Ten years after the neurodegenerative disease progressive supranuclear palsyrobbed her of the ability to sing,Linda Ronstadtis still using her one-of-a-kind voice to speak her truth loud and clear.
Ronstadt, who was not expected to speak, decided to answer the question on mic before a crowd of two hundred VIPs and State Department officials. “I’d like to say to Mr. Pompeo, who wonders when he’ll be loved, it’s when he stops enabling Donald Trump.”
The jab may have ruffled some feathers, but Ronstadt could not have cared less. In both her life and her art, the 73-year-old rock icon is unapologetic and uncompromising. Note her well-documented departure from the late ’70s pop-rock fast-lane for the bumpier road of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, Nelson Riddle-arranged American Standards and Mexican canciones. Many feared each creative detour would be a dead-end, but the excursions were successful in every sense of the word, enriching her already formidable musical legacy.
After picking out a Christmas tree near her San Francisco home, Ronstadt spoke to PEOPLE via telephone about the new documentary, going head-to-head with Pompeo at the Kennedy Center Honors, and how she expresses her musical passion amid her heath battle.
First and foremost, congratulations on receiving the Kennedy Center honor! That must have been such a special night.
Don Henley was there, too. I know you both go way back.
I was really surprised to see Don, andKevin Kline. Aaron Neville came. They were all surprises. It was fun. I met a lot of interesting people I wish I could have talked to more.
You also exchanged words, at least from a distance, with Mike Pompeo. How did that go down?
Mike Pompeo made this preposterous speech where he talked about how the State Department was supporting education for women and girls all over the world. I thought, “Yeah, you put them in a cage at the border, and you support Saudi Arabia.” I was thinking all those things. Then at the end of his speech, he said, “I just wonder, when will I be loved?” So I thought, why leave it a rhetorical question? Why not just give him the answer?
They said it was rude for me to insert politics into the ceremony, but I think it’s rude to put little children in cages and screw with people’s lives. And it’s rude to insult the two countries on your border, Canada and Mexico. And it’s rude to insult all your allies like England and Germany. What they’ve done with their foreign policy has just been disgusting. Trump’s alienated everybody there, and he’s the laughingstock of the European Union. He just makes trouble for us, and makes us feel insecure as a country.
Ronstadt at the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington D.C., Dec. 8 2019.John Paul Filo/CBS via Getty Images
Having grown up near the border in Tucson, it must be so frustrating for you to see what’s going on in the area today. I’m sure you take it very personally.
When Trump announced he was going to run for president, I knew he’d win. This is the rise of Hitler, and Mexicans are the new Jews. I was right because he said that whole thing aboutMexicans being rapists and murderers and drug dealers.
The culture of the region means a great deal to you — you’ve made several albums of traditional Mexican Mariachi music [Canciones de Mi Padre (1987), Mas Canciones(1991) andFrenesí(1992)]. What was the border community like when you were growing up there?
It was half cowboy country and half suburban. I mean, in my lifetime, the suburbs caught up with where we were. We were on a rural route on a dirt road. And in my lifetime, it became a paved road and they built a subdivision across from that paved road. But we didn’t see them. I lived on the last 10 acres of my grandfather’s cattle ranch. We had horses and chickens and dogs and cats and ducks. It was like growing up on a farm except we didn’t have to farm. They had a big vegetable garden we had to irrigate, but my father made his living with a big hardware business downtown. We sold all kinds of farm equipment, so the farmers would come from both sides of the border to shop there because we had the highest quality stuff. We had a really strong business and personal relations with people on both sides of the border. We always went back and forth. We’d go to Mexico for lunch and to shop in the little stores down there. They had really nice stores [in] Nogales. And then when people had baptisms or special picnics, whatever, we’d be invited.There’d be town balls, and we’d go to their balls. We’d get dressed up and go across the line and go to a party. And the food was the same on both sides of the border. There was no fence.
What did you want out of life at that time? What were your dreams growing up?
I wanted a really pretty pinto horse, and I wanted an Arabian [horse]. But I wanted to sing, mainly. I wanted to sing on stages. My brother was a singer in the Tucson Arizona Boys Choir and they played a really pretty little concert hall in Tucson. I always thought I wanted to sing on concert stages, not clubs.
Linda Ronstadt, late ’60s.
Was there a moment when you knew music was what you wanted to do with your life?
I knew in first grade because I didn’t do very well in arithmetic. The first grading period I got a D in arithmetic. And I thought, “Well, I won’t need to have arithmetic. I’m going to be a singer!” I got straight As after that, but arithmetic was tough there at the beginning. I knew I was a singer then. I didn’t think about being famous or being a star. I just thought about singing.
What were some of the biggest challenges of being a public figure? Did you ever find it hindered what you wanted to do?
I just avoided it. Before cell phones, you could avoid it. I didn’t show up for galas or big openings or anything like that where there were press; never did. I just stayed where I was. It was annoying because it takes away your ability to observe other people because they’re always looking at you. I have my anonymity back now so I can check out the room when I go into it.
Linda Ronstadt circa 1977.
Today there are so many singers who foster relationships with fans on social media. Do you think that people’s knowledge of the singer and their personal life enhances the experience of hearing them sing because you know the personal emotion that they’re putting into it? Or do you think that’s just a distraction bordering on voyeurism?
You’re a very avid reader. What are you reading right now?
Did you see a lot of that firsthand when you were touring?
Was that fun and exciting for you at the time or was it lonely? Or possibly a little bit of both?
I hated touring. It was just too hard. I did it for years, but I didn’t like it. It’s not a regular life. It encourages carelessness and waste because you always forget something in the last town, and you have to buy it new in the next town. And it’s not good for relationships unless the relationship is traveling with you, and then that’s not good for a whole bunch of other reasons. You lose touch with friends, and it’s hard to have an animal. I’ve always been an animal lover.
Ronstadt onstage in the mid-’70s.Richard E. Aaron/Redferns
It has to describe my life, at least one of the lines, and then I try to make the rest of it fit. But I have an urgent need to say that in that way.
One of my favorite songs of yours is “Try Me Again” fromHasten Down the Wind, which you wrote. Did you ever feel the desire to write more songs, or was that simply not how you wanted to express yourself?
I didn’t think of myself as a writer. Writers get up and they work every morning, or a lot of writers do. Songs just come through them. That song just came through me one day, and I went to the studio. I wrote it in the car, but it needed a bridge and another verse. And I sat up late to try to write it and nothing came. I got in the car the next day and went to the studio and the rest of it came. Andrew Gold helped me play the guitar for the bridge, but I wrote the chords and the music and the words. A little story of my life, then.
I wrote both the words and the music, but I didn’t think of myself as a writer. I didn’t feel like I had to come up with another song. That’s not my gift, you know? I mean, Icouldwrite a song. Anybody can write a song, but I can’t write a good song.
I recentlyread an interviewyou gave a number of years ago where you said, “Being able to sing songs about an emotion is to triumph over the emotion.” I thought that was such a beautiful expression, I was wondering if you could talk a little more about that.
You keep it from destroying you. I don’t know if you actually triumph over it, but art is there to help us express our feelings and deal with our emotions. You call artists for that. So it’s a way of expressing your feelings or telling a story. “This happened to me originally, and I have to tell you about this thing that happened.” It’s that kind of feeling.
Do you feel like the best singers have to be part actor to effectively convey that emotion?
No. [There’s] no acting because it has to be my story. I just see a movie of it, and I’m describing the movie.
Jackson Browne described you as an “auteur” inThe Sound of My Voicedocumentary. Sounds like he got it right!
It was very generous of him. I recorded some of his songs early in my career when I didn’t know how to phrase, and I kind of butchered them. And I recorded one later on, “For a Dancer,” with Emmylou Harris, and that turned out better.
You’ve had some amazing duet partners — Emmylou and Dolly [Parton] and Aaron Neville. What’s it like to sing with somebody? What is that relationship like? Very intimate, I’d imagine.
Very intimate. First of all, I learned so much singing from Emmylou, and I learned so much emoting from Emmylou. When she sings, it’s like a prayer. It’s like your last desperate prayer for reprieve from the guillotine. And she helped me just lay it all out, and I learned a lot of musicianship from her, too.
Relationships with somebody that you’ve sung with like that is as intimate as sex but it’s not sex. It’s different, but it’s very, very intimate. I mean, you feel like you know somebody. I feel that way about people that have written songs that I’ve recorded, like Jimmy Webb. I feel so close to him. He feels like a brother to me because I’ve sung those songs. He’s a great songwriter. I love his singing, too. I produced a record for him.
It felt urgent. People told me that it wouldn’t work. It wasn’t like I disagreed with them, I just didn’t hear them. I was listening to the music. I was making too much noise playing it, and they were songs that I wanted to sing. I thought they were better than the songs I was getting from contemporary writers.
There was another beautiful quote that yousaid earlier this year: “For me, there’s public music, private music, and secret music.” What’s your private music and what’s your secret music? Are you able to share?
I think that was something that came from [journalist and author] Pete Hamill, who said everyone has a public life, a private life, and a secret life. Public life’s open to anybody, but private life’s nobody’s business. It’s your life you never reveal.
I’m not telling you what my secret music is because it’s a secret. Private music is what people do just in their living room when they’re feeling a certain way. I recorded a song that was written for brass instruments to accompany. It was a little lament song about being deserted in Italian, but it really was for somebody to sit in their piano or sit in front of their glass harmonica and sing their sorrow. It didn’t necessarily need to be announced to the public.
Linda Ronstadt.Jessica Chou for The Washington Post via Getty Images
You’ve said that youstill sing in your mind. What do you like to sing?
You know what? That’s true, but it’s in your voice, so I’m happy with that.
source: people.com
