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The multi-platinum artist Linda Ronstadt is celebrating her 80th birthday. The “Blue Bayou” singer was born on July 15, 1946.
Key points
- Billy Joel talked about the significance of having Linda Ronstadt advise him as he finalized his 1977 album The Stranger.
- At the time, Ronstadt had hits including “When Will I Be Loved,” “Blue Bayou,” “Heat Wave,” “It’s So Easy,” and “You’re No Good.”
- “It’s a nice soft ballad, love song,” Joel said. “I didn’t even want to put it on the album because I thought it was too mushy.”
She’s so good, she’s so good, she’s so good...baby, she’s so good.
In 1977, Billy Joel was quickly becoming one of the most popular artists in music, with his Piano Man, Streetlife Serenade, and Turnstiles albums all selling over 1 million units, or going “platinum,” as the Recording Industry Association of America had started calling it in 1958. He had not yet matched, however, the mammoth reception of his breakout single, the title track from Piano Man.
Enter the ’70s undisputed Queen of Rock.
By this point, Linda Ronstadt was a true cultural phenomenon. She was also on her third platinum album in a string that would ultimately see 14 total — and she was the first woman to have four albums hit that distinction in a row.
She also had hit singles off each album to back them up, with multiple Top 10 hits, including “When Will I Be Loved,” “Blue Bayou,” “Heat Wave,” “It’s So Easy,” and the No. 1 “You’re No Good.” Her concert sales, too, were off the charts, with Ronstadt often described as the first “arena class” female artist. Paired with the former Beatles’ producer Peter Asher, Ronstadt had a formula, and it was working.
And if not for Ronstadt, one of Joel’s most famous songs might have never made it to the masses, as he explained in a new interview with Rick Beato.
When Billy Joel was putting together the finishing touches on his album The Stranger, he trusted the advice of Ronstadt, who was recording at a studio in the same building, as was singer-songwriter Phoebe Snow, both of whom spoke enthusiastically of “Just the Way You Are,” even as Joel was considering booting it from the album altogether.
“It’s a nice soft ballad, love song,” Joel said. “I didn’t even want to put it on the album because I thought it was too mushy.”
“And then we were in the studio,” the “An Innocent Man” singer continued. “Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow were in the studio, and we played the song for them. I said, ‘I don’t like this song that much.’ Linda Ronstadt goes, ‘Are you out of your mind? That’s a hit record. You got to put that on the album. That’s a great song.’ ‘Really?’ She talked me into it. So I have to thank Linda Ronstadt for that song.”
The song was also endorsed by another major legend, as during the interview Beato recalled that Paul McCartney said, “It’s one of the only songs that he wishes he wrote.”
“That blew me away,” Joel replied.
Of course, “Just the Way You Are” became Joel’s first Top 10 Billboard pop hit, reaching No. 3, with the single certified 3x platinum, meaning it sold over 3 million units. This breakthrough led to a string of chart-toppers, including “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,” “Tell Her About It,” and “Uptown Girl.”
Ronstadt’s career, too, was set to take more momentous turns. After several more albums that followed the same winning blend of rock and country, à la the classics Heart Like a Wheel and Simple Dreams, she successfully bridged into other genres, including punk with Mad Love, light opera with the Broadway musical and subsequent film adaptation of The Pirates of Penzance, the American songbook with a trilogy of Nelson Riddle collaborations, and mariachi music with Canciones de Mi Padre, which paid homage to her Mexican roots and became the biggest selling non-English language album in U.S. history.
She followed her style-bending of the 1980s with the three-time Platinum Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Moon, which included several duets with Aaron Neville, most significantly the Grammy-winning “Don’t Know Much.” Her duet with James Ingram, the theme song to An American Tail titled “Somewhere Out There,” also won the Song of the Year in 1987. In total, Ronstadt has won 10 competitive Grammys, been honored with the Grammy and Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement awards, and was the subject of Best Music Film Grammy winner, the 2019 documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice.
She was also a 2014 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. She received Kennedy Center Honors in 2019 and made headlines during this time — among many, many other times she’s spoken out about politics —for rebuking President Donald Trump’s then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Pompeo honored her at the pre-show dinner musing, “When will I be loved?” Ronstadt replied in her speech, “When he stops enabling Donald Trump.”
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Ronstadt, who turned 80 this year on July 15, announced in 2013 that she had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, though it was later determined she had progressive supranuclear palsy, which affected her vocal cords and rendered her unable to sing. She last performed in 2009, and her last album was released in 2006.
“In fact, I couldn’t sing for the last five or six years I appeared on stage, but I kept trying. I kept thinking, ‘What if I tried singing upside down? Or standing on my head? Or while juggling? [Laughs] Maybe I’d be able to sing better then,’” the “Long, Long Time” performer told AARP Magazine in 2013. “So I didn’t know why I couldn’t sing — all I knew was that it was muscular or mechanical. Then, when I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, I was finally given the reason.”
While her voice was heralded as one of the best in music during her zenith, the ever-humble star — who was at various times romantically attached to such prominent names as George Lucas, California Gov. Jerry Brown, and Jim Carrey — is known for being self-effacing.
“When I listen to all my old stuff, I tend to be horrified,” she said in a 2017 interview with The Guardian.
While promoting her 2013 autobiography Simple Dreams, Ronstadt told Rock Cellar, said it “never occurred to her” that she’d have “such a great life.”
“My little motto has always been: ‘Shoemaker stick to your last.’ A shoemaker makes a shoe using a device called a ‘last,’ so I stuck to my last,” the “Hurts So Bad” singer explained. “I loved to sing, and I tried to play music that reflected and told my story and made me feel passionate. That was my main ambition. And I was lucky that I had hits, which was surprising to me.”
Watch Ronstadt perform her hit “You’re No Good” from the special Linda Ronstadt: Live in Hollywood below.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
