Linda Ronstadt: 2013 National Book Festival

from the Library of Congress in Washington DC and now I want to introduce Linda Ronstadt one of the most celebrated singers of our generation [Applause] she said I have friends out there rock country Ron Schara classic jazz you name it she's saying it and she was the most versatile singer in America and probably and we're grateful to all the joy that you brought to us for a very long time and we snagged her from Arizona to Washington today because she just wrote a book in case you didn't hear simple dreams a musical memoir and so today we're gonna talk up here for a little bit and then we have two mics we'll get time for some questions already do you have any memorable mic failures when you were singing with the Eagles for instance you know when you are professional you learned that you're never gonna be working at any kind of optimum situation there's always gonna be the sound that's always gonna not work you're always gonna be in a room that isn't good for you know for sound that doesn't have good acoustics and there's always gonna be a lot of distractions and then it's also gonna be that thing humming over there and you just have to do it you just have to step up to the plate and swing do your best you do restaurant professionals you know well thank you I mean musicians play so much that they learn it's in their muscles they they know how to feel it because you don't ever get a break from me hearing it and you just learn that you're gonna be able to do your best 78 90 90 percent you know it's gonna be in that range somewhere you only do a hundred percent when your rehearsal that's why I like rehearsal when people say yeah they come to my show I'll say can I come to the rehearsal well it's sort of had it arrived in increments I was walking through the Troubadour one night and I heard a band called Shiloh and I was looking for a drummer and their drummer was really good and I said hey that's exactly the style I need you know I'm gonna go talk to him see if I can get him away from this band Shiloh so I went and I and the guys name was Don Henley and so I said you know I want to come on I got a tour coming up why don't you come out on the road with me and then I needed a guitar player because I had Bernie Leadon working in my band but he'd gone off to play with the Flying Burrito Brothers and he wasn't available so I was going out with this guy JD souther that I lived with and he he was he had a duet with this guy named Glenn Frey it was a really good guitar player I said hey maybe we can get Glen you know to do Bernie's part so we hired Glen Glen and Bernie were rooming together I mean a glam star Glen and Dawn were rooming together on the road we didn't have enough money in those days for everybody to have their own room so I had everybody double up except for me I got my own room which I shared with my panda and my teddy bear and Donna Glenn started writing songs together they you know it was Glenn that discovered that Don could sing because we we never heard him sing he was behind the drums and you know he it's unusual for a drummer to sing Glenn discovered that Don was not gonna not only sing but he was a really good singer and a really good writer so they started writing songs together and they wanted to form a band together so so John Boylan who was over there helping with the sound was my manager and producer at the time and he said I'll tell you what he said we need a band for a while and it's gonna be a while before you guys can get your band together and get a record deal so while you're doing that you know we'll just work together but we have some suggestions for who you should put in your band so he suggested Randy Meisner the bass player and I suggested he get Bernie because I wanted Murni to start with and Bernie and Glen is just was just an added bonus so he hired Bernie and we hired Randy and we started playing shows together and you know and then they would open I mean they were like they are they didn't open they had like it they put it songs in the show so they just kept growing this catalog of stuff you know pretty soon they're just kind of wriggly blowing me off the stage but I didn't care I was loving it so and you know the minute they started playing we knew they were gonna be we knew they were gonna be a success there was just no keeping that music down it was really good harmony singing really good songwriting really good playing and you know the rest is history you you hung out with so many I mean I suppose they're saying they hung out with you but Jackson Browne Emmylou Harris Rosemary Clooney you had so many any of those great stories to come back about big moments that you remember with your collaborators well yeah you know there's I first met Jackson Browne when he was 17 and I was 18 and he was already writing brilliant songs he wrote the song called he had already written a song called these days which was the song that I loved our opening farewell which is still one of his best songs ever and it didn't mean that he started writing crappy songs after that it just meant that he was already up here and it kept going you know and as it never stopped he's really an extraordinary talent and a very good person I think so you know I was just astonished that somebody that young was writing especially he was younger than I am then I was you know by a year and and was just writing at that level and when I got to California I was just astonished at the level of talent I mean the first guitar player that I met over there was right cooter you know and I just went well they don't come any better than that you know he's in the great master category and he was very young then and playing his ass off you know he just played like a demon so it was a real experience coming going from Tucson where we you know we played and we sang and we plunked around and then all of the sudden it was this other level of professionalism and brilliance you know they came over to my house you know somebody brought a pan pole and I was singing a song that Pam Poland had written that I'd I met her through Kenny Edwards who is one of the stone ponies I mean they're just all musicians kind of knew each other in those days you know we hung out in the same clubs and we'd find each other in the same old funky you know places to eat that you know you could get meat in three four five dollars you know and we relied on those kind of places so you talk in your book about that whole era which is so interesting a lot of sex drugs rock and roll I mean did not so much of that I mean I you know I get this with every interviews like oh you're all out there having orgies and smoking a big spliff and yeah I'm doing a line of coke you know you know did I ever take drugs you bet I did you know I tried everything not everything I didn't try injectables but I my addiction I have to say is reading and if I smoke a joint I'd start the sins and it would melt away I'd forget the beginning of the sins by the time I got to the end of the sins cocaine just made me real nervous and talked really fast I got enough of that going on in my life anyway I didn't need it so you know I was the one that was knitting and reading and the band I mean I had a pretty refined band you know I mean the guys in my band Kenny Edwards who was in the Stone Pony to start with is a very intellectual guy is a big reader highly literate very well-educated serious guy with a very refined Sensibility Don grolnick my piano player used to have articles written about him when he was a kid as a smartest kid in Long Island his IQ was up in the 180s somewhere and he's the one that turned me on to Anna Karenina you know I read that because of him you know and he was a brilliant guy with an I mean these guys are gigging musicians they have to have their body and their soul and their mind all knit together in order to do their job or otherwise they they just wash out I know they're rock and roll bands that have these relationship you know I mean the Parkinson's moment here have a the stories about them is that they you know are wrecking hotel rooms and stuff like that reputation was the word I was trying to find we weren't like that the boys were what they were reading Anna Karenina you know they were they were reading The Magic Mountain or they were reading the heart of darkness you know we traded books around they were they were mostly readers didn't always read the drummer's were not the literate ones but they weren't stupid either they were the drummers did something else I don't know they they communicated in another way piano players always read bass players usually read it's funny they fall into funny little categories but the piano player is always the grown-up guy you know that has to keep everything together he's like the he's like the catcher you know he watching baseball and the pitcher goes over to the the capture goes over to the pitcher to try to calm him down the lead guitar players the pitcher and he gets really rattled he started playing just way too many notes you see the piano player to go over there to sort of settle him down and kind of negotiate between him and the bass player you know it's Hue words you write in your book about you know everything every man in America was in love with you including my husband millions were not in love and many men in particular were not in love including many that I said my cab for believe me much to my chagrin they were not in love with me but many were and you wrote your famously this is a political town and you were going out with Jerry Brown who was the governor who's again the governor and you wrote this lovely passage about Jerry Brown he was smart and funny not interested in drinking or drugs and lived his life carefully with a great deal of discipline this was different from a lot of men I knew in rock-and-roll and I found it a relief well I'm a Democrat you can tell that right what was it like to be in the thick of politics there here you were a music icon and hanging I wasn't involved in politics I did not get involved in his life I just didn't you know what his wife is very involved in his life that's why she's his wife and she's a really nice person I like her a lot she can take know I mean it was just silly you know we just somehow we we we dated we were sweethearts we had a really good time together you know but we I was not involved in his politics I was not that involved in his law in his professional life he wasn't involved in my professional life at all he didn't have any understanding of it you know he met over there someone I've never heard him say ain't saying he likes flamenco music hearing likes passionate music he liked the passionate music passionate women you know that's his deal in case you wondered likes flamenco write it down I still make them add comedy to its poetry - and he reads it very well how is it possible that you never got married I didn't need to get married it just wasn't a requirement for me you know I had some really nice boys I'm not dissing it I have great respect for people that are able to do the kind of compromise and really build each other up you know I think the only reason to be with some buddies they make you a better person you make them a better person but I was busy running around you know so fast and and I did have a number of nice boyfriends that lasted pretty long but you know when I know have a lot of friends that are married and they tried really hard to make it work and they didn't and then they had to figure out who got the sofa and who got the pan and who got that this and that I just when I was done with it was done with and I didn't have to do that thank God I'm a kind of a believer in serial monogamy with an emphasis on the cereal I'm not talking about Cheerios you know you asked me if I you know like from touring if I had memories of seeing Washington you know there's a there's an opening passage in the heart of darkness by Joseph Conrad this is a reading a reading group so I know I can make a literary reference here where he talks about how provincial a sailor's life is and you think provincial they go all over the world you know but the thing is most of the time they're on the boat which is the same group of you know scabby old guys you know and they're hanging out with each other and they've got their group dynamics they're on the boat and then they get to the Harbor and the harbors are the same all over the world disturbingly much like airports are now you know it's the same old grog shops and the same old chicks and the same old whatever they find and they don't go beyond the harbor to explore what's going on in the interior of the country they just come in and you know change their supplies so we really were very insular in that way you know rock-and-roll band touring it's pretty insular there's the bus there's the hotel there's the soundcheck there's the show and there's afterwards in the hotel where you spend most of your time hanging out and playing music because that's all musicians ever want to really do is just pick and so people are writing songs and people are figuring out harmonies and people are showing each other songs and we often would play a lot of other people's songs we wouldn't play our own songs because we were tired of them so we'd be playing you know songs from Motown or Everly Brothers songs or Hank Williams songs or Merle Haggard songs or whatever you know working out the harmonies and that's how you get your basement that's your that's the fundamentals of your craft you're honing it always so there wasn't a lot of time for exploring you were on the cover of Time magazine in 1977 you were in every city I read those posters of you everywhere and then we didn't hear from you for a long time what was that like to be in ultra limelight and then kind of well I had children you know they came into my house my life and they came in my house and I had it feed them and you know do stuff with the talk to them and they wanted me there in the morning and they wanted me still there at night you know it's kind of a shock but there I was so I I changed my life rather dramatically I stopped touring I stopped recording I stopped everything and then I eventually went back to touring in summertime when they got in school so because I could they could go with me and they they loved touring because I don't have TV at my house or any computers they weren't allowed any of that stuff so they got in the bus and there was a big TV screen they were like oh great we always do it we always heard about this you know they heard about TV they were in heaven and I got him a lot of games and stuff like that like I didn't ever let him play with Legos or any weird plastic toys you know I wanted to play with real stuff I wanted to play with clay and beeswax and make stuff and they did all that but then when they get they found out about Legos and that's awful colors that Legos come in and those hideous shapes you know it's just so regimental it's all the same kind of basic shape I think it's worth having to arc it's what's happened to architecture today as all those architects played with the Legos and they can only make these squares ago like that I hate Legos well some of them I don't like the Washington what is that big felt like pointing thing they were watching him I like that so much the Lincoln Memorial is pretty and the Capitol is pretty and so you know I like old architecture I like anything before World War one is pretty good and I can just kind of drag it up to 1929 when the crash happened you know but after that it's just kind of pathetic sort of sad I don't like modern architecture so your kids you adopted two kids and they're 19 and 22 now I think it gets harder I mean I thought whoa you know after the diaper thing and the toddler thing we have to chasing after him all the time I got my son when he was 11 I got him a bus pass I said you're on your own kid you know I hope you couldn't find your way there's your bus pass but and he did he was great he was very independent you know but he always came home at night because he had to eat and now he doesn't do that he got a girlfriend and she's really nice he's moved in with her and we just we just packed him up last Sunday and moved him into it with the girlfriend so it's gonna be a new thing I'm gonna go home no me half an empty-nester my daughter's halfway moved out she lives in a little cottage on my property but she has mercifully your own kitchen so she won't mess up mine I'm a Dutch housewife man I run a tight ship I don't like any dirt or any clutter in my house can't leave any dirty dishes out I have a fit so she goes out to her own little house and just piles up the dishes as much as she wants recorded music very much its historic and it's working I don't like recording music very much I like live music because when I was recording it was always live you know I know it sounds weird for recording artists do not like recording music but I like it as a living thing that changes all the time and it's always it's a it's a plastic you know moving thing have you stayed in touch them do you still meet up with some of the old gang oh I do so JD souther last night had dinner with him and I see Emmy Lou Emmy Lou Harris a lot and I saw Jackson brown not too long ago you know I mean that was a huge part of my social life because musicians go over to each other's house and hang out for hours but they don't do a lot of talking they do a lot of playing and then the talking just kind of fits in the little cracks here and there and you get to talk about where you got your new shoes or what your child is doing or you broke up with your boyfriend or whatever it is but it just fits in in between the next song you play so if I had to go over to somebody's house and just sit there and talk to them so I wouldn't know what to say there would be this big lags and the conversation where the song is supposed to be Wow good question well well first of all I I was I was out to dinner I was at a dinner and I looked to my left and there was Michael Pollan who I'm very huge fan of and I just read the botany of desire three times and I went oh my god I'm sitting next to Michael Pollan so he was talking to me and he said you think you're gonna write are you gonna write a memoir and I went oh come on I have no craft I'm not a writer like you I don't know anything about writing I've never even written I never kept a diary I never kept a journal I've never written anything B except a thank-you note so which I do very well with my fountain pen you know so um he said well I think everybody has one good story they can tell even even without learning to be that you know the craft of writing I think of one good story you can tell so I thought about that and about a week later I got a letter from one of the major publishing houses that included a book by Renee Fleming and one by rosanne Cash and it said you know here's a book that Renee Fleming wrote about being a soprano all her life and what her process was in becoming a singer and here's another one by rosanne Cash is it very sort of discrete book about her life and I loved both of the books thought they were great I said maybe I could write a book like this if I stuck to the work you know and I just stuck to the music and how and then I thought well what did I do that was different from other people because I'm not the his pop singer that ever led you to redefine pop music or anything like that I'm just one of many and there are a lot of better singers than I am but what I thought I did was I was the most diverse singer I did the most harebrained half-witted you know next leap that you'd never be able to figure out so um and I wanted to write why those musical selections weren't arbitrary you know why they were deliberate choices and what there was in my background that that was the foundation for it and then how I went from each thing to the next thing you know long my little path I mean they weren't career moves believe me I wasn't sitting there going what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna stop singing in English and I'm only gonna sing in Spanish and in addition to that I'm gonna sing these obscure you know traditional Mexican songs that nobody's ever heard unless you live on a ranch someplace in peak takete though you know and and that's gonna be a good career move it just wasn't like that my record company had a fit they couldn't believe I was doing it but it was it was music that I was just completely passionate about and I wasn't gonna let anybody get in my way to sing it I had to sing it I was gonna die I think a lot of people think that you were so fabulously successful and admired that you have a huge amount of money but I've read that you've said that it's actually the songwriter is not necessarily the singers I mean I'm not poor the fellow in that you must have got that out of the New York Times the fella in the New York Times seems to think that I'm a broke and be a drug addict or recovering drug addict that was neither you know I saved my money and was pretty careful I can't live like I used to live but but people think that just because you had a record out that you have hundreds of millions of dollars or even tens of millions of dollars just isn't true you know I'm not gonna I'll be fine I think but as long as my kids don't spend too much money but they're not big spendthrifts so but I was mainly complaining him about the real estate prices in San Francisco where I live which is ridiculous you know you can't a starter house in San Francisco with three bedrooms and two bathrooms is like five million dollars you know in a nice neighborhood it's ridiculous so I was whining about that so I guess he decided I was broke like why couldn't I afford to twenty million dollar house oh gee I must have snorted it [Music] how did you think the industry the music industry has changed since the 70s and 80s in the economics it's completely different there's a really good book I recommend by the way I think it's an important book by Jaron Lanier it's called who owns the future and Jaron Lanier was a guy who who really built a lot of the internet and he developed the idea of he's one of those Silicon Valley guys tech scientist a computer scientist and he also developed virtual reality and named it virtual reality and what he and he's also one of the rare Silicon Valley lefties that's who's Pro labor and really believes that you know we should all get paid for our work and paid in some kind of way that we can sustain the living and he feels that the internet as much as he loves it and as much as he was a part of developing it it's gonna deliver hyper on him unemployment in the future and it's delivering it now in fact and he used the record business as the it's a prime example for his book the record business the photo business the publishing business going down you know because we have Kindles I read a Kindle 2 and we have Amazon because we have these super servers that are just you know charging you a lot of money to get stuff but they're uploading for free and so nobody's getting paid for the content that they're uploading and that's that's been the case in spades with music the music business is completely different the record business as I knew it is completely gone now that some of that might be good but there were some good gatekeepers out there there was some true record men that would work on the hunch and the rush and that really had great intuition and knew what a good song was now we don't have any gatekeepers the same way with a newspaper you know if we need the New York Times the editorial board just started and some fact checkers to see what what's out there you know you need them and we're not getting it with it with the internet so you know the Internet is a great wonderful shiny bright thing to have but what's the price you pay and the price we pay I think it may turn out to be much too dear for what we lose ask a question they can line up at these mics we have about fifteen minutes for questions and while you're doing that just make sure you keep your question brief and then it is a question is there anybody on the current scene that you could think of for doing particularly good music at the moment oh there are a lot of people talent never leaves the gene pool you know it just becomes harder to find them in the in the hue and cry I like um there's a girl named Duffy who's Welsh and she's like an R&B singer I love her I love Amy Winehouse she was we lost her she was the one that got away I loved her she was great you know I think Adele is I mean I'm talking about mainstreaming I think adele is an amazing singer she's wonderful in the real breath of fresh air but and I also loved this girl janelle monae because I loved she's beautiful and I like the way she styles and I love the way she performs and she's a really good singer but she's demanding a certain kind of respect out there you know for her body and for her image as a woman and she's real clear about it and I like that a lot it's a it's a lesson for Miley Cyrus you know I'm not criticizing her I feel bad for her you know but but she's her mom to tell her that you know it's important it's important to have dignity it's important to have self-respect I mean people are saying you know I mean me compared to those girls you know I was wearing a Cub Scout suit I mean be serious you know compared to Beyonce in those girls but and there's nothing wrong with it I mean sexuality and youth are a thing to celebrate and I don't want us to go back to those puritanical days when you know when that was all considered bad and dirty you know the whole calvinist thing it's ridiculous you know and Martin Luther who really had a problem those guys really had a bad hang-up in it it kept us screwed up for a long time I think but you have to have dignity and you have to have respect for your own person and I think she's showing that no there was more pressure to wear a longer skirt I went to work for grad night for Walt Disney and you know Disneyland and they said well you had a lien on so you kneel on something and it was like that the Catholic school you know or your your uniform skirt had to be a certain length and so they put that in the contract that if I knelt someplace my skirt wouldn't be too short I mean the biggest problem I had with short skirts was I had this striped dress that I used to wear to sing in my word on the Johnny Cash showing remember the last time I ever wore it and it was made it was a Betsey Johnson dress and it was just a great dress for singing because I kept it in my purse because you know they're all airlines it always lose your luggage so I carried in my purse so I always have something to wear when I got to the gig and and I could you know there was we move fast there was no money to pay for dry-cleaning or anything like that it was supposed to be drunken so I washed it in the sink but it was made out of some strange kind of synthetic material and just kept shrinking and shrinking I'm pretty stupid it's like I can't wear this anymore my mother wouldn't let me out of the house you know so I had to throw that away but that was it after that I wore pants Aylin how are you hi advanced copy of the book it was fantastic read it in one day i'm sokka what's a short book is 135 pages I have to admit I had three posters of you on the wall in college and I have a question that I think a lot of people in this audience may have how are you not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame what a disgrace I'm not really sure and I don't care but a long time ago I was asked to somehow participate in one of their festivities I'm just not very interested in prizes I'm glad to have them you know I mean I just to give you an idea but the first Grammy that I won I left in a rent-a-car and I was glad that I got it and it's I'm grateful too you know one always likes to have one's work acknowledged but prizes are not what's important to me and years ago I was invited to participate in one of their festivities and I I declined and the president of my record company was there and he said Lydia if you don't do this you'll never be inducted into the Hall of Fame and what's the one so you know maybe the word got back to them I don't know I don't care you know it's not important to me it's a crime okay it's not a crime it really doesn't matter I wouldn't go anyway in 1978 I wrote you a fan letter which I sent to your dad courtesy of the hardware store did you ever get it I still have I still have the copy the letter he wrote back saying he was going to talk to you that was nice of him he was a nice man I'll show you a letter later if you want to okay good deal that's serious question though with all the programs you did in the 70s and such what was you have never liked I didn't really know him I just did his TV show for about a minute and a half you know all these chicks around I remember I sang long long time and all the little playboy girls started to cry and I said I think maybe that's gonna be hit you know made all the money all the money started to cry but he you know he had a had a magazine that included it was like Vanity Fair is now you know where it had a lot of blingy shishi stuff and then it had a couple of serious articles you know like Christopher Hitchens you could have Christopher Hitchens Vanity Fair was my guilty pleasure at the hairdresser and when they got Christopher Hitchens like I actually got a subscription so you know there are their magazines like that I think he tried to have a little bit more varied sensibility but you have to realize he was working out of the early 60s when sex was just something that was just like way over there stuffed into somebody's panty girdle it wasn't allowed out you know and that needed to be addressed they went a little overboard but really you know maybe it'll write itself in the next century I don't know hey good morning I felt like we were shorted of getting information about your childhood and that early background so I'm very curious um if you could just talk more about that you said you know musical background I'm wondering if did you study music go to college where'd you grow up I did study music and I I don't read music til to this day I'm really pretty I I you know if I were gonna give advice to somebody I'd say be a little bit more prepared than I was you don't have to read reading comes from a part of your brain that isn't necessarily the creative part it's a useful tool but it's not an end in any way shape or form and I find that when I'm forced to read it puts me in a different part of my brain that it keeps me from connecting to the emotional part of my story but that's not that way for everybody you know those studio players that are just great that are great readers they can do everything you know that's why a virtuoso is a virtuoso because they have all those skills and they can do everything really well and tell the brilliant story that's so evocative it makes you fall on your knees and cry which is what music is supposed to do you know I mean if I almost say if music can't make you cry then you're you're a hopeless case so and it's my job to make you cry I don't cry very much myself but it's my job it used to be my job Linda hi did you write any of your own songs I did I wrote a song called try me again and I wrote another song for a movie called winter light and but I I'm not a you know writing it's not what I do that's a separate gift and I think there's some people that are really compelled to write and I was just in an area that has such a rich pool of songwriters I just thought why bother with mine you know I can just I can go straight to George Gershwin Rodgers and Hart JD souther you know Jackson Browne I got the cream here welcome hi Linda I'm from Tucson okay and your brother Mike is one of my best friends and Dan Buckley and big Jim's and they're low those guys those guys thank you very much for being on the committee for the new mariachi documentary about mariachis in Tucson oh great and the Ronstadt family is added so much to our town thank you well thank you for saying that that's really nice it's hard to miss us there there are a lot of Ronstadt's one of one of my uncle's had twelve children and they they all wouldn't had children of their own so you can imagine what it's like it's like a herd of rabbits out there hi Linda I was hoping you could share a fond memory or an anecdotal story of when you worked with Emmy Lou and Dolly when you were recording trio I love that album well it's hard to say a certain anecdote I'm trying to think what it would be but what it really was was that I'd met dolly I saw her singing on the Grand Ole Opry when I went with Randy Randy Scruggs he took me to see it when it was still at the Ryman Auditorium and I was standing backstage watching dolly sing and she was a wonder to behold I mean she's one of those girls interview you know if you take away the wigs and the makeup and wash all the mascara and the hot false eyelashes off and everything like that what you have it in front of you it's one of the most beautiful girls you've ever seen you know she's just gorgeous she doesn't need even a shred of makeup but she likes it so she puts it on so she was standing there with all this stuff and a really tall hair and she had on a dress with the big skirt lots of petticoats and I just thought oh look at that you know and then she started this and I was dressed kind of like I am today you know t-shirt and a pair of jeans I didn't have the hoody on it was I think it was summertime but um at any rate she came over and I and I talked to her and I thought she was completely charming when she opened her mouth and started to sing I fell on the floor she's an amazing singer Dolly Parton is a great singer so I was delighted to meet her I like this record that she made called Jolene I thought it was a really good record she'd written it you know so I told him he knew about her and then Emmy met her somehow through some other thing you know probably she went to the Ryman when I met her too but she called me up from home one time Emmy was living in LA and she called me and she's the Dolly Parton's at my house you have to come over so I was living like 40 minutes away you know at the beach and I said okay I'm coming right away and I got there in 20 minutes and so I sat down and we started to sing and again that's what musicians do we always do that when we're touring when we're hanging out where whatever we're always playing and singing well of course Sammy got her Katara we started to sing right away and we were shocked you know because there was the sound that was different from anything that we'd heard we thought it was really good and and we just went wow we want it we got to do more of that you know so then we thought well we would like to make a record together but of course the record company didn't want to hear about that because it was too complicated and it really is hard to get three different record companies in three different careers together but we managed to do it eventually and we managed to make two records it was like you know it was like moving heaven and earth to do that but we did it hi Linda I'm gonna make you feel old cuz we met 40 years ago I worked at the New York Academy of Music you were there with David Bowie and you were with somebody in a stroller is every month you remember that I don't remember David Bowie and it was in the stroller no no no the baby with there was a baby in a stroller and you were looking after it and my baby no I think it was David Senate thing was for either Iggy Pop a Lou Reed back in 73 I don't think that was me I think he may be Nico maybe Nico no that was definitely you but my question is before you were diagnosed with the Parkinson's was there any truth to the rumor that you're gonna get back together with some of the guys saw the Hillman puree and Henley and do a tour well I was no no there was no truth to that rumor we didn't tour together that much I mean we never did south of him in for a I never toured with them well I know they wrote some of yours it was another girl too and are you still in touch with little Irving with who Irving Azoff Oh everything Azoff um well I was never that close to Irving Azoff I haven't seen him for maybe 40 years or 30 years I think I like him we weren't we were just talking one night and he said to me this was I think we were at the Saturday Night Live show hanging out in the backstage and he's and he asked me a question I answered he said Linda you're so normal how do you be so normal so that's what I named my music company then it was normal music perving why he's so short well that's a thing that we don't tolerate very well in this culture but it's kind of silly when you think about it and it's not like you have a deliberate choice over whether you're short or tall it's interesting in Mexico if you're short it's just because you're short you know if you're tall they call you shorty they call you fatty they call you skinny you know it's not an insult it's just a kind of an acknowledgement of what you are but it doesn't after that they you know you your what your value it you're decided your value is decided on its merit not on your height it's a kind of a weird thing to do to people in this country thank you and it's sorry to know that you're not gonna be able to tour again no I'm not gonna tour but thank you anyway my family is from the Benson and Tucson area as well really so having the Mexican music and lucky horseshoe cafe my mother's no longer here but on behalf of my mother we're grateful for concie honest because we always listen to them and she handed me the first cassette and then her favorite rendition I'm sure she took it wherever she is in the other place that WS she would cry hear that song - that's a sacred special song she said now this is the voice of your generation and look how she's handling these songs of course she said it all in Spanish the monument also [Music] I'm pretty good remember the house parties where you take the lab shades off so they could do the moving pictures we did the same thing at home and thank you for the concert over at what was called the Nissan Pavilion I dragged my sixth-grade son with me to see you and he was a fan forever fantastic great thank you I'm sorry one from here and one from here I'm sorry about the but she will be signing books later okay so thanks for being here today first I echo the previous questioners comment about about trio and how what a great collaboration that was but one of the ones that intrigued me the most was your collaboration with Nelson Riddle on the classics what what led to that well um I was singing pirates every day and we were doing eight shows a week and I was singing only ones you know it's just singing this same music and I loved it but I had to start working on something else just so I can have some variety and I ran into this guy um Jerry Wexler who's a great record man you know work for Atlantic Records he's one of the pillars of Atlantic Records he had a killer record a record collection I said I want to come over and start listening to some of your records and start learning some songs because I I wanted to improve my phrasing and what I always would do is I would study when I take on some genre of music which at that point I was singing you know mainstream pop music I'd listen to what came before it so that I could improve my phrasing so I thought well what came before my mainstream pop music which was rock and roll was um American Standard songs and I thought the songs were for instance mostly better than the things that I was singing and the things that I was finding missing because they're so beautifully crafted if the American culture gave anything to the world at large it was the American popular song probably the most significant contribution cultural contribution to the world at large so and and that the zenith of the American popular song is truly you know from the 20s through to the middle 50s when the Gershwins Rodgers and Hart you know Irving Berlin all these incredibly great songwriters we're writing these songs that were crafted on so that there was somebody something for everybody there was you know sentiment there was heartbreak there was concern and worry about you know your you know the the economy crashing or where your future is gonna be if you're if you're an immigrant and there was also an intellectual component to for anybody that wants it's kind of like I like to compare that ear to Bette Midler you know she had a tour that she didn't call thighs and whispers well you know it's fine i'm you know thighs and whispers because she had a lot of girls and stuff like that but also if you're a birdman fan you know you get that extra level of it so that's what the Gershwins could do and they did that musically to to a great degree so there's this incredible complex mesh of different cultural influences that were completely created by the fact that we were a country that was welcomed to immigrants we allowed immigrants to come in and find their place in the economic pie and we allowed them to prosper which has put people from Mexico and Guatemala and Salvador would be doing right now and people from Liberia and Libya and all these people that are coming in from all these different places we need to help them find their place because otherwise we're driving in them into the shadows and we drive them into crime and we drive them into generations of crime and a great precedent for that is the black migration the african-american migration that happened from the beginning of the century all the way up and showed through the 40s and 50s well actually it happened all the way up into through the 60s - they were fleeing the Jim Crow laws and they came up north and they didn't have Jim Crow to deal with but they had that economic door slammed in their face and it's an example of what we need to not do I don't know why this country doesn't learn but we need to open the doors for everybody and make it easier [Applause] we have time for one last question and then we'll have some closing remarks here and then she will be signing books a little bit later good morning Linda welcome to our hometown you said it's your job to make us cry by your singing which has often brought it love to my throat particularly the last high note of Blue Bayou tell me how you prepared and how you chose to sing that note and hold it so long little Mexicano that's a style there's a style called wah-wah Pongo that is in in Mexican music and Mexican traditional music where you instead of trying to go through the passaggio like you do in in classical music or you don't emphasize the break in the voice you purposely emphasize that yodel II break in the voice and break into falsetto and it gives a kind of a thrilling emotional rush and that's what I was doing in fact it was so Mexican what I did was doing that I I recorded the song in Spanish too but the translation wasn't very good so I made a lot of mistakes actually the translation was fine but when I copied it I made a lot of spelling errors and so I went and and tan Sayers so I wound up sounding like a hermaphrodite in a time machine you know a little weird they were annoyed about it in Spain they didn't mind too much in Mexico because they kind of knew me and they know I was one of their homegirls but at any rate that was completely my Mexican influence one that's been given to all of us and something comes along well I have to keep reminding myself that I had an unusually long turn at the trough and you know I had a lot of chances to do things that other people don't ever get and I have to be content with that I have to look around for some other way to make myself useful what you might be doing to make yourself useful in the coming years well I work with the group Carlos and soundless and there are a culture it's it's a little cultural center in in the East Bay and northern Northern California in Richmond which is pretty funky neighborhood and they have a lot of immigrant kids there and there were there with an extreme culture shock they don't know quite how to place themselves to come from this place called Mexico and they wind up in this place called the United States and they don't know quite who to be and this little place is you know and there's no art education in case you haven't noticed you know the Republicans don't ever want to fund the Arts I know because I came here and talked to them on behalf of arts for children and education and they weren't they were not very interested but um and they haven't coughed up the bucks subsequently but I keep hoping they'll happen to some enlightenment but anyway this one place teaches these kids really really deep traditional Mexican music how to play the instruments how to sing how to dance and they teach them visual art also really envision art and the kids have a tremendous record of staying in high school going on to college staying out of gangs not getting pregnant you know teen no teenage pregnancies and and they they don't feel as bad they have a place to go that's there's you know where they can kind of you know just you know they can define themselves they don't have to go out get a tattoo in order to find out who they are so I've been working with them for about 20 years and I just started devoting all my time to that right now I go over there I go to their rehearsals you know they have a performing group but they don't teach kids music so that they can get up on stage like trained seals and perform they teach them music so that they can use it they're socialized they can use it to process their feelings that's what art is for to help us work out our feelings and so they can have something to you know how they can define themselves in their in their community in their culture [Music] this has been a presentation of the Library of Congress visit us at loc.gov

Channel: Library of Congress

Views: 147,907

Rating: 4.8405499 out of 5

Keywords: Library of Congress, National Book Festival (Recurring Event), Linda Ronstadt (Musical Artist)

Id: v4R1UhKbclE

Length: 46min 59sec (2819 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 12 2013