Heart Like A Wheel
Sep. 16th, 2013 10:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dedalus_1947Some say the heart is just like a wheel
When you bend it you can’t mend it.
But my love for you is like a sinking ship
And my heart is on that ship out in mid-ocean.
When harm is done, no love can be won.
I know it happens frequently.
What I can’t understand,
Oh please God hold my hand,
Why it had to happen to me?
(Heart Like A Wheel – Kate & Anna McGarrigle: 1974)
I first learned of Linda Ronstadt’s disabling medical condition on Facebook in late August. My sister-in-law, Tootie, posted a link to the AARP Magazine story in which Ronstadt revealed that she could no longer sing because of her Parkinson’s. The news was a blow to me, and sounded so much like a death sentence that I didn’t want to read it – so I ignored it. I couldn’t conceive of the owner of that incomparable voice, who Rolling Stone and Time Magazine crowned Queen of Rock in the 1970’s and 80’s, silenced forever. I succeeded suppressing these facts until I happened upon a surprisingly upbeat article in the Sunday New York Times about Linda Ronstadt’s memoir and Parkinson’s.
The first time I encountered Linda’s beguiling voice was in high school, when I heard the hit single Different Drum on the radio. Although a new musical trio, The Stone Poneys, recorded the song in 1967, Top-40 radio stations and television music shows quickly started featuring its photogenic, standout female vocalist, Linda Ronstadt. I’d like to claim that I was an ardent Ronstadt fan from those early days in the mid-60’s, but that wouldn’t be true. My appreciation of Linda’s voice and work actually grew because of the devotion of a true fanatic, a veritable Ronstadt groupie, my friend Jim.
I’m not sure when Jim fell in love with Linda (probably as early as 1967), but it was clearly manifested by the dawn of the next decade. Jim bought all her solo albums and played them whenever our group of friends got together for trips, parties, or card playing evenings. It was Jim who convinced us to go to The Troubadour on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood for the first time to hear her perform. It was in that iconic, musical temple of Folk, Rock & Roll, and Country Rock that I fell in love with her too. One had to see her to truly realize and appreciate how such a tiny, dark-haired, cupid-faced beauty, could have such a powerful and wide-ranging voice. She played us like instruments, flirted with our musical emotions, and blew us away with her voice. We would eventually follow Jim to other exotic places like Riverside, CA, and the Palomino Club in North Hollywood to hear her sing.
Although never the devoted collector of all her vinyl albums like Jim, I bought my first Ronstadt LP in 1972, with the self-titled album, Linda Ronstadt, and then 5 more, stopping in 1978. With the birth of our son, Toñito, that year, my record purchasing cooled off until 1987, when I learned (from Jim) that Linda had recorded a musical homage to her Mexican roots with an album titled Canciones De Mi Padre (Songs of my Father). This album became a great excuse to expose my son (and soon my daughter Prisa) to the wonders of Mariachi music. For me, that album confirmed Ronstadt’s reputation as a gifted interpreter of other artist’s music. Never a songwriter herself, she was able to take other people’s words and sentiments (mostly men’s) and reform them in such a unique way, that she eventually captured the real voice of the music and expressed it in a distinctly Ronstadt-esque way. Even with a song so universally recognized with the voice of its author, Roy Orbison’s Blue Bayou was successfully redefined and re-popularized by Linda in her album, Simple Dreams. In Canciones De Mi Padre, one would never believe that Linda wasn’t naturally fluent in Spanish, or deeply steeped in Mexican musical traditions from birth (she was neither). But her fluid and seductively intense delivery of Mariachi songs and lyrics was so authentic and so passionate, that millions of her fans were introduced to the romantic, flamboyant, and uniquely macho sounds of traditional Mexico.
I lost touch with Linda after her Mexican phase. I would occasionally read how she dated then-Governor Jerry Brown, was chosen as the female lead in Joe Papp’s 1980 New York production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, and collaborated with Nelson Riddle in 1986 to perform and record selections from the Great American Songbook in 1986. But I was no longer attending her live performances, nor buying her albums. For all intents and purposes Linda started fading away from me. I assumed that she, like other aging but timeless singers, simply retired from touring and recording in the new millennium, married, and quietly resided in the peace and tranquility of some Santa Barbara beach. So I was shocked to learn last August that she suffered from Parkinson’s disease and would never sing again. It wasn’t until I decided to read Sam Tanenhaus’ Times article on a Sunday morning, that I found the will to think about her again, and to remember the influences she had on my musical enjoyment.
I liked the tone and content of Tanehaus’ piece, Like A Wheel, But Turning Slower, right away. It wasn’t the musical obituary that I’d feared, but, rather, an upbeat and positive description of an artist’s next phase of becoming. The story was a report of Linda Ronstadt’s new career as an author, and the publishing of her first book, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, in September. While citing the AARP Magazine report about her Parkinson’s, and quoting Ronstadt about her inability to sing, the article concentrated on the memoir, and Linda’s artistic life before doctors confirmed the debilitating disease. I learned that she never married, and lives in San Francisco with her two children, ages 22 and 19. It also related an interesting story of Linda sharing a cab with singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker after a night of music in Greenwich Village. Walker sang the first verse of Heart Like A Wheel, a ballad written by Kate and Anna McGarrigle, that Ronstadt later recorded in her 1974 album of the same name. Tanehaus described the song as beginning with raw emotions but seasoned with a metaphor – the wheel that when it bends can’t be mended – and a plaintive question: “What I can’t understand/Oh please God hold my hand/Why it had to happen to me?”
“I felt like a bomb had exploded in my head”, recalled Ronstadt in her memoir, remembering that evening.
I found myself wondering, after I finished the story, if those same lyrics from Heart Like A Wheel, hadn’t gone through Linda’s mind when she was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and told that it was the reason she could no longer sing, and never would again. I’m glad Linda wrote her memoir, and my hope is that she will keep writing. The knock on all songstresses who ONLY “interpreted” songs has always been that they were not “authentic” artists; because they did not create the lyrics or music they sang. Many critics dismissed the legendary diva, Billie Holiday, who treated her voice as an instrumental part of the band, and was the creative muse of countless songwriters, as ONLY a jazz and blues singer. I believe Linda is in the same category. She influenced three generations of musicians, songwriters, and audiences, but never wrote a note or a lyric. She was an interpretive genius who never stopped changing throughout her career. Like Dylan, The Beatles, and Neil Young, Linda never stopped evolving. She was like the wheel in her song – her artistic heart never bent, warped, or broke – she just kept rolling along, traveling through the bumps, bends, and tragedies of life. Now she has moved into an art form that she never imagined herself capable of – writing. Even though she never wrote music or lyrics, she now writes prose. Written words have become her new medium of expression, her Different Drum, and I have every confidence that she will make them rock and roll.
When you bend it you can’t mend it.
But my love for you is like a sinking ship
And my heart is on that ship out in mid-ocean.
When harm is done, no love can be won.
I know it happens frequently.
What I can’t understand,
Oh please God hold my hand,
Why it had to happen to me?
(Heart Like A Wheel – Kate & Anna McGarrigle: 1974)
I first learned of Linda Ronstadt’s disabling medical condition on Facebook in late August. My sister-in-law, Tootie, posted a link to the AARP Magazine story in which Ronstadt revealed that she could no longer sing because of her Parkinson’s. The news was a blow to me, and sounded so much like a death sentence that I didn’t want to read it – so I ignored it. I couldn’t conceive of the owner of that incomparable voice, who Rolling Stone and Time Magazine crowned Queen of Rock in the 1970’s and 80’s, silenced forever. I succeeded suppressing these facts until I happened upon a surprisingly upbeat article in the Sunday New York Times about Linda Ronstadt’s memoir and Parkinson’s.
The first time I encountered Linda’s beguiling voice was in high school, when I heard the hit single Different Drum on the radio. Although a new musical trio, The Stone Poneys, recorded the song in 1967, Top-40 radio stations and television music shows quickly started featuring its photogenic, standout female vocalist, Linda Ronstadt. I’d like to claim that I was an ardent Ronstadt fan from those early days in the mid-60’s, but that wouldn’t be true. My appreciation of Linda’s voice and work actually grew because of the devotion of a true fanatic, a veritable Ronstadt groupie, my friend Jim.
I’m not sure when Jim fell in love with Linda (probably as early as 1967), but it was clearly manifested by the dawn of the next decade. Jim bought all her solo albums and played them whenever our group of friends got together for trips, parties, or card playing evenings. It was Jim who convinced us to go to The Troubadour on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood for the first time to hear her perform. It was in that iconic, musical temple of Folk, Rock & Roll, and Country Rock that I fell in love with her too. One had to see her to truly realize and appreciate how such a tiny, dark-haired, cupid-faced beauty, could have such a powerful and wide-ranging voice. She played us like instruments, flirted with our musical emotions, and blew us away with her voice. We would eventually follow Jim to other exotic places like Riverside, CA, and the Palomino Club in North Hollywood to hear her sing.
Although never the devoted collector of all her vinyl albums like Jim, I bought my first Ronstadt LP in 1972, with the self-titled album, Linda Ronstadt, and then 5 more, stopping in 1978. With the birth of our son, Toñito, that year, my record purchasing cooled off until 1987, when I learned (from Jim) that Linda had recorded a musical homage to her Mexican roots with an album titled Canciones De Mi Padre (Songs of my Father). This album became a great excuse to expose my son (and soon my daughter Prisa) to the wonders of Mariachi music. For me, that album confirmed Ronstadt’s reputation as a gifted interpreter of other artist’s music. Never a songwriter herself, she was able to take other people’s words and sentiments (mostly men’s) and reform them in such a unique way, that she eventually captured the real voice of the music and expressed it in a distinctly Ronstadt-esque way. Even with a song so universally recognized with the voice of its author, Roy Orbison’s Blue Bayou was successfully redefined and re-popularized by Linda in her album, Simple Dreams. In Canciones De Mi Padre, one would never believe that Linda wasn’t naturally fluent in Spanish, or deeply steeped in Mexican musical traditions from birth (she was neither). But her fluid and seductively intense delivery of Mariachi songs and lyrics was so authentic and so passionate, that millions of her fans were introduced to the romantic, flamboyant, and uniquely macho sounds of traditional Mexico.
I lost touch with Linda after her Mexican phase. I would occasionally read how she dated then-Governor Jerry Brown, was chosen as the female lead in Joe Papp’s 1980 New York production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, and collaborated with Nelson Riddle in 1986 to perform and record selections from the Great American Songbook in 1986. But I was no longer attending her live performances, nor buying her albums. For all intents and purposes Linda started fading away from me. I assumed that she, like other aging but timeless singers, simply retired from touring and recording in the new millennium, married, and quietly resided in the peace and tranquility of some Santa Barbara beach. So I was shocked to learn last August that she suffered from Parkinson’s disease and would never sing again. It wasn’t until I decided to read Sam Tanenhaus’ Times article on a Sunday morning, that I found the will to think about her again, and to remember the influences she had on my musical enjoyment.
I liked the tone and content of Tanehaus’ piece, Like A Wheel, But Turning Slower, right away. It wasn’t the musical obituary that I’d feared, but, rather, an upbeat and positive description of an artist’s next phase of becoming. The story was a report of Linda Ronstadt’s new career as an author, and the publishing of her first book, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, in September. While citing the AARP Magazine report about her Parkinson’s, and quoting Ronstadt about her inability to sing, the article concentrated on the memoir, and Linda’s artistic life before doctors confirmed the debilitating disease. I learned that she never married, and lives in San Francisco with her two children, ages 22 and 19. It also related an interesting story of Linda sharing a cab with singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker after a night of music in Greenwich Village. Walker sang the first verse of Heart Like A Wheel, a ballad written by Kate and Anna McGarrigle, that Ronstadt later recorded in her 1974 album of the same name. Tanehaus described the song as beginning with raw emotions but seasoned with a metaphor – the wheel that when it bends can’t be mended – and a plaintive question: “What I can’t understand/Oh please God hold my hand/Why it had to happen to me?”
“I felt like a bomb had exploded in my head”, recalled Ronstadt in her memoir, remembering that evening.
I found myself wondering, after I finished the story, if those same lyrics from Heart Like A Wheel, hadn’t gone through Linda’s mind when she was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and told that it was the reason she could no longer sing, and never would again. I’m glad Linda wrote her memoir, and my hope is that she will keep writing. The knock on all songstresses who ONLY “interpreted” songs has always been that they were not “authentic” artists; because they did not create the lyrics or music they sang. Many critics dismissed the legendary diva, Billie Holiday, who treated her voice as an instrumental part of the band, and was the creative muse of countless songwriters, as ONLY a jazz and blues singer. I believe Linda is in the same category. She influenced three generations of musicians, songwriters, and audiences, but never wrote a note or a lyric. She was an interpretive genius who never stopped changing throughout her career. Like Dylan, The Beatles, and Neil Young, Linda never stopped evolving. She was like the wheel in her song – her artistic heart never bent, warped, or broke – she just kept rolling along, traveling through the bumps, bends, and tragedies of life. Now she has moved into an art form that she never imagined herself capable of – writing. Even though she never wrote music or lyrics, she now writes prose. Written words have become her new medium of expression, her Different Drum, and I have every confidence that she will make them rock and roll.
Torchy rock indeed!
Date: 2013-09-16 11:26 pm (UTC)As you said, she was not a song-writer like Joni Mitchell but her interpretations of other peoples' work was so strong that she invigorated tunes that were over 20 years old. Think of "Heat Wave" or "Tracks of My Tears" among many others. The lead guitarist for her band in the '70s was Andrew Gold (who actually attended my wedding). Andrew has passed on but I'm glad that Linda is still expressing herself. -- Eddie
Re: Torchy rock indeed!
Date: 2013-09-16 11:45 pm (UTC)Re: Torchy rock indeed!
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