Rhino Podcasts 20 and 21: Linda Ronstadt

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I have created a new thread to make the podcasts easy to find.

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Listening to the second half of this podcast, there were a couple of nuggets about Linda's career which I don't think had been touched on before by her, and which was somewhat shocking. The first was Linda talking about choosing her own songs, which of course, is well known. But, in talking about Capitol. she talked about the fact that no one from the A&R division ever approached her with possible songs she could record. She said something like she would've liked it if they had sent some songs her way. I always thought Capitol did suggest some songs to her, but that she rejected the songs as being not for her. So, I'm wondering now if the reason Linda didn't have much success while she was on Capitol was because the label's A&R did very little to help advance her career? Or is she remembering something which never happened because she preferred her own musical choices? Or is it somewhere in between the two?

The other interesting nugget was about a problem she had with a producer. And it sounded as though she didn't want to name names, which she didn't really do, but she mentioned something about the problem taking place at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. From the way she talked, I gather the recording session in Muscle Shoals was not a good experience for her, which may explain why whatever was recorded there was scrapped. It doesn't mean that what was recorded was no good, just that if Linda had an unpleasant experience there, her preference may have been to let it remain unreleased because of the bad memories. Curiously, the producer in question would've been John Boylan, and I know Linda and John had some problems in the 70s, but could she have been referring to John or to someone else? Muscle Shoals was sort of like American in that they had a house band and a house producer. And although John's name was on the album jacket and label for "Linda Ronstadt," it's a possibility he wasn't involved in the production of the Muscle Shoals sessions except in a peripheral way. Rick Hall was the house producer for Muscle Shoals, and it seems more likely to me he was the one who was actually producing Linda's session in Muscle Shoals. And the two didn't hit off for whatever reason. And perhaps John's name was added as producer because Rick didn't want his name listed as producer. That's the only way I can think of as to why nothing from Muscle Shoals was released.

And it seems like the more I know about Linda, the less I know about her. She still is a fascinating mystery.

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Good chats with Linda. #20 about her HBO 1980 concert, #21 more general life and career.