|
|
Post by the Scribe on Nov 9, 2012 15:27:01 GMT -5
Linda has some great quotes, some serious and some funny and most of course are taken out of context. If you find some good ones post them here. If you have the link it came from post it here too. Linda has always been such a refreshing character.
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Nov 9, 2012 15:32:48 GMT -5
"I don't really like to kiss strangers. I couldn't imagine 17 juicy, wet kisses from 17 strangers. It's unsanitary. You'd have to go home and get your teeth cleaned." www.ronstadt-linda.com/playboy80.htm |
|
|
|
Post by erik on Nov 9, 2012 15:38:44 GMT -5
" One thing, though, I don't like to sing a song unless I can really fall in love with it... every part of it. Until I can say every line... honestly... to people. I think honesty is of the first, utmost importance in art... any art. After that comes technique and... after that comes talent. Honesty is first. All the rest of the things are important, too, but they're secondary. Without honesty, I don't care how much technique you have, you have nothing." ronstadt-linda.com/arthitp1.htm |
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Jan 31, 2013 18:16:19 GMT -5
"Los Angeles became too enclosing an environment," she says. "I couldn't breathe the air, and I didn't want to drive on the freeways to get to the studio. I also didn't want to embrace the values that have been so completely embraced by that city. Are you glamorous? Are you rich? Are you important? Do you have clout? It's just not me, and it never was me."
Bringing up a family has given Ms. Ronstadt a good excuse to cut down on performing, an activity she has never particularly enjoyed. She is happiest, she says, staying home with her children, although she will return to New York later this year, to play Radio City Music Hall with her rock band in May and to perform with Rosemary Clooney at Carnegie Hall in July.
"I've done many of the things I wanted to do in my life" she says. "I've had a very active social life, I've had a very active romantic life. I've traveled all over the world. And what I'd really like to do now is stay home. I love to read. I love being at home and being part of a family. I love hanging around my brothers and sister and nieces and nephews with a house full of kids screaming and yelling."
Ms. Ronstadt feels no need to find a man and build a picture-perfect nuclear family. "There's no such thing as the perfect mate," she says. "There's the relationship you are able to renew. That's not really conducive to a person with a life like mine, which is by nature episodic. I think what our culture supports is serial monogamy, which is exactly what I subscribe to. What's important is that my children have a loving family that includes both male and female role models: loving uncles, loving aunts, loving grandparents, loving friends." www.ronstadt-linda.com/artnyt95.htm
|
|
|
|
Post by musicaamator on Jan 31, 2013 18:35:30 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by erik on Jan 31, 2013 18:58:46 GMT -5
" Extravagant praise is destructive and reverence is rubbish. Great artists are people who find a way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike." www.ronstadt-linda.com/creem76.htm |
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Feb 7, 2013 15:16:48 GMT -5
"In the United States, we spend millions of dollars on sports because it promotes teamwork, discipline, and the experience of learning to make great progress in small increments. Learning to play music together does all this and more." She says music can help us learn other subjects, too (think math). And that it should be available to everyone. www.huffingtonpost.com/julia-moulden/linda-ronstadt-on-the-pro_b_299808.html
|
|
|
|
Post by macbanshee on Feb 14, 2013 22:49:48 GMT -5
My favorite quote from Linda, answering a question about how to sequence songs for a charity performance by an amateur musician: "Start with the song you think you'll suck at least ."
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Jul 25, 2013 13:41:46 GMT -5
CONAN: This email from Paul(ph) in Minneapolis, who says it's a possibly apocryphal story. Somebody once said to Linda Ronstadt, I'd do anything to sing like you. She replied, really? Would you practice three hours a day for 10 years? Mr. SHENK: You know - and that's not to say that anyone could be anything that they want to be. Obviously, you know, I'm not going to be Michael Jordan, et cetera, et cetera. But there is this theme that emerges when you study the lives of high achievers. And one of them is the extraordinary amount of sacrifice, which is far greater, usually, than what people conceive of. And you imagine - you see this person with what looks like by the time they're, you know, performing at this amazing level, it looks like a natural ability. But, in fact, most of these people have lived very unusual lives, given up most of what we think of is a healthy, balanced life, given up a lot of relationships, a lot of time spent enjoying and cooking great meals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, in order to these one thing very, very well - which is to say to a parent or a child who's thinking about wanting to be great, you know, it's more a matter of choice and what kind of level you want to be at and trying to determine the level of sacrifice you want to make in your life than it is just trying to figure out what innate level you were born at. CONAN: We're talking with David Shenk. His new book: "The Genius in All of Us." You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125021837
|
|
|
|
Post by erik on Jul 25, 2013 14:48:17 GMT -5
" I used to think, you know, I'm trying to communicate here what I feel and I'm going to do it, and f**k all those people 'cause who cares? But now I realize that...that that's where the responsibility lies ... I have to make contact or else I don't deserve to be here." ronstadt-linda.com/artcrw74.htm |
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Oct 9, 2016 5:45:01 GMT -5
what's going on musically these days?
RONSTADT: It is a strange time for all of us in the music business. The music is oddly lacking in different kinds of sensibilities. In the Sixties, there was such a variety; the delicate, romantic approach of Donovan, Motown, The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, all the country stuff. I like it when it's all messed up like that. Right now there is a whole lot of disco and it's just not the kind of music that inspires you or that gives you a personality to get involved with. The Seventies was a polished-up version of a lot of the things coming out of the Fifties and the Sixties. I think we refined them past their prime: like racing horses that have been overbred - they run fast but their bones break.
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Oct 9, 2016 18:32:38 GMT -5
Playboy Mag. April 1980 (Linda Ronstadt Interview)If you play dirty tricks on people, it makes you weaker. And, in that sense, they've got a victim's kind of strength and I know a lot of people who maneuver and get into that position of being the victim because it gives them power.
I should have only things I need. Too much clutter in my life makes me anxious. You know, you don't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. Form follows function. It's just a much more efficient way to live. I'm real interested in efficiency.
The press is discouraging candor. It is encouraging people to be secretive about their lives. Just to sell copy, the press distorts and flat-out makes up things. I'm more quiet out of self-protection.
Putting anything between me and reality has never done anything but make me feel less secure and more scared and awful. It's lies. I'm not comfortable with lies . . . though I still do tell a couple now and then.
The press has nobody to check its authority, to control it. And thank God there isn't. I would sooner see us go down in the worst kind of decadence and horrible corruption than see the press be censored; but if the press is unwilling to take responsibility for its actions, then it will cause its own demise
It would be good for this society to be encouraged to be as open as possible, because when society is encouraged to be closed, then evil things develop in the dark; horrible little stunted things grow out of darkness.
There was a period when I was moderately successful when I could just walk into a party and have a good time. But I went to a party the other night and I was more embarrassed than when I was in high school - a nobody and socially screwed up. Everybody was staring at me and saying, "There's Linda Ronstadt," and people immediately took sides, for me or against me. And the sensitive people have enough respect for themselves not to be swayed by my presence and they just usually hang back. You mostly don't get to meet the nice people.
I close my eyes when I sing. I get scared when I open them and see all the people. I realized how much I close my eyes as a device because it's unnatural to have thousands of people staring at you.
If there is someone around to spark you sexually, it really does make you get up and do your best. I love that. And it doesn't have to be an ongoing sexual thing. If there is someone I like to flirt with around before I go onstage, my shows are always better. It's a good way of priming the pump.
When I came to LA. in 1964, I kind of looked around and thought that maybe the kind of career Judy Collins had was perfect. She was quietly putting out things that seemed tasteful and sold respectably. That was the kind of career I wanted: a career where you earned a nice living, your records sold well, you had the respect of other musicians and did things in good taste. I never tried to become the next big thing. It seemed that was something to be guarded against at all costs.
In the early Seventies, I was in a rut. I didn't know how to get out of it. I was on this plateau that seemed endless. I was so numb. I could hardly see or feel. In fact, it all feels now like a murky dream.Years and years on the road. I was punchy. In fact, the fluorescent lights in certain kinds of dressing rooms made me crazy. (Laughs) If anyone ever wants to brainwash me, if I'm a hostage and they put a fluorescent light on me, I'll become a Communist, anything, you name it. God. I hated those years. I tried to stay unconscious the whole time.
It's unnatural not to reach out, not to try to progress. I was going along, making country-rock albums, experimenting. I felt I was somewhat of a pioneer in that area. I felt like I was throwing some new ideas onto the pile. My records were selling OK. I thought I had arrived. That was before Heart Like A Wheel. I had no idea I was destined to be more.
There are those times when I am just plain sure, when I have that incredible right feeling; and when I have that feeling about a song and I put it on a record, it usually doesn't miss. But sometmes it works the opposite way. I didn't think I sang Different Drum or Heat Wave particularly well. I was really on the fence about those two, but the public certainly didn't respond the same way.
I have three favorite movies; Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Seventh Seal and Scenes from a Marriage. Those movies tell life to me.
I remember not long ago standing in the dressing room at the Universal Amphitheater, talking to some Warner Bros. record guy who said he was looking for a girl singer like me. It made me feel so funny. I had become a trend, like when the English were a trend. I was this female who could sell records, and suddenly, female artists became cool. I hear girls singing with the same kind of inflections that I do. I remember so many times sitting down with a record when I was young, trying to copy every tiny inflection of a girl singer. I don't think I've made the kind of impact that changes the face of music like, say, The Rolling Stones or the Beatles. And not in terms of writing the book on singing style. At some point, all girl singers have to curtsy to Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. I brought together a lot of kinds of straight threads of music and put them in a little fabric that has an interesting design. I had commercial success and opened the door for girl singers.
Sometimes I need an interpreter. Waddy (Watchtel) taught me how to sing Tumbling Dice. He really understands The Rolling Stones better than anyone except Keith Richards. And if you want to know about the Beatles, you go to Andrew Gold. If you want to know about Roy Orbison, you ask J. D. Souther. If you want to know about Neil Young, you ask Dan Dugmore. And if you want to know who to ask, you ask me. I'm the expert on who to ask. There are some people who work well all by themselves. Some of those Swedish fiddlers who sit in front of the mountains and just emote this passion are wonderful. But I live in a complex society and there are a lot of people around and I just need somebody to come in and put the other parts of the puzzle together for me.
I feel it can be dangerous for me as an artist to get involved with issues and, particularly, with candidates. But at some point, I feel like I can't not take a stand. I think of pre-Hitler Germany, when it was fashionable for the Berliners not to get involved with politics and, meantime, this horrible man took power.
I feel pretty good. I didn't become a drug addict. I didn't become a compulsive liar. The thing that screws up people in my position more than anything is isolation. Because if you become isolated, then you don't get ideas; and if you don't get ideas, then you think that you can't do it anymore and you start to fall. The other thing that screws up people in my position, the idea you're not allowed to fall. It's perfectly natural to fall, especially if you get up afterward.
Part of learning how to stay sane is learning not to attach yourself to things that cannot be yours. I'm pretty good at letting go of them. Even with things I want very badly, with hindsight, there was always a real reason why I couldn't have them and it turns out for the best. That goes for songs, business, men....
www.ronstadt-linda.com/playboy80.htm
|
|
|
|
Post by sliderocker on Oct 9, 2016 19:47:17 GMT -5
"I don't really like to kiss strangers. I couldn't imagine 17 juicy, wet kisses from 17 strangers. It's unsanitary. You'd have to go home and get your teeth cleaned." www.ronstadt-linda.com/playboy80.htmI'm searching for something I can contribute here, but I've always found Linda's remark above to be somewhat funny, wondering what her response would've been if she had met Elvis and had wanted a kiss from him? Would she have stood in line if Elvis had kissed 20 girls before her, 50 girls, and then when he got to her, he said, "Sorry, kissing all those girls is unsanitary. I gotta go home and get my teeth cleaned!" Actually, I could've seen Elvis taking Linda home with him. |
|
|
|
Post by sliderocker on Oct 9, 2016 19:49:13 GMT -5
I always say if music can't make you cry, you're a hopeless case. I don't cry very much myself, but it's my job to make you cry.
|
|
|
|
Post by sliderocker on Oct 9, 2016 19:50:07 GMT -5
The thing you have to be prepared for is that other people don't always dream your dream.
Linda Ronstadt
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Nov 21, 2016 3:22:32 GMT -5
LINDA RONSTADT: The good thing about musicians in terms of making advances in racial discrimination or sexual-gender identification is that musicians don't give a shit as long as you can play. If you could play, hallelujah.
LINDA RONSTADT, singer-actor: Well, who are you going to date—the dentist? But if you were smart, you didn't mess around with anybody in your band. If you were smart.
LINDA RONSTADT: The Eagles had seen a lot of other bands break up, come together, and break up—like Poco and the Burrito Brothers. There had been a lot of versions of that country-rock sound. It finally coalesced because it found a groove with Don Henley.
“This is a date year, just like high school,” she says a bit mischievously. “I have lots of boyfriends but it’s mostly rush and thrill.” Yet Ronstadt has maintained close ties—after the thrills were gone—with J.D. Souther, comedian Albert Brooks and most other exes, including even the managers who preceded her genius record-producer incumbent Peter Asher. (“I’ve never understood people who say after a divorce or a breakup, ‘I never want to see him again.’ What you liked about him in the first place hasn’t gone away just because you aren’t lovers anymore.”)
“I’m not going to do rock ‘n’ roll forever,” Ronstadt declares. “I want some grace and dignity in my old age. If I continue singing I’ll probably settle into the notion of a chanteuse, a cabaret singer, doing something timeless.”
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on May 22, 2017 4:20:13 GMT -5
"Most people came to rock ‘n’ roll through blues or rhythm & blues or gospel. I didn’t have that background at all, except for what I heard as a kid on radio. I sang Mexican music, and that’s what my belt voice was, that ranchera style, Mexican country music. That’s where my sense of phrasing and rhythm was based. If you look up early interviews that I did, I’d always mention Lola Beltran as someone I wanted to be. My dad found an old interview, like in Tiger Beat or something, and they asked what is your greatest ambition as a singer and my answer, even back then, was, ‘I want to be the world’s greatest Mexican singer.’"
— Linda Ronstadt, (Sunday, December 5, 1993 - Los Angeles Times)
|
|
|
|
Post by philly on Dec 4, 2017 14:54:27 GMT -5
"I talk like Bucky Beaver on acid, and it makes me self-conscious sometimes"
- Linda Ronstadt, LindaRonstadtWithCountryGazette1974-08-17McCabesGuitarShopSantaMonicaCA
|
|
|
|
Post by Dianna on Dec 4, 2017 15:07:01 GMT -5
Bucky Beaver.. So that's where that scene from Grease came from.
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Jan 14, 2018 0:04:57 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on May 11, 2018 18:09:37 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Jan 5, 2019 6:10:54 GMT -5
 Linda Ronstadt, who early on delved into baroque pop on her first hit, "Different Drum," while she was a member of the Stone Poneys, included her version of "Walk Away Renee" on a recent duets compilation album for which she hand-selected the songs.
"That's a real special song for me in the whole pop music canon," Ronstadt told The Times last year. "When it first came on the radio, I didn't have any idea what the words were. It just sounded like, 'La la la.' I didn't know any of the words, I couldn't understand them, and yet, in a second, it became just one of those haunting songs you can't forget. I don't know what it is. There's the feeling when you give up on somebody, and you just let it go. That song nailed that arc of emotion and the arc of how it works. I love that song."
www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-rip-michael-brown-left-banke-appreciation-ronstadt-20150320-story.html |
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on May 10, 2019 5:23:47 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by RobGNYC on May 10, 2019 6:10:36 GMT -5
My favorite quote from Linda was at the 92nd Street Y in New York when she was on her book tour. John Rockwell interviewed her. She said that when her son left home, she didn't know what to say except "Be kind. Try hard." I think of those words every single day. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone followed them?
|
|
|
|
Post by eddiejinnj on May 10, 2019 7:06:18 GMT -5
Hey Rob: My partner and I were there that night and I agree wholeheartedly about the quote. She used her experience of not being kind at times and working her butt off and imparted her life wisdom onto her son. Re: my observation, it is weird that I was thinking just a couple days ago of that outdoor Mike Douglas appearance where imo she acted somewhat disrespectful and said the come on man, etc. I am thinking and hoping it was somewhat of an act as she was trying to figure out (she discussed that with Janis if I remember correctly) her public persona since she was revolutionary and different from the big dress big hair sweet country girl singers. eddiejinnj
|
|
|
|
Post by ausfan2 on Aug 15, 2019 7:04:44 GMT -5
`I couldn't wait until I had enough financial clout to ram down your throats the music that's really interested me.'
The Orange County Register - 12 May 1995
|
|
|
|
Post by erik on Aug 15, 2019 9:24:16 GMT -5
"It's nice for your work to be acknowledged, but it's not what you do it for. You do it for the work. And if you're doing it for prizes, you're in big trouble." - Linda on CBS Sunday Morning (February 3, 2019).
|
|
|
|
Post by musedeva on Aug 15, 2019 16:54:15 GMT -5
NEVER saw this before!! tHIS is my fave...and a further testament to her musicianship!!!!
Always have something to write upon when you snooze.......sleep is when insight/creation comes to you.....free of charge!!!
|
|
|
|
Post by warren on Jul 13, 2021 3:49:06 GMT -5
`I couldn't wait until I had enough financial clout to ram down your throats the music that's really interested me.' The Orange County Register - 12 May 1995 lol. I cannot imagine Linda saying that but what do I know? She has come up with some good ones over the years though. |
|
|
|
Post by eddiejinnj on Jul 13, 2021 6:02:31 GMT -5
Thanks for input and welcome to the forum, warren. She has shared those sentiments a lot. Maybe in this case she was a little more let's say graphic in stating it. eddiejinnj
|
|
