Artist:Arielle Silver Hometown: Finding the answer to that question has been a lifelong quest. My childhood was spent in Florida, NYC, and New Jersey. Boston raised me from late teens through most of my twenties, but I did a few stints in PA, TN, and NC. Something brought me to Los Angeles a while back, and it’s now been my hometown longer than anywhere else. I’m rather attached – and detached – from a lot of places, but I think I love LA and Boston the most. Song: “Soft On the Shoulder” Album:Watershed Release Date: October 6, 2023
In Their Words: “Inspired by the Laurel Canyon music of the ’70s and the cultural activism that came about after the murder of George Floyd, ‘Soft On the Shoulder’ is a song largely about self-culpability. I was reflecting on the place of music amid cultural change and its place in political activism and social engagement. I was also thinking about the ways that I – as a white-presenting woman – have unwittingly participated in systemic wrongs. While initially inspired by thoughts sparked by the BLM movement, this song applies to any personal or cultural circumstance where we are asked to examine our long-held beliefs and consider another person’s perspective.
“Having grown up listening to records, cassettes, and CDs, I am very album-oriented. I felt that ‘Soft On The Shoulder,’ which opens the Watershed album with the words, ‘It starts with a witness…’ and is threaded with the mantra ‘love more, fear less,’ captures the compassion and reflective nature of this entire collection of songs.” – Arielle Silver
This week, we cross the pond for a talk with rising British roots-rockers Will Turner and Georgie Fuller, who harness the freewheeling sonic spirit of the ’60s with a new Brighton-based band they call The Heavy Heavy.
While the British coast isn’t exactly known for its blissed out sunshiny beaches (or as a haven for rock ‘n’ roll stardom), Will and Georgie decamped there during the pandemic. And through the power of imagination (and production wizardry), they somehow mastered the reverb-y sun-soaked harmonies that Laurel Canyon favorites the Mamas and the Papas and the Byrds brought forth during the summer of love, with their breakout EP Life and Life Only (with a wink to Mr. Dylan), issued stateside by ATO Records.
The response to their Woodstock-flavored tracks like “Go Down River” and “All My Dreams,” led by pairing Will’s roaring guitar and Georgie’s gospel-tinted vocals, has been overwhelming. European tours with label-mates Black Pumas preceded national U.S. TV appearances and their first full run in America. While some could write them off as merely skilled nostalgia-hounds, what Turner has pulled off with his masterful production of Life and Life Only shows an obsessive attention to detail, helping resurrect a sound and, more importantly, a feeling that isn’t stuck in the utopian hippie era, but could be the soundtrack to a more hopeful age that we may just be entering now.
I’m not sure what it is about this era that has permanently ensnared my soul. Perhaps the raw, confessional nature of the troubadour has always reassured me that I am not alone. These are the songs that made me abandon my fine art career at the age of 18 and embark on a lifelong quest to appease the songwriting gods. The fact that all of these songs can be fully delivered with one instrument and one voice has always amazed and inspired me. It was wonderful to record a few of these classics on my current EP, Seventies Roots, part of a double album of covers that I’m releasing in February 2022 called Forget-Me-Nots. — Jesse Terry
Joni Mitchell – “A Case of You”
Was there any doubt it would start with Joni and a song off her masterpiece, Blue? I put Joni in a Jimi Hendrix-type category, where it feels like the artist was transported from outer space, in perfect revolutionary form. Her songs, chord progressions, lyrics and vocals have always been otherworldly to me. It was thrilling to record this song on my Seventies Roots EP. Actually it was intimidating, but in the end I love the song too much not to do it.
James Taylor – “Fire and Rain”
The blueprint for confessional, honest songwriting. It’s awesome to hear JT tell the story behind the song and know that he put every last personal detail into his lyrics. This inspired me to be vulnerable and completely open in my writing. Nobody sings or plays like JT. And to this day, if I’m having a rough go of it, I blast his records and let that warm voice console me.
Jackson Browne – “For a Dancer”
Another true original with an unmatched voice and sense of melody. I think Jackson is without a doubt one of the best lyricists of all time. His lyrics and melodies flow effortlessly off the tongue and never tire.
Bruce Springsteen – “Growin’ Up”
Springsteen is a legendary rocker and performer. But what really impresses me about the Boss is his songwriting. All of his anthems can be stripped down to an acoustic guitar and still deliver with the same emotion. There aren’t many songwriters that can paint pictures like Springsteen. With him, you’re not just listening to the song, you’re IN the song or maybe even one of the characters.
Carole King – “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”?
Like all of the truly great songwriters, her songs transcend and feel universal and timeless. This song feels perfect, whether you’re listening to Carole’s version or The Shirelles.
Tom Waits – “Shiver Me Timbers”
A truly masterful and utterly unique songwriter. Waits writes about characters and tells stories better than anyone. His lyrics and penchant for perfect timing are well-known, but I also adore Tom Waits’ gift for melody and harmony. His melodies break my heart and are married flawlessly to the lyrics.
Paul Simon – “American Tune”
If you created a singer-songwriter in a lab it would be Paul Simon. Some of the most endearing lyrics and melodies of all time. His songs are so perfect, it’s easy to overlook his guitar playing and singing, which are equally remarkable. Music schools often try to dissect his songs to display the craft of songwriting, but I get the sense that this magic simply flowed out of him.
Elton John – “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters”
Over the years, some very talented folks have sent me lyrics and poetry to set to music and I’ve always been disappointed with my results. That makes me even more knocked out by Elton John’s ability to marry Bernie Taupin’s lyrics to the most perfect melodies, tempos and chord progressions. I recorded “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” on my Seventies Roots EP, but I easily could have chosen “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” or any number of tunes. Way too many great options to choose from.
Neil Young – “Comes a Time”
What songwriter list would be complete without Neil Young? Neil is raw unfiltered emotion, live to analog tape with no rewriting or editing. That makes him so special. I can’t think of another songwriter that can cover so much ground with such authenticity.
Randy Newman – “Marie”
Randy Newman is a genius. His character-based songs are on the same level as Tom Waits and his lyrics are just as evocative, biting and unique. It’s impossibly rare to find Newman’s talents as an orchestrator and arranger in the body of a singer-songwriter. “Marie” especially breaks my heart. I believe every word Randy Newman sings.
Townes Van Zandt – “No Place to Fall”
A mythical figure in songwriting, Townes wrote some of the most beautiful and enduring songs of all time. “No Place to Fall” has always spoken to me and broken my heart. Was an honor to record this one.
Bob Dylan – “Simple Twist of Fate”
I admit, as a young kid I was more seduced by the “singers” in this group — artists like Joni, James and Jackson that could sing the phone book. But eventually I became spellbound by Dylan and my affection for him has never waned since. And as I listened more in my life, I realized what an amazing singer and communicator he was. His phrasing, his lyrics, his melodies and his hooks convey the lyrics perfectly. There will never be another Dylan.
Loggins & Messina – “Danny’s Song”
Kenny Loggins went on to have a huge solo career, but the music that he released in the ‘70s with Jim Messina in Loggins & Messina will always be my favorite work. My father used to sing this song to me when I was a kid and it felt like he wrote it for me.
Stevie Wonder – “Love’s in Need of Love Today”
Admittedly my playlist is Laurel Canyon-heavy and that’s what inspired me the most. But I also remember Stevie blaring through speakers as I was growing up. Again, one of the classic singer-songwriters that will never be replaced nor imitated. One in a billion. And on top of that, one of the best, most flexible voices of all time.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – “Our House”
I’ll end my playlist with this classic song that transports you to another time and place. You can almost smell the flowers blooming in this song.
Although she’s been an entertainer for decades, Wynonna says she hasn’t ever been much for making music around the house – at least not until this year.
“I think it’s because I was so famous at 18 that the time home was spent just being quiet, because my world was so noisy,” she tells BGS. “Somebody who came to stay with us for a couple of days made a comment, ‘How come I never hear you hum or sing around the house?’ And I looked at her and I was like, ‘I don’t know!’ I had never thought of it.”
If nothing else, life in quarantine has given this country legend time to think. After all, she’s been touring since the ‘80s, first with the Judds, then as a solo artist, and eventually some of both. 2020 is the first extended break she’s taken since late ’94 and early ’95, for the birth of her son, Elijah, who is now a first responder. (She’s making a lunch for him as we’re speaking.) Off the road now for six months, she says her routine has gone from staring off into space every night, to doing Facebook Live sessions with her husband Cactus Moser, to calling up old friends and dusting off her vinyl records.
And to show for her efforts, she’s releasing an EP of covers titled Recollections. The five-song set offers her intimate, off-the-cuff renditions of classics like Grateful Dead’s “Ramblin’ Rose,” Nina Simone’s “Feelin’ Good” and John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” with some of the project’s audio tracks taken directly from her Facebook live sets. She called BGS from her farm in Franklin, Tennessee, to talk about all of it, and offered a film recommendation, too.
BGS: While listening to this EP, I was pleased to hear that you and I have the same favorite verse of “Angel From Montgomery.” What was on your mind when you recorded that one?
Wynonna: Well, it’s tough and it’s a part of life… I was in the living room and I was just practicing. I haven’t done this much practicing in a long time, but I’m home and what else is there to do?! [Laughs] And I got a text from my agent who was a personal friend of John Prine and his family, and he said that John had passed. I sat there, and it’s one of those weird moments in your life when you get that call. I was overwhelmed, sitting there, and all of a sudden — I’m not kidding — I just started to play it on my guitar. I thought, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” I’ve known this song since I was 15 years old, and I started playing it like I played it all those years ago.
I kid you not, Cactus comes in and I looked at him, he looked at me, and I started singing it – he got tears in his eyes, because it was a moment. It’s like that moment when you stand there doing your vows, it’s just a heavy moment. And I said, “I think we need to do this tonight.” So we did it on Facebook Live, which is what you’re hearing. We’re sitting there together and it’s me paying tribute to my hero. One of my heroes is John Prine and we must not forget what this man gave to us. It was one of those sweet, beautiful moments of reflection on my part of how far I’ve come as an artist.
I know you play acoustic guitar on that, too. Which guitar did you play?
I played the biggest Gibson you can get. I’ve always played a big guitar, for obvious reasons. I’ve always felt like the one I have is my weapon. It’s like the biggest guitar you can buy. I was 18 years old and I needed — like when soldiers go into battle and like in Game of Thrones they’d always hold up the shield — it’s my shield. It’s my weapon. So, yeah, I just played it that night and he recorded it and kept it. I said, “Honey, I think this is important.” Because it’s a snapshot of my experience that day.
I love to hear you sing “Feelin’ Good.” I’d read you sang this at a women’s prison, too. Tell me about that experience.
Pretty deep. It was pretty deep. I had played down the hair. I thought, “Now is not the time. I’m not on stage.” I found myself being in that moment with the women. I was standing there, telling my story, talking to the women. It was one of those moments where I don’t know what to say. … So, I just started to sing. I think it made a difference in the room, because these women could sit there for a moment and feel better. That’s what I do as my go-to — I start singing.
I don’t know what you do, but we all have a coping skill, and I think for me that day it was music. I think it’s an important as an artist to not forget your gift. Sometimes we can, if we get distracted. So, this time at home has been devastating at times, yet so life-giving, that the music reflects just that. You’ll hear tough and tender in my voice because there are days when I can’t even get out of bed without crying. And then there are some days I hop out of bed and I am freakin’ Wonder Woman.
Now that you’ve been home probably longer than you ever have in your life, have you developed any morning routines to propel you through your day?
So, on March 14, I cleared the bus. I’ve had a bus since 1984, so that was bizarre. It was like moving to another country. I came into the house and I went, “What the hell do I do now?” So I spent five weeks – you can tell I counted – of doing absolutely nothing. I got really frustrated, because I was lost! It was 8 o’clock at night and I would stare off into the night and go, “I should be doing a show. I should be with my fans. I should be with people. I should be on the road.”
Wynonna and Cactus Moser
I found myself doing nothing. And I think that’s what I needed. I’m going to do a testimonial. I’m writing a book in my head right now, and I’m going to put it to paper, like you as a writer: “What do I do today? What did I do today? What did I want to do today? What do I have to do today?” And how do you find life in that? So I went through the same stuff you have, like most of my fan family: “What do I do?” …
And I started to practice. My husband goes, “Yeah, honey, um… I don’t know if you’ve done this in a while.” It took a minute though. I had to self-start, which was hard for me, because I’ve always been given my schedule, and I go to the airport, and I hustle through, and I make it. You know what I’m saying? We’re used to doing and going and being really successful! What do you do when you’re home for six months?! What do you do, man!!
So when you say “practice,” were you practicing songwriting? Guitar?
Yes, all of it! I came home and, like the rest of America, I gained weight and let my roots grow out. I’m not wearing any undergarments. … And when you come home, and you’re on the farm – I haven’t left but maybe half a dozen times in six months — it’s very strange. What do you do? You have to find a new purpose. And my new purpose was writing, and I started calling people on the phone. Ooh!
You know how it is, you start reconnecting with people you want to reconnect with. There was a lot of forgiveness. There were a lot of relationships where I needed to go back and say, “Hey, man, I missed your wedding and I’m really, really sad about that.” Then you start a conversation. This is really important stuff, right? You don’t have time for that – you don’t make time for that – because you’re too busy being fabulous.
Have you been pulling out your vinyl records, too? And listening to music you’ve loved in the past?
Yep! I’m doing it in a way I needed to, and I don’t know that I would have if it hadn’t been for me being at home like I am. I’ll be honest. I was taught to be a doer, a mover and a shaker. I got caught up in that, and when I came home, I felt like, “If I put everything away, that means I’m stuck at home.” It took months and months and months, and finally I was like, “Oh, for God’s sake, I’m tired of looking at all my stage clothes and my undergarments! Put ‘em away!” And I was like, “No, I don’t want to because that means you’re dead!”
Anyway, I did it, and I thought, “You have to find life at home, woman!” You know, you’ve got life on the road. What is it like at home? So I started to do that, and I started to… listen to music! I started to watch documentaries. You have to watch the two-part documentary on Laurel Canyon. You have to watch it, dude, you have to. You know why? Because it’s important! You see the Eagles, when they’re teenagers, and they’re in L.A. trying to write songs. You see Jackson Browne, who’s 19, standing in line at the Whisky a Go Go. It’s awesome!
BGS did a story on that movie and interviewed Chris Hillman about it, too. It’s a fascinating history.
Oh, that’s another thing! I wanted to throw this in here: So I started to have a beautiful relationship with people I never see, and Chris is one of them. Because I got the number from my husband, I’m texting Robert Weir — and he’s texting me back! And I’m going, “OK… what are the chances?!” [Laughs]
Bob Weir’s on this new record, too.
He is, and it started out being a little bit of a dare. Cactus said, “I want you to learn a Grateful Dead song,” and I said, “Why?” Seriously, I said “Why?” Now, how arrogant is that?! I didn’t understand, not really. All of a sudden I’m learning the song and I’m going, “What the heck is this line about writing Frankenstein?” Then I started learning the song’s history and the meaning of it, so now I’ve become a student of rock ‘n’ roll. I started to study and learn the song and understand. “Ramble on Rose” – oh, there’s a story here. It’s not just a song that’s in the background as you’re smoking a joint!
I believe that when something is a God thing, and meant to be, it’s easy. There’s an ease to it. It doesn’t require an agenda or manipulation. And the next thing I know — and this is no exaggeration — the guy, the legend, the man is coming to Nashville to do something with Dwight Yoakam. And he’s at our gate! We’re buzzing him in to come down to the home studio, which is basically a shed with a lot of nice flooring. And we do a song together! And I go, well, nobody would believe me: “Hey, Robert Weir’s over here and we’re singing ‘Ramble on Rose.’ Yeah, cool!” [Laughs] It’s just fun and I want to get away with as much of this as I possibly can.
Don’t look now, but we’re approaching the mid-point of June and another week has passed us by. YIKES! Luckily, we have another week’s worth of long reads for you, too!
The long-winding catacombs of the BGS annals and archives have so much to offer. As we share our favorite longer, more in-depth articles, stories, and features to help you pass the time, take a minute to follow us on social media [on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram] so you don’t miss a single #longreadoftheday pick!
This week’s long reads travel from the canyon drives above Hollywood to Pavement to a former Oregon poet laureate to everyone’s favorite five-stringed instrument. Check ’em out.
Stephen Malkmus, of the bristly, brainy 1990s indie rock band Pavement, joins a host of fellow alt-rockers in dabbling with folk and acoustic sounds. On a brand new album, Traditional Techniques, which was produced by Chris Funk of the Decemberists, Malkmus expands on the flickers of folk interest that have permeated his career, though he may not claim mastery of any of them. [Read our #CoverStory interview]
Earlier this week we celebrated Sara Watkins’ birthday (June 8, for the record) with a revisit to our recent Artist of the Month interview where she walked us through her recent Watkins Family Hour album, brother sister. For the first time in their lifelong musical careers, Sara and her brother Sean focused on creating music centered on their own duo. brother sister was the result. [Celebrate Sara’s birthday with a read]
Aoife O’Donovan’s latest EP, Bull Frogs Croon (And Other Songs), arrived in March. Our Cover Story unspooled the inspiration she gained via poet Peter Sears, the former poet laureate of Oregon, whose verse is utilized in three songs O’Donovan wrote and arranged with Teddy Abrams and Jeremy Kittel. The project is rounded out by a Hazel Dickens cover and a classic folk song, giving listeners a sampling of each of O’Donovan’s folky expertises. [Read the interview]
A new, two-part documentary, Laurel Canyon, traces the comings and goings of several generations of folk rockers down Sunset Boulevard and up into the hills. Chris Hillman (The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers), one of the canyon’s earliest and most famous residents, about the new film, the community, the music, the neighborhood, and why he had to leave. [Read the full story]
With her classic 2018 Mixtape banjoist and singer/songwriter Ashley Campbell reinforced the deeply held BGS belief that– MORE!! BANJOS!! From songs by her late, legendary father Glen and her godfather Carl Jackson to classics from folks like J.D. Crowe, John Hartford, and the Dixie Chicks, this mix has a little bit of everything and a whole lot of five-string. [Read & listen]
Splitting off from Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, Laurel Canyon Boulevard runs a circuitous route through unkempt mountain acres, past the Laurel Canyon Country Store, weaving and curving for miles before finally spilling out in Studio City. Along the way small roads split off into the mountains like tributaries from a river.
Up these narrow, twisting mountain byways lived many of the musicians who, in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, exerted an incalculable influence on popular music: the Byrds chief among them, but also the Mamas & the Papas, Joni Mitchell, Love, James Taylor, the Monkees, and Crosby Stills & Nash. Together, they transformed folk music into folk rock and singer/songwriter fare, transforming it with new sounds, new ideas, new priorities, and — it can’t be denied — new drugs.
This strange, paradoxical place — a rustic mountain paradise nestled within the purgatory of Los Angeles — is the subject of a two-part documentary on EPIX, directed by Alison Ellwood and produced by Alex Gibney. Across two 90-minute episodes, Laurel Canyon traces the comings and goings of several generations of folk rockers down the boulevard and up into the hills.
Ellwood depicts this place as something like a bucolic community that enabled and encouraged romantic and musical collaboration among its denizens. A struggling musician named Stephen Stills flubbed an audition for a TV show called The Monkees, but suggested his roommate Peter Tork try out for a role. Mama Cass introduced Stills and David Crosby to a British musician named Graham Nash, and the trio became one of the most successful groups of the 1970s. A band of freaks from Phoenix, Arizona, calling themselves Alice Cooper showed up at Frank Zappa’s cabin at 7 a.m. — about twelve hours early for their audition. The stories go on and on, too much for even a lengthy documentary to contain.
Laurel Canyon didn’t just offer a sense of community along with unobstructed views of the city at night. It also gave these musicians access to the city itself — in particular, the happening Sunset Strip clubs like the Troubadour, Pandora’s Box, Ciro’s Le Disc, and the Hullabaloo Club. It was a neighborhood galvanized by the riots in 1966, when young clubgoers protested a police-imposed curfew — a pivotal moment in ‘60s radicalism and the inspiration for Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.”
The popularity of the music written in the hills above the Strip meant that Laurel Canyon’s most famous residents spent more time away from the canyon, spending weeks in the studio recording their next albums or months on the road playing their songs in front of growing legions of fans. Elwood’s documentary strays from the locale in its title, traveling as far away as Bethel, New York, for the Woodstock music festival in 1969, which demonstrate how deeply these new musical ideas were taking across the country.
There are, refreshingly, few talking heads in these two episodes. Rather than the usual musicians rhapsodizing about their youth, Ellwood frames the documentary with remembrances by a pair of photographers, Nurit Wilde and Henry Diltz. Their archival images and films make up the bulk of Laurel Canyon, which makes it all seem more immediate, as though fifty years ago was just yesterday. In that regard it’s closer to Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood than Jakob Dylan’s Echo in the Canyon.
But that also makes this historical moment seem more fleeting. Around the time that Charles Manson sent four of his followers to a house he thought belonged to producer Terry Melcher, drugs started to infiltrate Laurel Canyon, puncturing what Graham Nash calls a “beautiful bubble.” Grass and booze are quickly displaced by coke and heroine, and the scene chills a bit in the 1970s, as a new wave of musicians moved in to these houses and crash on these couches.
There are many stories from Laurel Canyon that don’t get told in the documentary, as well as many songs that don’t get played and many artists who don’t get mentioned. There’s no trace of Van Dyke Parks, the eccentric L.A. arranger who affectionately satirized the community on “Laurel Canyon Boulevard,” off his 1968 album Song Cycle. “What is up in Laurel Canyon?” he asks, quixotically, like the most ironic tour guide. “The seat of the beat,” he replies to himself.
On the other hand, the film can only hold so much. And the stories that Ellwood does tell add up to something larger: Laurel Canyon is less about a place and more about an idea. It’s about how different strains of traditional and popular music commingle and mutate, how they point to an infinite set of possibilities for voice and guitar (and drums and bass and amps and keyboards and synthesizers and so on).
On the eve of the documentary’s premiere, BGS spoke with one of Laurel Canyon’s early and most famous residents, Chris Hillman.
BGS: You moved to Laurel Canyon in 1965. What took you there?
Hillman: First thing on the list was, I needed a place to stay. The Byrds were getting going and starting to gain a little ground, and I had already known about Laurel Canyon. It was purely by accident that I’m up there one day by the country store, and I run into a guy who had a place to rent. It was wonderful. It was up on this road overlooking the entire city of L.A. You can imagine how beautiful it was at night, with all the lights on and everything. Shortly thereafter, David Crosby moved up there, and then Roger McGuinn. I’m not sure where Mike [Clarke] and Gene [Clark] were. They were probably up there, too. The Byrds were very early occupants of the area.
To what degree was it like a small town in the middle of this big city?
It sorta was. But it was trying so hard not to be that. We were literally four minutes away from the Sunset Strip. So you went from this incredibly energetic, fast-moving madness of the Sunset Strip clubs, you go up Laurel Canyon Boulevard, and in four minutes you’re up in this pristine, quiet environment with all these beautiful old houses. We weren’t the first ones to discover this place. People were living up there in the ‘40s and ‘50s — some actors and a lot of artists. It already had this reputation as a bohemian beatnik enclave.
There was the famous legend that Houdini had a house up there. People would be driving around and point out a place and say, “That’s where Houdini lived.” They’d point out some old wreck of a place, some ruins of an old structure. There were a lot of good legends to the place. I think that’s where Robert Mitchum got in trouble at a party in 1949 or 1950. He walked into a party and then the police came and arrested people for marijuana. He just happened to walk in at the wrong time. But he had a hell of a career after that, though, so he must have struck a deal. The musicians didn’t start moving up there until the ‘60s, and by then it seemed like a quiet mountain town that just happened to be minutes away from the heart of the city.
I always thought of it as the Woodstock of the West Coast — this retreat from the rigors of the big city.
Well, in Woodstock you’re a good long ways from Manhattan. But in Laurel Canyon you’re minutes from the Sunset Strip and maybe ten minutes from Beverly Hills or Hollywood proper. A lot of people don’t know this, but the Sunset Strip was part of Los Angeles County. It was a mile long, from La Cienega I think to Doheny. It was county instead of city, so it was run completely differently. It was patrolled by the L.A. County sheriff, as opposed to the LAPD.
Is that why they imposed that curfews that led to the riots in ’66?
The whole thing with the kids rioting had to do with the small business owners, whose businesses were being infringed upon by foot traffic. The kids were running around, goofing around, and it was killing business. I didn’t get involved in that. I just saw it on the news. I remember seeing that footage. I still lived in the Canyon then. I was there until ’68, then I moved to Topanga Canyon.
Why did you leave?
Things changed. I was still in the Byrds and I just bought a house in Topanga. No, I’ll tell you why I left. I completely forgot the most important part of the story. I’m getting older. The reason I left was, my house burned down in Laurel Canyon.
I was renting this beautiful house, and you could see the whole city. It was all wood, and I remember it was fall, then the ferocious Santa Ana winds hit. They always come around in the fall. They’re very dangerous. It was real hot that day, and the winds were kicking up, and I had pulled my motorcycle out. I was going to kick it over, but it was leaking gas and the wind blew the fumes into the water heater. It was an open-flame heater and it just ignited. It made the same sound you hear when you light an old-fashioned gas range. I literally caught on fire. Instinctively I rolled on the ground. I think I lost a bit of hair and some eyebrow before I got out of there. I jumped in my car and pulled into the dirt road. I had nothing. I had my car and that was it. I lost everything I owned.
David Crosby had just been visiting me at my house. He’d been there for an hour and left just 20 minutes before my house burned down. I think we can connect the dots! I’m kidding. I love David dearly, but I still poke him about that one. Roger McGuinn lived across the canyon from me and saw the fire. He said it looks like where Chris lives, so he starts filming it. Somehow the footage got on the local NBC affiliate. I was living in a hotel for a few nights, and I remember watching my house burn down on the TV. That was ’66.
Is that why you left for Topanga?
Well, it was starting to be the place to live. More groups were moving up there: the Turtles and Frank Zappa and Mama Cass and Peter Tork. Everything was changing. Drugs entered the picture. I ended up buying a house in Topanga Canyon, which is about 25 miles north of Los Angeles. It’s also very pristine and quiet — a little bit bigger than Laurel Canyon. A lot of people moved there, too, like Neil Young. And it was a very similar scene, with everybody interacting with each other. That should be the next documentary.
Photo of Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman playing cards: Courtesy of Nurit Wilde Photo of Crosby, Stills & Nash at Big Bear: Henry Diltz
There’s nothing quite like a sad song that isn’t actually sad at all, or a happy song that’s anything but. It feels good to condition the emotions and not let things get too caught up in the predictable, the status quo. We’re programmed to think that minor keys and slow acoustics always mean that lyrics just as somber are to come; and we’re equally used to hearing sprightly tales alongside fast beats and carefree picking. But when music really gets interesting, is when this formula is dismissed completely: Often a tool of bluegrass, the instruments can walk a much different line than the brain, painting a more complex picture of the human experience. It’s rare that anything is cut and dry, anyway, and, like some mournful words paired with a dancing fiddle, there are usually two sides to everything … at least.
Dori Freeman, on Letters Never Read, knows this well. Many of her songs play with the ability to be many things at one time and unveil their true vulnerability once they have captured us within their inherent melodies. “Just Say It Now” is an ode to just getting the band aid ripped off before the pain is too intense, and it sounds delicate and light — a go-lucky sing-along with a gauzy, Lauren Canyon chug. “Just say it now before the silence makes me cry,” she sings. “From the beginning, I knew you would say goodbye.” Her voice is sharp and ethereal, pastoral and crisp, able to carry the task of complexity easily within a two-and-a-half-minute frame. Maybe the best sad songs are the ones that make us smile, too.
In Home Free, his 1977 novel of faded denim hippie dreams, Dan Wakefield described his wandering anti-hero Gene Barrett overhearing a song on a nearby record player as he dozes in a hammock in Maine — Linda Ronstadt singing her folkish country ballad “Long Long Time” in the alto that wafted through many a window in those imperfect, exploratory days. “Gene was glad it was Linda Ronstadt, not someone soppy or sickly sweet,” Wakefield wrote. “Strong. Gutsy. Belting it out. Her voice didn’t seem just to come from the house, but out of the earth, over the water into the rickety little town and the scrubland and forest beyond it.”
Beginning in the 1970s, Linda Ronstadt’s singing has had that kind of geological effect throughout popular music: steadying, seemingly able to erase time and trends within one flow of feeling that goes below the surface and the deeper strata of American consciousness. In a time of fading utopian hopes, she emerged as an emissary able to connect old musical ways with the new consciousness of her own maverick generation. “She is offering us something very valuable for the '70s: not a fantasy figure, but a reality figure,” wrote the rock scribe Tom Nolan in 1974. Raised on country and the ranchera music that echoed through her Tuscon, Arizona, neighborhood, Ronstadt sang with a verve and directness that eradicated the pretentiousness that could sometimes afflict the children of the counterculture. Album titles like Hand Sown…Home Grown, Simple Dreams, and Hasten Down the Wind celebrated a naturalness that was complemented by a meticulous attention to musical detail and one of the greatest ears of the rock era.
Those who underestimate Ronstadt as a pretty face and voice who rose to fame on the power of others’ songwriting and production talents — and there have been far too many in that camp — are ignorant. From her teenage days in the folk trio the Stone Poneys, Ronstadt developed a persona that spoke profoundly to women waking up to the way many men had condescended to them throughout the early years of the supposed sexual revolution. She was an everywoman who, instead of building a world through songwriting, did so by taking on others’ words and melodies and reshaping them with intelligence and boundless energy. She grew up in public through her recordings. In 1971, when she was 25, she told a reporter that she didn’t have the voice to do soul music; by 1974, she’d developed her own style of testifying that made her funky reinterpretation of Dee Dee Warwick’s 1963 shouter “You’re No Good” into a number one hit, one she’d follow up by reinvigorating songs by Martha and the Vandellas, Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, and the Everly Brothers, among others. At the same time, she continued championing her own peers, who played on her most successful albums. She was that woman who, like so many others, did the real power lifting within a scene dominated by self-styled heroic men.
When the multi-platinum success of her fifth album, Heart Like a Wheel, sent Ronstadt into the arena-rock stratosphere, she became the premium interpreter of an American songbook that she’s continued to redefine throughout her career. It now includes everything from George Gershwin and Cole Porter to early rock 'n' roll, the Nashville sound, Mexican canciones, Laurel Canyon balladry, Cajun two-steps, and the punkish sounds of New Wave. She developed her singular eclecticism, in part, as a way of coping with a music industry that would have kept her in a stadium-sized box — she hated playing those big venues, ripping up her voice in front of anonymous-feeling hordes — and turned to theater music and standards as a way of reclaiming her right to be a subtle interpreter. "Your musical soul is like facets of a jewel, and you stick out one facet at a time," she said in a retrospective interview in 2003.
Even as a teenager, when lesser musical adventurers would fall into a rut, Ronstadt would change course. Setting forth on a solo career after early success with the Stone Poneys trio challenged the boundaries of strummable folk music by foregrounding its connections to country and becoming as much an inventor of country rock as was Gram Parsons or the Eagles, who famously formed as her backing band. After finding a niche as the patron of her L.A. neighbors, from Warren Zevon to Randy Newman and Jackson Browne, she teamed up with producer Peter Asher to hone that rocked-up pop sound that made her a superstar. Throughout her career, she would return to that sound which, in turn, became hugely influential, forming part of the bedrock of many future stars’ styles, from Olivia Newton-John to Sheryl Crow to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Carrie Underwood.
Meanwhile, Ronstadt became a producer herself, an extension, in some ways, of her role as a brilliant collaborator. Her work behind the boards with the soul legend Aaron Neville, for example, complements her many beautiful duets with him. Her deep love of harmony singing, along with her dedication to uplifting the women with whom she feels the deepest musical kinship, led her to form one of the most beloved vocal groups in recent pop memory — Trio, her project with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. “I always mean to be a singer, not a star,” she said when the second Trio album was released in 1999. In fact, Ronstadt’s stardom has been predicated upon her ability to consistently remind listeners that to sing is to cultivate a space where all the trappings of the moment — fashion, fame — fall away, a space of pure joy and sensual release.
Linda Ronstadt can no longer call that space into being in real time, having lost her voice to Parkinson’s disease in 2013. But she remains a bright spirit: the author of a revelatory book, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, and a role model for a new generation of musical boundary breakers. And through her immortal recordings, her voice still permeates the soil of our consciousness, a clear liquid presence easing our minds and, by example, urging us to continue challenging ourselves. A natural gift beautifully cultivated, Linda Ronstadt’s legacy still challenges us to be more free, even as it hastens down the wind.
Ann Powers is critic and correspondent for NPR Music and the author of several books, including Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music, forthcoming from Dey Street Books in 2017.
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