"But they wanted to call us the Signets; they wanted me to wear evening gowns and work in Vegas. They wanted us to make surfing music. We made a couple of records, 'So Fine' and a couple of Bobby's tunes, and then we told them to forget it, 'cause we wanted to be called the Stone Poneys, and I wanted to wear this denim skirt I had." A comic who worked at another club in Hermosa Beach stepped in and offered to get them a hoot at the Troubadour; he did, but immediately after the set he introduced her-and only her-to Herb Cohen, a folk manager and promoter. "He and Herb came and grabbed me and started to propel me out the door, and they took me to Tana's, next door, and Kimmel wandered over eventually and I remember Herbie saying to Kimmel, 'I don't know whether I can get you guys a contract, but I can get your girl singer recorded,' and that was sort of the beginning. Trouble in the ranks. And I said, 'No, no, I won't sing without the group."'
Without Cohen, the Poneys got a job at the Troubadour, opening for Oscar Brown, Jr. "It was so demoralizing," said Linda. "He had a band and this amazing chick he married [Jean Pace], and he got a very uptown black audience. It was such a blow to our confidence that we broke up. I moved to Venice, and Kenny and I continued to play at a couple of places, but we were starving to death for two or three months. My mother sent me rent money."
When Linda heard a record by one of Herb Cohen's acts, the Modern Folk Quartet, on the radio, she thought she'd blown her chance, but called him anyway. Cohen stuck with her-and the band-and introduced them to Nick Venet, a producer who shortly after meeting the group got a job at Capitol Records.
"Capitol wanted me as a solo," she said, "but Nick convinced them I wasn't ready, that I would develop. It was true. I wasn't ready to do anything. I still wasn't ready when I became a single." A first album, sort of soft/folkie, We Five sounds with Linda doing lead on several cuts, flopped. The second album included a rock number pulled out by Venet called "Different Drum," with Linda backed by four L.A. session players. Before "Drum" hit, in late 1967, Capitol sent the group out on a promotional tour. "We did things like open for Butterfield at the Cafe au Go Go-which was worse than Oscar Brown." Linda looked sorrowful at the memory. "Here we were rejected by the hippest element in New York as lame. We broke up right after that. We couldn't bear to look at each other." Edwards split for India.
But the Poneys had a hit. Linda and Kimmel pulled themselves together, hired some help and toured with the Doors. "Second acts," Linda laughed. "It's really the pits, you know?"
Capitol squeezed out one more album, this time with Linda and all session musicians, and called it Linda Ronstadt, Stone Poney and Friends, Vol. 3. But she was definitely on her own now-and in poverty.
"See, the Poneys were taken off the books after the second album. Since it was a hit, they made royalties off it. But I didn't. I paid all by myself for the third album, which was expensive, and it put me severely in the red by the time I started recording my first solo album. I never made any royalties until ...well, I'll make some at the end of this next royalty period. I'll make a bunch." Don't Cry Now, her first album for Asylum, sold over 300,000, but royalties were swallowed up by recording costs and the advance she had received for switching over.
Her first solo album for Capitol, Home Grown, was produced by Chip Douglas and had her running through songs by Dylan, Randy Newman, John D. Loudermilk, and Fred Neil. To her, it's an easily forgotten album. So is Silk Purse, produced by Elliot Mazer in Nashville, despite the hit, "Long Long Time."
"I hate that album," she said. "I'm sure Elliot doesn't think it's very good either. I couldn't sing then, I didn't know what I was doing. I was working with Nashville musicians and I don't really play country music; I play very definitely California music, and I couldn't communicate it to them." And the one song she liked-Gary White's "Long Long Time"-was ignored by Capitol until L.A. radio airplay forced the label. "They released it," said Linda, "but they told me, `Don't bring us another country single."'
Linda then met John Boylan, whose production work (especially on Rick Nelson's record of Dylan's "She Belongs to Me") she liked. "I wanted someone who knew what I was trying to do and would do what I wanted. So eventually we moved in together."
Boylan became her producer and, from here on, things get a little muddy. Boylan became her former boyfriend-Linda met and moved in with J.D. Souther-and she dropped Cohen as manager. She tried for a friend, Peter Asher, but he was managing Kate Taylor and feared a conflict of interests. Boylan agreed to manage her.
These shifts burdened Ronstadt through what she calls "the bleak years, when I was just grinding it out." One of her problems, she said, was her tendency to fall into dependent, father-daughter relationships. "Herbie Cohen gave me a perspective on the music business-how it was basically all bullshit. But he was older than me-he's 40ish nowand he intimidated me. I did everything he did and I related to him in a whiney, wimpy way. But he wasn't a musician and couldn't help me with the music." Boylan was another dad-kid relationship. "I'd wake up and call him and ask, `Gee, what should I do today? What socks should I put on?' It was very unhealthy, and it went on for a couple of years."
On the Neil Young tour, in Boston, Linda ran into Kate Taylor, who told her she wasn't working anymore and that Asher might be free. He was.
Linda began Don't Cry Now with John Boylan. She asked Asher to help on a couple of tracks ("Sail Away" and "I Believe in You"). One of her better songs on the Young tour was a version of the old Betty Everett hit, "You're No Good," and she tried cutting it. "It was terrible," said Asher. "I had the wrong rhythm section. They were very good, but they were playing the wrong kind of thing. We gave up."
"Then," Ronstadt continued, "I started re-recording everything with J.D. Souther. We were like kids in the studio, just inept, and we took a lot of time. But I learned a lot and it was worth it, almost, because it was such hard work. After that experience, I knew so much more when I went into the studio with Peter, it was easier for me to talk to him; it wasn't like I was a person who didn't know how to do what she wanted to do."
It is all finally coming together. After six years at it, she is even feeling all right about being a solo singer. "I didn't feel at ease about it until this month," she said. "I mean I finally feel that I'm doing okay as a singer, and that we're doing good shows, and the band is cooking and it's great.
"See, my voice was always the thing I hated the most. I thought it was nasal. But I always had lousy sound systems, and I never knew I was a loud singer till this year, I never heard myself; I sang by radar. I would oversing, ruin my voice, and never develop subtle nuances, or try to experiment. Being onstage was always an unpleasant experience for me. I always thought I was horrible. If people didn't like me, I thought they just had good taste." She laughed. "But I didn't think it always had to be bad or I would've quit. I thought it was bad because of reasons I had to correct, and I was right. What I finally did was, when I got Peter, I finished off Don't Cry Now and two days later I had to be on the road, I had to take this band I put together real fast, with a lot of good musicians, but people who couldn't play with each other. And Peter was looking at it, and I thought, `My god, he'll think this is terrible and he'll quit!' That's when I realized it was up to me; I'd have to pull it together, get up onstage, and take command. And I did. I started playing guitar onstage, 'cause we needed an acoustic guitar player. I remember sitting in the dressing room rehearsing "Long Long Time" between shows, so I could go onstage and do it. And Peter was impressed that I was able to pull it off."
Peter Asher is a thin, redheaded, bespectacled, shy sort, British and a teen idol ten years ago, the Peter of Peter and Gordon. Since then he has shied from performing, except for background bits behind the acts he has produced and managed, James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.
"Her musical instinct and ear were exceptional and almost always right," he said about Ronstadt. "People in the past have tended to discount that, but I think it was because she had a hard time getting people to understand her." Linda, he said, chose most of
the songs and worked out the initial vocal arrangements on Heart like a Wheel. Instrumental arrangements were a cooperative matter among Asher, Ronstadt, and Andrew Gold.
One of the few arguments about the album was over "You're No Good." Asher had resurrected the song and, with Gold, tried to come up with a guitar track. "We'd been there all night and tried a million things. Finally we built up this montage of all these guitar overdubs which we were very proud of by the end of this twelve-hour thing. Linda came in the next day and didn't like it. And for a while she actually tried having someone else overdub something else. But in the course of listening to it several times, she completely turned around."
Linda had heard part of Asher's remarks, and I asked her what she didn't like about the guitar lines.
"Oh, I thought it sounded like the Beatles," she said. And it does. I turned back to Asher.
What about the time, in Tucson, when Linda's father took Asher aside. What did be say?
"He said he was glad to meet me, that he was glad she was successful and thanked me. And he said he hoped she was making some money that she would keep, because she wouldn't be doing this forever. He knows she's never made any money in the past."
I asked Asher for the secret of his success with Linda.
"I think the thing it's frequently attributed to is that I'm the first person who's managed and produced her with whom, as they so delicately put it, there is a solely professional relationship. It must be a lot harder to have objective conversations about someone's career when it's someone you sleep with."
Ah...but what about temptation? Or, as I so delicately put it, "Was Betsy [his wife] ever insecure that you might fall into a relationship with Linda?"
Asher smiled. "I've no doubt it's crossed her mind," he replied. "Crossed my mind."
Linda doesn't talk much about her love life, but from the songs she has chosen to sing and the stories she has told about her frustrations, I began to toy with the word "heartbreak" for her story. I told her this in Hawaii and she perked up.
"I've been heartbroken a lot," she said. "That's a key word.... When you choose to become a singer and sing about stuff like that, it means you choose a life like that. It naturally means it'll be overbalanced in areas that don't contribute to emotional security and continuity with anyone. It contributes to an overall person who is more paranoid and volatile; you have to stay sensitive and more vulnerable in that way, and things change so fast; people like you for such strange reasons, for such untrustworthy reasons, that pretty soon you don't know who to believe or trust.
"The weirdest things make me fall in love. Usually, it's whatever I happen to be missing right at the moment. I can have a guy I'm in love with who has everything but one thing; then the next guy I meet has a whole lot of that one thing and I go, 'Oh, I'm in love with him,' but he hasn't got any of the other things. So it's usually very illusory." Ronstadt emphasizes the ill.
At L.A. International, the plane to Honolulu was delayed, and Linda and Peter made small talk. Bonnie Raitt needs a producer and two suggestions have come up for her comment: two producers who have worked with Linda. She dismissed both-one as too sloppy, the other as a jerk. "You should produce her," she told Asher-"even though I might be cutting my own throat."
Speeding toward Hawaii, Peter Asher relaxed into the latest Reader's Digest while Linda watched The Sting. Seconds later, he nudged my attention and pointed to an article he'd found about a leukemia victim in Nashville. He wanted me to note the title, in romantic pink type:
"Linda's Extraordinary Triumph and Rebirth," it read.
-March 27, 1975
Rolling Stone
Bonnie Raitt:
DAUGHTER OF THE BLUES
onnie Raitt was one of those women worth waiting for. When I tagged along with her and a band of musical Merry Pranksters on a bus tour from Austin to Nashville (by way of Dallas and Houston) in the fall of 1975, she'd made four albums in four years, and she'd become a regular presence on FM radio.
But her tasteful forays into the blues, R&B, and prime material from singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and John Prine had yet to bring her a hit record. At Rolling Stone, we liked her bluesy guitar playing, her eclectic musical taste, her feistiness. We admired Warner Bros. Records for hanging in with her. Warners was known for championing-that is, subsidizing-numerous artists' artists, including Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Van Morrison-and doing so with clever advertisements in our magazine.
With Raitt, we knew she'd find commercial success someday. But in 1975, we had no idea that it would take fourteen years before she'd break through with Nick of Time.
IT is ALICE DOESN'T DAY, October 29th, a day to show the system how much it depends on women. Women are urged by the National Organization for Women to refuse to work, in or out of the house, in or out of bed.
It's 1:30 on Alice Doesn't Day, but Bonnie Raitt is hungover and doesn't know what day it is-she is in downtown Nashville, using Tootsie's Orchid Lounge as a back drop for a photo session. As she wanders past a few stores, past a few Nashville cats striding by with their guitars in grip, something, or someone, is bothering her. In a minute she's back at Tootsie's. A few steps behind are two urgent-looking young men.
She looks annoyed. "This jerk"-she motions to the bearded one behind her"comes up and starts telling me, `I was in jail and I let Jesus Christ come into my life, and he forgave me all my sins.' He wouldn't stop. If I was a minister the guy wouldn't have let up enough to let me tell him."
The two young men are back, hovering. They do not recognize Bonnie, who will be headlining this evening at the new Grand Ole Opry. They just want her to show up at a revival meeting that night. Bonnie stops posing, nods an irritated head toward the two. "I don't want these turkeys behind me," she tells the photographer. The two men hear and seem puzzled, but move off toward a parking meter. Bonnie shoots a glare: "Would you please not watch? I'm already self-conscious as it is."
She has given them a perfect opening and one of the JC freaks-the one who was forgiven-takes advantage of it: "Jesus," he soothes, "will free your soul."
Raitt squints, rolls her eyes. "Jesus Christ," she mutters, "this town is out to lunch."
Just past three on Alice Doesn't Day, she returns to the Spence Manor Motor Hotel just in time to climb aboard the tour bus (called Kahoutek I and featuring chrome mag wheels) to go to the Grand Ole Opry for the sound check. For Nashville, John Prine has been added to the Raitt/Tom Waits bill, and Prine looks like he got good and warmed up the night before. Electric hair, Manchurian moustache, undersized denim outfit, green socks, black tennies. He is tossing a drink around. Tom Waits, as always, is hunched over, outfitted in grimy newsboy cap, slop-dash black suit, soiled white shirt, thin tic, and thinner cigarette.
"...and I think I got married to the bartender"...Bonnie is talking... "That's what happens when you don't get served your dinner till eleven. I only wanted one screwdriver and I wind up drinking eight of them." She and Waits and Prine had jammed till 5 A.M. the night before and an entire party had collapsed in her suite. She turns to Tim Bernett, her road manager. "Did you leave that cherry in my bed?" Prine fingers his maraschino and delivers the obvious punch line: "I've never left a cherry in bed."
At the four o'clock sound check, Bonnie falls into another funk. The piano tuner is tuning late, stalling the check for an hour. She strums at her Gibson and recalls her first guitar lessons-self-taught-off Mississippi John Hurt's "Candy Man" from the Blues at Newport, 1963 album. "It took me two weeks to learn that song," she says, and proceeds to pick up a new chord-a James Brown-styled C Ninth-from guitarist Will McFarlane.
Sound checks usually give Bonnie and her band a chance to goof off; they invariably get into "Sunshine of Your Love" or "Purple Haze"; McFarlane will throw his guitar over his head and bite out riffs with his teeth. But today, on the spur of the moment, she bows her head and sings a tentative but sweet "Louise," a Paul Seibel song that is not part of
her repertoire.
After a perfunctory performance of "Walk out the Front Door" from the new album, Prine and Waits saunter onstage to run through "High Blood Pressure," the Huey "Piano" Smith song. Prine, who regularly performed the song until he dropped his backup band recently ("I ran outta money," he shrugs), takes a vocal solo, giving the good-time tune a soft, furry, Dylanesque whine. Raitt mock-scolds him: "It sounds fruity. Let's get down-be soulful!"
To illustrate the lyrics of the song, she pretends to be taking a blood pressure reading for Waits, who tends to stagger around near his mike in a cloud of his own cigarette smoke. She tries a guitar chord, but it doesn't work; Waits himself protests that it looks like she's tying him up for a fix. Bonnie ends the episode with a crack: "How about if I just wrap his dick around his arm?"
Back on the Kahoutek at six, Raitt resumes moaning. She has a radio interview to be canceled, dinner to be had, an accountant to be called, and a magazine interview scheduled for after the concert. "Ooh, I wish it were tomorrow," she says. "I just can't do everything at once." Not until 8 P.M. in her dressing room at the Opry House does Bonnie learn that it is Alice Doesn't Day. A fan has sent her some advice on a sheet of yellow paper bordered by brown postal adhesive tape: "Kiss no ass/Or take no sass/This Alice Does/Get real high off Bonnie's buzz."
She wanders toward the stage to watch Prine, who is given to singing and playing with one leg back a ways, on its toes. Bonnie lets out a whoop for him, and he flashes her an illegal smile. "His face is so cute," she says. "He's got no bones, just like me. We're like the Pillsbury dough twins. It's like an instant love affair whenever we're around each other-but he's married and I have Garry, so I'm glad we don't see each other that often. But we're cut from the same stock."
Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll Page 35