This post has nothing to do with bodybuilding, but I wanted to write about Linda Ronstadt this morning. Linda can no longer sing due to Parkinson’s disease, but I have at least a dozen of her CDs that I listen to often. I just read a disappointing interview with her in the New Yorker conducted by a younger person who didn’t quite have a handle on who Linda Ronstadt was.
In the early 1970s I was working as a photographer for the Canadian Press in Los Angeles, covering all the awards shows, doing interviews with celebrities, etc. I arranged an interview with Linda and was told to meet her at a tiny rehearsal studio in North Hollywood. She was rehearsing there with her band, which transformed to the Eagles a year or two later.
I sat on a stool right next to her. She sat on her stool in front of the microphone two feet from me and sang her entire set over a couple of hours with classic Eagles vocals backing her. I was in heaven. I loved Linda and her music, and the idea that I was an audience of one as Linda sang all her hits (including Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You”) was one of the highlights of my life.
The lighting in the studio was terrible and my strobe was broken, and I only got off four or five shots between songs, including the one you see here. When there was a lull I had the balls to ask her if she might sing one of my favorites of her early songs, “The Dolphins,” and amazingly she obliged me.
We lived on the same street, Beachwood Canyon, but I had never run into her in the neighborhood. After I said goodbye I waited across the street for a friend to come pick me up. My car was in the shop. It was past midnight. Linda drove by in her green Datsun 240Z, stopped at a red light and waved. I was embarrassed I didn’t have a car and didn’t have the nerve to ask if I could have a ride home.
My ride never showed up.
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