Linda Ronstadt , Elvis

[johnfoyle]

Elvis has always been rather dismissive of the 1970's covers of his songs by Linda Ronstadt ; this interview extract seems to indicate a level of co-operation at the time.

http://www.ronstadt-linda.com/intpb.htm


Playboy Interview: Linda Ronstadt

a candid conversation with the first lady of rock
about her music, her colorful past, her new image
and her "boyfriend," jerry brown

Interview by Jean Vallely
April, 1980

( extract)
PLAYBOY: How did you get the new tunes?

RONSTADT: Elvis Costello, who I think is writing the best new stuff around, wrote three of the songs.

PLAYBOY: What did Costello think of your cover of his song Alison?

RONSTADT: I've never communicated with him directly, but I heard that someone asked him what he thought and he said he'd never heard it but that he'd be glad to get the money. So I sent him a message. "Send me some more songs, just keep thinking about the money." And he sent me the song Talking in the Dark, which has not been released here, and I love it. I also recorded Party Girl and Girl Talk.

PLAYBOY: You also have three songs from Mark Goldenberg. Who's he?

RONSTADT: Next to Elvis Costello, he's writing my favorite new rock 'n' roll. He's part of a group called the Cretones. He's great. I don't know how this album will sell. I'm sure I'll be attacked: "Linda's sold out, trying to be trendy, gotten away from her roots." But, well, can't worry about what the critics say.

...........later

PLAYBOY: Before we get to the year 2000, what about the music just ahead - in the Eighties?

RONSTADT: The Eighties is a season of change, kind of like the Sixties just before rock 'n' roll exploded. A lot of us are kind of walking around wringing our hands and wondering what the music will be like. The most interesting things seem to be coming out of England again. At least my favorite things: Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Rockpile. L.A. looks like it has dried up as far as ideas are concerned. Right now there is a real vacuum. I keep turning the radio dial a lot.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A review from the time is detailed in it's analysis -

http://www.ronstadt-linda.com/revmad1.htm

Album Review / Mad Love
Rolling Stone #314, April 3, 1980
Review by Stephen Holden

( extract)

The arrangements strike the same attitude as the singing. Utilizing one or two guitars with lots of fuzz tone, organ-dominated keyboards, bass, drums, very few backup vocals and no sweetening, the settings are bleak, spare and downright hermetic. What little drive Mad Love has is muted and mechanistic: every take sounds like the 200th. Such studio meticulousness lends the music a desolate ethereality that's as unreal as Ronstadt's vocal punkiness. It's hard to imagine these performances live because the "crudeness" here is so high-tech chic.

Elvis Costello's compositions are probably the worst casualties of this salon approach. Costello's songs boast some of the snappiest melodies in all of rock & roll, but as Ronstadt demonstrates, their lyrics aren't easily penetrable. Battlegrounds of rage, frustration and fearful longing, they demand an unpretty voice like Costello's and fierce, clanging settings. By treating Costello's work as pop lieder, Linda Ronstadt and Peter Asher simply undermine its neurotic urgency.

Ronstadt sings "Party Girl" in the first-person singular, thereby becoming the girl to whom Costello originally addressed the tune. This silly idea changes the song from a desperate declaration of love into a murky tear-jerker whose pathos is underscored by the most lethargic of tempos. "Girls Talk" comes off as a ringing high-school anthem to teenage gossip rather than a fiery expression of sexual paranoia. "Talking in the Dark," a number that vents the psychotic extremes of hostility and need, is sung with a jaunty macho swagger that barely acknowledges Costello's shrewd craziness.

[Mr. Average]

It was a challenge to get by the opening accolade referring to Ms. Ronstadt as "the first lady of rock". Even circa 1980 the comment is ridiculous.

That said, I enjoyed the 3 Costello composition album by Linda, "Mad Love" although compared to earlier, higher quality stuff, it is trite pop fluff by comparison. Still, enjoyed it at the time, but it certainly does not pass the test of time.