A 1989 interview for her album featuring Aaron Neville
For many years I’ve thought of Linda Ronstadt’s 1989 album “Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind,” her last top 10 on the Billboard album charts, as her “duo” album with Aaron Neville. I think the cover line read “featuring Aaron Neville,” and in my now battered hardcover copy of Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Albums, 1955 – 2001 based on Billboard’s charts, it is listed both as a Linda Ronstadt album and separately as an Aaron Neville album. There were two hits from their collaboration, “Don’t Know Much,” written by Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, and Tom Snow, and “All My Life,” by Karla Bonoff.
Bonoff also wrote “Goodbye My Friend,” the closing song, on which Brian Wilson arranges multitracks of his own harmony singing. There are also two songs by Paul Carrack, Nick Lowe and others from each of their 1982 albums in which the same band made two records, one credited to Carrack (formerly of Squeeze), and one to Lowe.
But there were only four songs featuring Neville on “Cry/Howl.” Ronstadt, as she often did, uses multiple songs by a small group of writers. The songwriting star is really Jimmy Webb. Ronstadt sings the definitive version of Webb’s “Adios,” which she considered almost autobiographical (about her, though it wasn’t written for her). He also wrote the opening track, “Still Within the Sound of My Voice,” as well as “Shattered” and “I Keep It Hid,” all of which were new to me, but really shine now.
Yet the Neville Brothers had finally made their breakthrough after decades as a revered New Orleans taste, with the albums Uptown (1987) and Yellow Moon, (1989) and so much of excitement around “Cry/Howl” was how these two master singers would sound together. Stopping in New York briefly to promote the album, Ronstadt was on her way to Europe for some TV appearances with Neville. Meeting in a typically sterile record company office, Ronstadt offered a deep look into how seriously she takes the job of being a musician, not just a pop singer. She indicated from the start that doing the work – of recording, singing, choosing songs, and working with other musicians – is really closest to her heart. She set me straight right away as I said hello with a softball question. And then she rarely stopped talking, as was her interview style.
Wayne Robins: Are you looking forward to going to Europe to promote the record?
Linda Ronstadt: I’m perfectly happy to do it, but the fun is being in the studio pushing big mountains of sound around. That’s what I really like to do. Big sound is what I went for on purpose on this record. I was really trying to channel Phil Spector because, I had very much in mind those records Phil Spector made in the 1960s, wall of sound records, though they were recorded in monaural and this was recorded in stereo, so I wanted to make a modern comment on that stuff, so that’s what I set out to do.
WR: Was there a particular reason to go big with the orchestra? Your last album, Trio, was a country album with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.
LR: Since I had these Jimmy Webb songs that I love so much, and it’s a shame to do Jimmy Webb songs without using an orchestra, because he writes for orchestra in such a particularly neat way. I had this big room, the Skywalker Studio soundstage at Lucasfilm to record in. [Star Wars creator George Lucas and Ronstadt had been dating from 1983 – 1988.]
I wanted to put every big thing I could in there. I had a 50-piece orchestra, and the Tower of Power horn section. I had the Oakland Interfaith gospel choir, which is 50 voices, I had Aaron Neville, and I had 15 “Brian Wilsons” overdubbed [on one track]. We just stacked the record. And we had the snare drum sound through the room, used the room to enhance that sound. We would put the amp in the room and crank it up, use all that room ambience. We put [supporting vocalist] Rosemary Butler in the room by herself and stood her way far away from the mike, so we had a lot of ambient sound recorded from the room. So the room was, in a way, like an instrument on the record.
WR: Why the desire to capture that “big sound?”
LR: Because I wanted to throw a bouquet at Phil Spector. I purposely avoided using synthesizers except for where only a synthesizer would make that sound, or where it would flatter the natural instruments. Even thoush there are synthesizer records I admire, like Prince’s, which are very emotional, evocative records, that isn’t the only way to make a record. It seems to me lately people are forgetting that, and it’s all over the radio, that the only way to make a record [isn't] with a drum machine.
WR: So, is this a pushback against the prevailing recording trend of the 1980s?
LR: I don’t mind records that come out like that; I mind that there aren’t any records that aren’t like that. I mind that regional music seems to be disappearing from the formats of American radio. I mind that Detroit, Detroit R&B used to sound entirely different from Memphis R&B. And Memphis music, Memphis country music didn’t sound anything like Nashville country music. And they’re both in the same state!
The Beach Boys totally personified southern California pop music, and so did the Byrds, and they didn’t sound anythings like the Drifters, who were an East Coast thing. None of those people dealt with the same instrumentation, didn’t deal with the same kind of song lyrics, and to me, that kind of diversity made this country interesting artistically.
For that reason, I wanted to make my own-sounding record, I wanted to make a record that has that magic when the drummer and the bass player lock eyes and hit that groove and really start to make music together.
WR: There are four Jimmy Webb Tunes. Do you go around collecting them for the right moment to use?
LR: No, Jimmy and I are very close friends. I’ve admired his work tremendously since the late ’60s; most songwriters I know admire him. I remember having conversations late into the night with people like JD Souther and Don Henley, Jackson Browne, the kind of guys I used to hang around with in L.A. in those days, and I remember them saying how brave they thought he was, as a songwriter, the kind of risks he took.
WR: What does a Jimmy Webb song do in particular for a singer like you?
LR: As a vocalist, he does put you right on the ragged edge of musical sanity. It’s very ambitious, very rangy, it’s technically difficult to execute. But once you get to a certain level of proficiency with that stuff, he lets you soar, in a way that other contemporary writers don’t do.
Also, because he writes into the orchestra, there is the capability of a very sophisticated, very full emotional range that can be lacking in more simply-constructed songs. I was happy to try my wings up in that area. I’ve had some experience now with the orchestra and I’ve gotten very spoiled by it. Between the three records I made with Nelson Riddle [beginning with What’s New in 1983], and the Mexican record where I was dealing with Mariachi, Mariachi is an actual folk orchestra, very traditional music, a folk orchestra with strings and horns. So, I like the way strings and horns support my voice.
WR: Were those Webb songs kicking around?
LR: Two were brand new . . . one was new, one was new, one was old, neither had been recorded; and one was new, one was old, and had been recorded. To say I admired them is to understate it. There are songs that I cherish in my heart, that I really want to sing.
But I had a little trouble with my nerve because they’re so hard to sing. But when I worked with the Mariachi I learned so much about singing, because everyone of those mariachi singers sings better than anybody that you’ve ever heard! And sings with really perfect technique. The kind of technique really applicable to Jimmy’s songs. It’s a really classical technique, in a sense, even though it’s pop music or folk music.
WR: It seems you've been focusing on technique the past few years?
LR: Technique is just a tool; what you strive for in all art is clarity. Art is there to help you make sense out of life, or to make order out of chaos. It’s my response to the relentlessness of life that hits you in the jaw, wave after wave.
None of us have has a corner on experience...there is a way to help order it, to make it more comprehensible to those of us going through it. So that to me, is the function that all art serves, whether it’s ballet or writing or sculpture or music, a way of commenting, refocusing your thoughts and perceptions of what’s going on around you.
What was the question?
WR: Technique as a way of art...
LR: So technique comes in as an instrument by which you can clarify yourself. I’m not a particularly technical singer. If were, I’d be singing like Maris Callas. She’s a great singer. That’s technique. I’m a pop singer, which by its very defintion I’m alot more “homegrown” in my technical ability. But the more I refine my ability, to speak in the tone and cadence I want to, the more clear I can express myself musically.
WR: Do you think too many pop and rock singers give too little truck to technique?
LR: No, I think there are a lot of rock singers that are highly evolved in technique. Annie Lennox, you’re not going to find a more technically refined kind of singer. Same way with Phoebe Snow. Bonnie Raitt. Jennifer Warnes, wow! What a great singer she is! So I think there are plenty of them, with very individual technique, stylistically idiosyncratic technique. But they’ve refined them within their own personal style to a high degree.
WR: Was the initial plan to do a whole album with Aaron Neville?
LR: Well, we talked about recording. We didn’t know whether we would do a whole album, or one duet, or four duets or what. We figured we’d get together and find as meny songs as we could that we sounded good on. Also, I had these songs of Jimmy’s, and songs of Karla’s, so it was a matter of how to make 12 songs that could fit together. The four we found were the best, at the time. Since then we’ve found a couple of more. And I’m gonna work with Aaron on his next record; he asked me to produce it.
WR: Have you done that before?
LR: Yes, I produced David Lindley’s last record. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about New Orleans music right now. I think Aaron is so much a product of New Orleans, it would be a shame to dislocate him from that.
WR: What is your philosophy of producing?
LR: My philosophy is that, it’s the artist's dream, and they get to seek their dream, and I’m only there to facilitate that, and to serve them, to express themselves, which is the way Peter [Asher] has always done it with me.
WR: It was suggested that it was difficult to find songs that you two could sing together.
LR: Well, our voices are real good together. But he’s a New Orleans rhythm and blues singer, and I’m a little girl from Tucson. I grew up in Tucson, I’m a product of this screaming eclecticism that was rampaging through my household when I was growing up.
WR: Such as?
LR: You had the radio blaring Hank Williams at us, all those jazz standards on the record player, my dad singing Mexican music, and my mother playing Gilbert and Sullivan and ragtime on the piano, my brother the boy soprano in a boys choir. So I heard all these things, and they’re all an authentic part of my musical heritage. I listened to R&B when I was little, but I never sang it. It wasn’t part of my culture; my culture was Mexican, and Aaron’s is African/Creole, American exotica. So we are both very much products of our regions, so that doesn’t give us very much of a common ground. But I thought the Karla Bonoff songs [would work], because they’re very sturdy in the rhythm section, in a very clear kind of R&B way, but, they’re also very richly melodic ballads, which Aaron and I can both sing well. I thought it worked out really well.
WR: How about the version of Sam and Dave's “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby?”
LR: See, that was more in his ballpark; I had to stretch myself over to that. If you pull [Aaron] out by the roots, you better make sure you take a lot of the soil along with it.
WR: Everybody loves the Nevilles these days...
LR: If you asked Keith Richards what band he’d like to be in for a night if he couldn’t be in the Rolling Stones, I guarantee he’d say the Neville Brothers. Every musician that plays in pop music today admires the Neville Brothers, and would love to be in the Neville Brothers. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to do this. I think there’s something terribly wrong with the way radio programs that they haven’t been readily attainable on the airwaves.
WR: Aren't you ghettoized into Adult Contemporary?
LR: No! But I’ve had records go platinum with no radio play, like the Nelson Riddle records, for instance. The Trio record (with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris) got some country radio play, which is as fine a record as I’ll ever make in my life.
It was a big seller. It means there’s an audience out there that’s not getting to its music through the radio. Radio is foolish to ignore it; it’s a big portion of the population.
WR: Did you move out of L.A.?
LR: “Adios,” even though Jimmy Webb didn’t write it about me, was very autobiographically correct. I did leave home at 17, and I did a lot of learning, and a lot of growing, in Los Angeles in terms of developing my music, and it was a good center for me at the time. But I was always very homesick for Tucson, and I really didn’t like the city physically. It’s got ugly architecture, it’s very badly planned. So I was never very happy there. I was grateful to it as a community for nurturing me...
WR: You were identified as part of the L.A. scene...
LR: I didn’t like that, either, because I felt I came from something beyond that. I really haven’t lived there for the last seven years. I owned property there until about two years ago. That record was a way of saying goodbye.
WR: When Brian Wilson came in, did he have an entourage?
LR: No. he had one person with him. He came and he was very professional, put the tracks down one after another, very complex, sophisticated harmonies which would’ve taken me hours. I’m very good at harmonies, but what Brian did would have taken me days to figure it out. He did them one after another, 15 parts, wham wham wham wham. I was astounded; I’ve never seen anyone work like that.
WR: A lot of your projects of the last decade or so have been fairly high risk, such as your 1987 Mexican album, Canciones de mi Padre. Is this album, aside from the sound concept, pulling the neck back in?
LR: You’re wrong! The thing that was most familiar to me was the Mexican stuff. That’s the first thing I heard. Rock and roll was the most radical departure for me I ever made in my life, since I never heard rock and roll til I was seven, and never sang it until I was 17 or 18. So for me it was the greatest reach I had to do, the biggest left turn I took in my whole musical career, because I started out as a folk music artist. I have always loved working in traditional classic forms, including when I did rock and roll covers, because those things, Smokey Robinson songs and Buddy Holly songs, had by then established themselves in rock and roll as traditional, classic forms.
Ronstadt, now 79, was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2013. The diagnosis has been changed to progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a degenerative brain disease. I wish her well in her treatment and hopeful recovery.
Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Rob Bogaerts/Anefo/public domain.
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