Linda Ronstadt

With this in mind, Ronstadt fuses country and rock into a special union."

By this stage of her career, Ronstadt had established her niche in the field of country-rock. Along with other musicians such as The Flying Burrito Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, Swampwater, Neil Young, and the Eagles, she helped free country music from stereotypes and showed rockers that country was OK. However, she stated that she was being pushed hard into singing more Rock & Roll.

Author Father Andrew Greeley, in his book God in Popular Culture, described Ronstadt as "the most successful and certainly the most durable and most gifted woman Rock singer of her era." Signaling her wide popularity as a concert artist, outside of the singles charts and the recording studio, Dirty Linen magazine describes her as the "first true woman rock 'n' roll superstar... (selling) out stadiums with a string of mega-successful albums." Amazon.com defines her as the American female rock superstar of the decade. Cash Box gave Ronstadt a Special Decade Award, as the top selling female singer of the 1970s. Coupled with the fact that her album covers, posters, magazine covers—basically her entire rock n roll image conveyed—was just as famous as her music. That by the end of the decade, the singer whom the Chicago Sun Times described as the "Dean of the 1970s school of female rock singers" became what Redbook called, "the most successful female rock star in the world","Female" being the important qualifier, according to Time magazine, labeling her "a rarity... to (have survived)... in the shark-infested deeps of rock." Read Less

Her 1976 Greatest Hits album would sell consistently for the next 25 years and in 2001 was certified by the RIAA for 7 times platinum (over 7 million U.S. copies sold). In 1980, Greatest Hits Volume II was released and certified platinum. Read Less

Ronstadt eventually tired of playing arenas. She had ceased to feel that arenas, where people milled around smoking marijuana cigarettes and drinking beer, were "appropriate places for music." She wanted "angels in the architecture"—a reference to a lyric in the Paul Simon song "You Can Call Me Al" from the 1986 album Graceland. (Ronstadt sang harmony with Simon on a different Graceland track, "Under African Skies." The lyrics pay tribute to Ronstadt: "Take this child, Lord, from Tucson, Arizona.") Ronstadt has said she wants to sing in places similar to the Theatre of ancient Greece, where the attention is focused on the stage and performer.

Ronstadt's recording output in the 1980s proved to be just as commercially and critically successful as her 1970s recordings. Read Less

It included New Age arrangements such as the lead single "Heartbeats Accelerating" as well as the self-penned title track and featured the unique glass armonica instrument. But alas, it was Linda's first commercial failure since 1972, and peaked at a disappointing No. 92 in Billboard, whereas 1995's Feels Like Home was Ronstadt's much heralded return to Country-Rock and included her version of Tom Petty's classic hit "The Waiting." The single's rollicking, fiddle-infused flip side, "Walk On", returned Linda to the Country Singles chart for the first time since 1983. An album track entitled "The Blue Train" charted 10 weeks in Billboard's Adult Contemporary Top 40. This album fared slightly better than its predecessor, reaching No. 75. Both albums were later deleted from the Elektra/Asylum catalog. Read Less

Beginning in the mid-1970s, Linda Ronstadt's private life was given major publicity. It was fueled by a relationship with then-Governor of California Jerry Brown, a Democratic presidential candidate. They shared a Newsweek magazine cover in April 1979. They also made the cover of Us Weekly magazine. Ronstadt and Brown took a trip to Africa which became fodder for the international press, and they made the cover of People magazine. In the mid-1980s, Ronstadt was engaged to Star Wars director George Lucas. In December 1990, she adopted an infant daughter, Mary Clementine. She later adopted a baby boy, Carlos Sangria, in early 1994. Read Less

Ronstadt appointed the Land Institute as recipient of all proceeds from her signature guitar. Read Less