Feels Like Home– A Linda Ronstadt Biography of Sorts

This is a wonderful book full of the beauty ands wonder of the region where Linda Ronstadt grew up— from Tucson south into the Sonoran desert region in Mexico. The pictures in this book are beautiful, and the recipes are wonderful, but more than anything else it is a personal reflection on the area that Linda feels at home in, and calls home, though today she lives in San Francisco.  This is not at all the biography chronicling Linda the rock star of the 70s and 80s, but rather is an homage to her younger years growing up as a Mexican and German America in the southwest.  Were I to title this book I would call it— The Longing for Home,  but Fred Buechner already gave us a wonderful reflection under that title, and I would say it makes a beautiful companion to this book by Linda and her friends.   Nothing at all is said about Linda’s rock n roll career that put her in the Rock Hall of Fame in Cleveland. And that is fine. Yes, her friend Jackson Browne makes a cameo appearance in the book sharing a sojourn with others down into the Sonoran region.  Nothing is said about her many wonderful rock concerts, for instance the one Rick Sanders and I saw in the mid-70s at the Kennedy Center with Linda opening for Neil Young.  And that is just fine, because this story needs to be told.  It is a story about prejudice against immigrants, EVEN THOUGH all of us are immigrants in America except the native American Indians.   It is a story about how music, in this case Mexican music sung in Spanish provides a link with the past, and a strong sense of ongoing community.  It was something that united Linda’s own family.  And yet it is strange that Linda barely mentions her own children, both adopted one in 1990 and the other in 1994.  But in part this is because Linda never married, though at one point she came close to marrying Jerry Brown then a candidate for President in 1976, and later she dated George Lucas for some time, he of Star Wars etc. fame.  None of this resulted in marriage.  This helps explain the obvious deliberate omissions in the book, and it is fine.  None of those men had anything to do with Linda’s heritage, and this book is about that.   Linda not surprisingly has some strong opinions about the racism that is going on now against Hispanics, and this is not really because she is some woke liberal. It’s because her ancestry and heritage are indeed a vital part of our American heritage, and it needs to be celebrated not eviscerated.   For the record, and I do mean the vinyl, she was one of the most remarkable singers in the whole rock era, including her forays with Nelson Riddle into ‘the Great American Songbook’ and songs from musicals, and her wonderful Hispanic music lps which by the way were also best sellers, despite her handlers predicting they would bomb.  My only wish is that she had done an lp of Gospel classics.  She could sing anything.

Linda’s winsome personality shines through in this book, and explains why Willie Nelson apparently once said— ‘there are only two kinds of men in America. Those who are in love with Linda Ronstadt and those who have never heard of her.’  I once had a close friend at UNC who was in the former category.  Me…. I just loved her singing, in all its iterations.  If you want to hear her at her rock n roll peak, listen to the  Live at Hollywood  CD.  Amazing.   I highly recommend this book, which is beautifully written.  Thank you Linda for everything.   You have been a blessing to many of us for many years.