Linda Rondstadt

These days Linda is a rocker who amazingly enough, has notched some of her biggest hits with Sinatra-styled standards and made on-stage impact by singing Gilbert & Sullivan on Broadway (80's). But once she sang plenty of country and employed some of the best country rockers in the business. Born on July 16, 1946 in Tuscon, Arizona, she arrived in LA in 1964 and formed the folksy Stoney poneys. After kicking around for a year they signed to Capitol, 1967 seeing the release of two albums, 'Stoney Poneys' & Evergreen, the former yielding a hit single in Linda's version of Mike Nesmith's 'Different drum. Linda next went out as a solo act and made two more albums, 'Hand Sown Home Grown (1969) & Silk Purse (1970), the first featuring the talents of such musicians as Clarence White, Red Rhodes & Doug Dillard, while the latter was made with the aid of Nashville pickers. By 1971 however, she made the first move in a new direction, forming a backing band consisting of future Eagles, Glen Fry, Don Henly & Randy Meisner and releasing an album called 'Linda Rondstadt', which contained a version of Hank Cochran & Harlan Howard's 'I Fall To Pieces' - recorded live in LA with the help of steelie Pete Kleinow, fiddler Gib Guibeau and others. Since that time she has moved further & further away from her original country-oriented sound, though every now and then she would cut a track to remind the country music fans of days gone by, her hit single including 'Silver Threads & Golden Needles', I Can't Help It' (both 1974), When Will I Be Loved (#1 1974), Crazy (1976) and Blue Bayou (1977). An Asylum artist from 1974, during late 1978 and 1979 she worked on a trio album with Emmylou Harris & Dolly Parton, the project being shelved before completion, though all three singers intimated their desire to try again. Back