Linda Ronstadt on the sound of her life
SAN FRANCISCO - Linda Ronstadt did not want a movie to be made about her life. She expressed that clearly to any filmmaker who approached her, seeking permission to spotlight her music career.
"I'm bored to delirium talking about the past," she replied to one such email inquiry in 2015. "Surely, you can find more worthy subjects."
The singer, now 73, frequently insists that she didn't know how to sing for the first decade of her career - a period during which she released the hit singles "You're No Good," "Blue Bayou" and "Heat Wave." All she hears in those songs is a young woman who "did everything wrong," belting her way up the scale instead of switching into her head voice past B flat.
"I sounded like a goat," she says.
So a documentary about her life, no doubt filled with concert footage of her 1970s bleating? Pass.
But Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman were persistent. After her initial rejection letter (see above) she eventually agreed to have lunch with the directors. She thought their emails had been especially literate, and she was a fan of Epstein's "The Times of Harvey Milk," which won the feature documentary Oscar in 1985.
Over lunch, she acquiesced. But there were stipulations. She did not want to participate in a sit-down interview. ("The self-consciousness of it! Me,
