(Credits: Far Out / Linda Ronstadt)
Sat 6 December 2025 20:30, UK
If you were a music fan in the 1970s, there was a catalogue of bands through whom you could pledge your musical allegiance.
In fact, there were so many choices that many music fans didn’t feel the need to align themselves with one band at all. In the 1960s, the British media in particular were keen to create a narrative between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, forcing young music fans to pick between the two. The straight laced of those were supposed to lean into The Beatles, while the rebels among the bunch were told the scruffy London lads were their proud flagbearers.
The point is, though, by the 1970s, the music industry underwent a seismic change. The Beatles had broken up and in essence, created a big bang within music. In the dust of which was a creative awakening, where new genres were forged and experimentalism was celebrated. The result of which? A widespread landscape of music artists for young fans to enjoy without tribalism.
Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Fleetwood Mac were but a few bands populating this wildly diverse and artistic decade. But while it was largely the decade of the band, there were several solo artists making groundbreaking music. Marvin Gaye, David Bowie and Linda Ronstadt.
But the latter, however, became an icon through a somewhat unlikely method. While the ‘70s was largely concerned with originality, Ronstadt took a more ‘60s approach to things and so rarely wrote her own music. Nevertheless, she was more than just a singer. She had character and artistry that meant the songs she would adopt would be warmly embraced by her voice and turned into something deeply personal.
Really, it was a lead she took from one of her favourite musicians of all time, Mick Jagger. Their brief romantic relationship aside, the pair shared a deep level of artistic respect for one another, and Ronstadt took inspiration from Jagger’s ability to reinterpret songs and make them sound inherent to his vocal style.
But then, when music started to change, so did Ronstadt’s. She looked at this new musical landscape of authentic creation and marvelled at a new crop of bands. But there was one that stood out, for their ability to combine the skills of all the greats that came before them, and remodel it, to make it fresh.
“I really like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers,” Ronstadt admitted. She continued, “I like them because they came along after The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Byrds and Bob Dylan and they absorbed a lot of those influences and still turned it into something that’s completely originally their own thing, you know.”
She continued, “They really got the form, and they hooked onto it in a really original way, I thought. I love Tom Petty’s singing, I like his songwriting. I love the band.”
Being the great musical interpreter she was, Ronstadt later got a chance to work with The Heartbreakers, who played in the backing band of her cover of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers’ hit ‘The Waiting’ on her 1998 album We Ran.
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