Went to see Linda Ronstadt with Kay last night. Deignan came with us. Linda has the worst opening act on record. Dirty jeans, dirty face, dirty mouth, he is a disaster. “Well,” he says, “do you all eat catfish down here?” No response from the bored crowd. “Well, you eat pussy or what?” he says. “You gotta eat something.” No response. He was awful. But then we did not come to see him. We came to see Miss Linda and he was only an unavoidable prelude. The man behind me is explaining the scene to a couple in their forties. “Well,” he says, “the hippies are all in their late twenties or thirties by now.” Kay and I exchange glances. He is right. He is talking about us. He is also talking about Linda. and then she comes prancing out, awkward as ever in tight jeans, great Charles Jourdan boots, a tiny vest, bangles and wild hair with a rose stuck in the side of it. She is pleased and excited to see us, but still scared. She doesn’t talk at all; she just sings and her voice is everything. Carefully controlled, but telling it all. She sings songs that every woman in that audience screams for. When she sings the first few notes of “Love is a Rose,” we all sing the song with her. We also sing “Blue Bayou,” and “Desperado,” where in the middle her voice rises almost out of her range in her desperation to be heard, understood, loved. The chorus of sighs from the women there, including me, reflects all the lost loves we ever had. She is so good. She tries to talk a little bit because she has heard that rock and roll stars talk a little, but she isn’t comfortable doing it. She tries to dance a little for the same reason, but she isn’t comfortable doing it. “She doesn’t need to dance,” I say to Kay. “She can just stand there and sing!”
The thing that I realize is that almost every song is about love that doesn’t work and I wonder why. She has the fame. She makes $60 million a year for her record company. Men masturbate with her photograph in front of them and she sings like the proverbial bird, but she is unlucky in love and insecure about her looks. She feels fat. She feels ugly. She doesn’t have a man who loves her waiting backstage. “She needs Jon Peters,” I whisper to Kay. “Yes!” Kay whispers back and we nod at each other. Jon Peters. The kind of man the liberated artist woman longs for. He thinks Barbra Streisand is the most talented, the most beautiful, the most creative, and she, the ugly duckling from Brooklyn, thinks so, too. Why can’t we clone him and make him come in black, white, Chinese, and sell the motherfucker? Every female artist needs one because the money doesn’t matter. Neither does the fame or the rose in her hair. She ain’t got a man. Nobody calls her the morning after either. We are all sisters. We know how she feels and we love her.