![]() ![]() When she is joined on the chorus by Don Henley (of the Eagles) the impact of the song’s touching and mystifying lyric is completely blunted by the beauty of the harmonizing. Here, strings and Andrew Gold’s impersonal piano accompaniment take the song all the way out of the danger zone, and Ronstadt’s carefully articulated, stodgy vocal belies her misunderstanding. In the original version, stinging, venomous guitar lines plus ethereal guitar solos accentuated Zevon’s weary vocal. While it is certainly not in a league with her masterpiece, Heart like a Wheel (and I’m beginning to believe its perfection occurs but once in an artist’s career), Hasten down the Wind is nonetheless representative of Ronstadt redivivus, of Ronstadt, the sensitive, introspective stirring we have admired all these years.Īside from the inclusion of two innocuous songs - “Lo Siento Mi Vida” and Karla Bonoff’s “If He’s Ever Near” - the album’s problems are fairly well exemplified by the totally wrongheaded interpretation of the Warren Zevon-penned title song, which delineates the chilling tale of a lover’s indecisiveness. This is Linda Ronstadt’s tenth album (including the three made with her first group, the Stone Poneys). It was also the second of four number 1 Country albums for her. Her third album to go platinum, Hasten Down the Wind spent several weeks in the top three of the Billboard album charts. A reworking of the late Patsy Cline’s classic “Crazy” was a Top 10 Country hit for Ronstadt in early 1977. The album included a cover of a cover: “The Tattler” by Washington Phillips, which Ry Cooder had re-arranged for his 1974 album Paradise and Lunch. The album showcased songs from artists such as Warren Zevon (“Hasten Down the Wind”) and Karla Bonoff (“Someone to Lay Down Beside Me”), both of whom would soon be making a name for themselves in the singer-songwriter world. A more serious and poignant album than its predecessors, it won critical acclaim. It represented a slight departure from 1974’s Heart Like a Wheel and 1975’s Prisoner in Disguise in that she chose to showcase new songwriters over the traditional country rock sound she had been producing up to that point. The album earned her a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Female in 1977, her second of 11 Grammys. Ronstadt was the first female artist in history to accomplish this feat. Released in 1976, it became her third straight million-selling album. Hasten Down the Wind is the Grammy Award-winning seventh studio album by singer/songwriter/producer Linda Ronstadt. ![]()
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