#Original meaning hasten down the wind plus

And in a few instances it’s as good as anything Ronstadt has done.

Worse still, one verse of an immaculately beautiful reggae song, “Rivers of Babylon,” is ruined by being used as a prelude to “Give One Heart.” No amount of sweetening can rescue lyrics as inane as “That’s the paradox of I love you” or “If your baby loves you right/You can have skyrockets any old night.” A rock & roll bridge has been punched up, which only makes things worse by forcing a scream from Ronstadt as she tries to move up the scale. Orleans couldn’t salvage it, nor can Ronstadt. The album’s only other major mistake is John and Johanna Hall’s “Give One Heart,” one of the worst songs - reggae or otherwise - I’ve heard. 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.įlashback: Stevie Nicks and Other Badass Women Pay Tribute to Linda Ronstadt at the 2014 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 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.

#Original meaning hasten down the wind plus

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).

Think instead of a gifted singer - perhaps our most gifted - who has given us (arguably, I admit) some 40 memorable songs but failed, and miserably so, to connect with much passion on her last album, Prisoner in Disguise. When I say welcome back, don’t think of John Sebastian’s awful song, or the equally awful television show it introduces.