To the guard at the gate, I gave my name, and then drove into the Malibu Colony and found Linda Ronstadt’s white-shingled, green-shuttered new home. The windows facing the ocean were open and the breeze blew through. Linda kept giggling embarrassedly, excited by her purchase. “It cost so much,” she’d say. Then it was as if she’d realize where she was now living, the girl who once posed with a pig, once sang with wonderful conviction, “If you give me weed, whites, and wine, then show me a sign, yeah, I’ll be willing,” and she’d giggle anxiously. Then, seriously, she said, “But it’s just not safe for me anymore to get a house by myself alone, out on some hillside.”
She couldn’t have been nicer, this daughter of a hardware store owner. Her new album, produced by Peter Asher, was called Prisoner in Disguise. She wanted to shoot as quickly as possible, she told me, since her weight tended to balloon up and down. Now she was thin.
I listened to the record. The title song was slow, anguished. I thought about the title and about Linda. I thought about Linda as “America’s Sweetheart.” This brought to mind the image of a dozen long-stem American Beauty roses. Then I thought how, as this was show business, we would get the roses made out of neon. It seemed to evoke a lot of qualities; like the flashing sign at some Arizona roadside diner but a little empty, too, like a prisoner in disguise, since these weren’t real roses, after all. (“You just keep thinking. Butch. That’s what you’re good at,” said Sundance.) (FROM AN AMERICAN STORY)
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