The song is about the end of a relationship, where the girl recognizes that nothing is working for them any more and the guy finally grudgingly admits it as well, telling her to leave, to go hasten down the wind. I just always loved the imagery in that phrase– hasten down the wind– and thought it fit well with this piece. If that sounds familiar you probably remember the old Warren Zevon song from the the 70’s most famously covered by Linda Ronstadt on her album with the same title. It’s 10″ by 30″ on canvas and is titled Hasten Down the Wind. She simply allows the beauty of this well-structured song to speak for itself.This is a painting that I finished over the weekend. She doesn’t battle the instruments she doesn’t strain for high notes. She sounds at peace with herself as she sings of foolish lovers who don’t take the time to discover love’s true meaning. Ronstadt’s interpretation is extraordinarily subtle, sly and witty. Swirling electric piano figures and a barely audible mandolin establish an irresistibly exotic ambiance. Ry Cooder’s “The Tattler” is one of the album’s two gems.
Her reading could be tougher, but the music behind it - particularly the solo sparring between guitarists Andrew Gold and Waddy Wachtel - has enough bite to overcome the vocal shortcomings. The version of “That’ll Be the Day” included here neither alters my feelings for nor threatens the Buddy Holly original. I’ve always appreciated Ronstadt’s good-natured approach to her remakes of rock ‘n’ roll oldies. And in a few instances it’s as good as anything Ronstadt has done. 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.
#Hasten down the wind pirate101 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.
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