![]() Neville and Ronstadt's collaborations are classic cheesy 1980s power-pop ballads. He looks so tough, but next time you see him ask him to show you a picture of his dog.'' I learned so much about singing and so much about a lot of things from Aaron. She has a particular fondness for Neville, with whom she has two songs on the album: Don't Know Much and All My Life, both of which were big hits. How do you compare a Smokey Robinson with an Aaron Neville or a Frank Sinatra? I've been lucky in my life to work with people who I consider master singers.'' ''I never looked at music as a horse race. Who was the most talented singer she ever worked with? I always choose everything, for better or for worse.'' Who chose the songs, the order? ''I chose everything. How did it come together? ''It was the record company's idea … I said, 'Great, I'll scrape them up for you'.'' I steer our conversation back to her album Duets. ![]() Those are going to be the hardest-working, best people.'' ''You don't want people who have never had to deal with adversity, you want people who have been able to deal successfully with adversity. '' are the best people because they've come the farthest and they've come through the worst adversity,'' she says, exasperated. A Mexican-American raised in Tucson, 97 kilometres north of the border with Mexico, Ronstadt has plenty to say on the subject. Ronstadt describes herself as a ''a screaming liberal'', and when I suggest that dream might be souring for Australians of a liberal persuasion, she is fascinated, especially when it comes to our current government's policies on asylum seekers. ![]() She last came here in the early 1980s with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra and remembers Australia as ''the dream that was promised by southern California that was never delivered … it's like delivering pizza - they delivered it to the wrong address!''. She is keen to chat about subjects outside music. Ideas tumble out of her mouth and it takes work to keep up. In conversation, Ronstadt is warm, funny, unpretentious and talks quickly. Officially, though, my time with her is to talk about her new release, Duets, a collection of collaborations dating to the mid-1970s. I'm keen to talk to Ronstadt about her Parkinson's diagnosis, which has left her unable to sing. She won 10 Grammys in her 40-year career, the first of which she has admitted to leaving in a rental car. Ronstadt's take on the induction shouldn't be confused with the bitter dismissal of such things by someone who considers awards uncool, mainly because they haven't won any. As a Mexican-American, Linda Ronstadt is vocal on immigration.
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