Tears well up almost 50 years after I first heard Linda Ronstadt sing the 1967 anthem of rejection, “Different Drum.”
“You and I travel to the beat of a different drum …”
It is a Proustian moment—À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
“So, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I knock it
It’s just that I am not in the market
For a boy who wants to love only me …”
Of the countless songs about unrequited love that I wallowed in as an oft unrequited love-sick teen, these lyrics (written by former Monkee Mike Nesmith) said it all, driven home by Ronstadt’s self-assured finality. Although I heard and lived those painful lines too often, nonetheless I fell in unabashed masochistic love with the singer, if not the song, to this day.
My memories have returned thanks to a recent spate of Ronstadt Facebook pages showing her in both young and current—78-years-old, with Parkinson’s—states. I mark every post with a heart emoji. (I was also eagerly anticipating the Netflix documentary that was promised for March 2025: Linda Ronstadt: A Voice for the Ages, which now seems to have no release date or even a mention on the streamer’s site.)
But I have memories of the brief moment when I stood two feet away from her in the lobby of New York’s long ago demolished Academy of Music.
She was combing her hair. I was speechless. She said “hi.” I returned the greeting. That’s it!
But the memory lingers like the scent of fresh-cut lilacs.
It was November 1970. I was the art director and designer of the poster and adverts (above) for a Rock magazine–produced concert at the New York Academy of Music, starring Tim Buckley, Van Morrison and Linda Ronstadt. It was one of a half dozen events that we produced—we ran three sold-out Doo-wop Oldies shows there—and this was our first contemporary rock gig.
The Academy of Music, a storied 2,000-seat music hall turned grand movie theater (my grandmother would take me there for matinees), transformed into a rock palace and later became the Palladium Ballroom and nightclub. Eventually, it was bought by NYU, torn down and replaced by a dormitory and Trader Joe’s (such is progress and property values).
As I noted, this was our first real rock concert, featuring three amazing headliners and their respective bands. We advertised it in all the weeklies—Village Voice, East Village Other, The Rat, Rock—and expected the same overwhelming ticket sales as our Oldies extravaganzas. We had stupidly not reckoned that the other New York rock palaces were also booking big acts for that same weekend. The Fillmore East, Electric Circus and Capitol Theater in Rye, NY, all had major acts from the Rolling Stones to Procol Harum to Moby Grape. I think Jimi Hendrix was in town, as well.
There was more talent than demand. We averaged a paltry 500 tickets each night for a 2000+ seat theater. This brilliant financial failure was, however, the stuff of good storytelling. Each performer gave their all despite the disappointing crowd size. However, I didn’t even notice all the empty seats.
I watched each of the four shows alone in the deep orchestra pit from The Academy of Music’s early incarnations that went unused. At 1 a.m., after the last show on Saturday night, I was hanging out in the lobby when Linda—forgive me, Ms. Ronstadt—and her band emerged.
She stopped in front of one of the lobby’s 10-foot tall mirrors to comb her flowing black hair and bangs, and I felt the fates had given me the chance I wished for. I was just about to tell her I was the concert’s graphic designer and love all her albums. I waited for the right moment … after her combing was done. Then all of a sudden, seeing me staring at her in the mirror, she casually said “hi.”
I was tongue-tied but managed to say “hi” back. Then watched as she walked away, under the pale yellow marquee lights, into a waiting car. The moment of a fantasy fulfilled was over in an instant.
I returned to the room where our concert producer, shocked by the indignity of the weekend’s receipts, suddenly looked up at me and growled, “This was a disaster! Why are YOU grinning?!”
“Linda Ronstadt just said ‘hi’ to me.”