Customer Reviews

Heart Like a Wheel

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Linda Ronstadt's HEART LIKE A WHEEL is essential for anyone who likes Country/Rock/Pop. It's almost like the glue for every music collection. Ronstadt's clearly moving into Rock, but retains some of her Country roots. "You're No Good", her first #1 single, is breath-taking, there's so much power in that song. No one's done Paul Anka's "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" as well as Linda Ronstadt. It's simply gorgeous. One her best J.D. Souther covers is "Faithless Love". She rocks up "The Dark End Of The Street", with a passionately agressive (vocal) performance. In my opinion it tops the version done by the Flying Burrito Brothers. The title song, actually named "Heart Is Like A Wheel" is hauntingly beautiful. It has cello, viola, fiddle arrangements that alternate, with a sweet harmony vocal from Maria Muldar, and outstanding orchestration from David Campell (whose arranged strings for her since). I'd take Linda's version of "When Will I Be Loved", over any other, any day. It rocks hard, and became one of her top singles. "Willing" is great. The duet that started the magic was "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still In Love With You)", sung by Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. The song deserved the Grammy it won. The simple arrangements fit "Keep Me From Blowing Away". "You Can Close Your Eyes" is one of the best closing songs on her album catalog. Gregory Rose's string arrangements on "You're No Good", "It Doesn't Matter Anymore", ""The Dark End Of The Street", and "You Can Close Your Eyes" are marevlous. With an exceptional array of musicians, thoughtful production, and brilliant performances from Ronstadt, HEART LIKE A WHEEL is unbeatable. It's the album that made Linda Ronstadt a star. It's the album that will make your collection complete.

A classic singer's album, "Heart Like a Wheel" bears up under repeated listenings 27 years after its issue. The album's tasteful arrangements fit around Linda's flawless vocals so securely that the time spent to listen to the album flows by as if it weren't there.

The session began with a hit, "You're No Good," but the real strength of "Heart Like a Wheel" lies in its sorrowful ballads: "Faithless Love," "Dark End of the Street," "Keep Me from Blowin' Away," and the title cut, to which Maria Muldaur adds an aching harmony. Albums previous to this one had shown the power of Ronstadt's voice, but here the arrangements and the poignancy of the lyrics allowed the beauty of her voice to shine through fully.

Another great programming move was the segue between the rock-out version of the Everly Brothers' "When Will I Be Loved" and Lowell George's "Willin'." The former shows that two minutes is plenty for a great rock performance if you've got the vocal chops of Ronstadt. As it ends with a nice patch of vocal harmony, a guitar slips in and a harmonica sighs and Linda's vocal wraps around the first lines of "Willin'," a wistful but gritty tale. It's a fine moment and one that never wears out for this listener.

Many of us grew up with Linda Ronstadt, and she has had an incredibly varied career. That's a great thing for an artist, but one hopes that this entry to her discography will not be forgotten. An underrated gem.

Linda Ronstadt's 1974 breakthrough hit Heart Like A Wheel represents her greatest musical accomplishment and one of country pop's definitive moments. The album opens with the visceral rock 'n roll of "You're No Good," a No. 1 pop hit. But it is the suite of ballads that follows that make Heart Like A Wheel so memorable. Never again would Ronstadt be able to capture the chillingly fragile heartbreak of the title track, the guilty love of "Dark End of the Street" or the frustration of "When Will I Be Loved?"

Ronstadt's voice is well suited for the melodic banjo lines, rolling piano notes and horns of country pop, but she also uses her higher register to good effect. When she sings the line "and my love for you is like a sinking ship," her wavering voice nearly cracks with heartbreak--a sharp contrast to "Dark End of the Street," when she intones "please don't cry / tonight we'll meet / at the dark end of the street."

Elsewhere on the album, Ronstadt's voice blends perfectly with the musical arrangements. Her cover of Buddy Holly's "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" rolls along with an insistent drum-line that echoes the song's theme of reluctantly but assuredly moving on after a tedious break-up, while the blaringly loud chorus of "Willing" is as hopeful and the lyrics are determined: "I've been warped by the wind, driven by the snow...But I'm still willin'."

Heart Like A Wheel is not a celebration of love but rather, an exploration of the anguish and power of heartbreak. Relationships here are unhealthy or hopeless ("Dark End of the Street," "Faithless Love"), breakups are overwhelmingly sad ("Heart Like A Wheel," "I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love With You") and prospects for the future are tenuous, at best ("When Will I Be Loved," "Keep Me From Blowing Away"). And yet, Heart Like A Wheel suggests that a failed unhealthy relationship is better than a successful but harmful one ("It Doesn't Matter Anymore," "You're No Good"). The album concludes with a promise of a bright new day ("You Can Close Your Eyes"), suggesting that even when you think everything is lost, time proves to be a great healer of a broken heart.

Heart Like A Wheel is a full and complete experience--a lovely set of country-pop gems encompassing the ups and downs of a relationship. Linda Ronstadt's voice carries, unites and embodies these intense emotions with such passion that it is impossible not to be moved. Each song stands beautifully on its own, but it is the stunning cohesiveness of the album as a whole that is most impressive and memorable.

The pinnacle of both Ronstadt's country-music phase and of her career as a whole, "Heart Like a Wheel" is one of those albums that does everything right to an almost uncanny degree. Sure, it contains some of her finest vocals, and yes, Peter Asher's production is as supple and modest as his work for James Taylor's "Sweet Baby James" was five years earlier. (After "Heart," Asher would adopt an ever-more rigid, formulaic approach to Ronstadt's releases that seemed to put her on a pedestal, or in a cage.) And it's inarguable that the material Ronstadt and Asher selected for "Heart" is uniformly strong. But there's something else at work here, something greater than the sum of the record's many impressive parts. If I knew what it was, I'd be in the music business; since I don't, I'll settle for calling it "kismet," or simply magic. This stellar album deserves better than the cut-rate, noise-ridden mastering of the original CD release that's still on the market. In the remastering era, it's as overdue for a sonic upgrade as any album in print.

This 1974 release is beginning of the formula that would prove so successful for Linda Ronstadt throughout the 70s. A clever mixture of top 40 pop and country radio with a few covers of some new/undiscovered songwriter that is all brought together by simple yet affecting production and a wonderful vocal and emotional connection from Ronstadt.

From the aggressive opening of "You're No Good", through the plaintiff "Faithless Love" right into "Willing" and "Heart Like A Wheel", Ronstadt shows every color, every nuance, every emotion she can muster in under 30 minutes. It's a tour de force for her, which unfortunately, she would not ever really re-create again so consistently. This is her shinning moment on record, and while she would of course move on to create some more ambitious, more successful and higher grossing albums, it's between tracks 1 and 7 of this album that she is at her most raw, vulnerable, strong and most importantly, consistent, of her entire career.

The last 3 tracks are also high quality, but considering they come right after the great 7, they somehow seem lesser.

Overall, an early masterpiece from this 70s rock-pop-country legend.

Ronstadt came out with this album in 1974 when songstress talents such as Baez, Mitchell & Simon dominated the scene; Ronstadt here is an unmitigated songstress but with a country-rock flavor that puts this album in a unique class. Every once in a while the layered country arrangement and stunning vocal will meet with the cool, straightforward, syncopated guitars and drums of popular rock, and the result is an unusual gem. This is known as "crossover" - the thing which made Shania Twain's "Feel Like A Woman" such a hit - but only time will tell if that will still move you in 25 years. If "You're No Good", with its dig-your-heels-in bridge, seems tiresomely familliar, well, you're jaded. The deal is sealed with the kicking, charming "When Will I Be Loved".

"Heart Like A Wheel" is full of unexpected treasures that make it a clean listen all the way through. Emmy Lou Harris sings backup on "I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love With You," and Don Henley drums on the sweetly cadenced James Taylor tune, "You Can Close Your Eyes", where Ronstadt's vocals soar. Her rendition of Lowell George's trucking song, "Willin'", blends the serenading, storytelling vocal of country singers like Reba McIntyre with a touch of Chrissy Hynde tough. And 'Sneaky' Pete Kleinow's pedal steel solo is as sweet as it gets.

She had had scattered successes in the first eight years of her illustrious career, but Tucson, Arizona native Linda Ronstadt finally broke through big time at the end of 1974 with the landmark country-rock album HEART LIKE A WHEEL. This is one of those albums whose formula has been endlessly copied by Nashville since the late 1980s, but few have even come close to equaling it, and nobody has surpassed it in terms of quality. Linda is THAT good a singer.

Much gets made about how diverse Linda's music-making has been, but HEART LIKE A WHEEL really demonstrates her appreciation for American music. Her highly-charged version of Betty Everett's 1963 soul standard "You're No Good" struck #1 on the pop charts; and its B-side, the Hank Williams classic "I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love With You" (with the harmony vocal provided by partner-in-crime Emmylou Harris), hit #2 on the country chart and earned Linda the 1975 Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal. A rockabilly-fueled remake of the Everly Brothers' "When Will I Be Loved" hit #2 pop and #1 country in June 1975. There are also superb versions of "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" (Buddy Holly's final hit) and "The Dark End Of The Street," to cite just a few more examples.

HEART LIKE A WHEEL is an album that artists like Trisha Yearwood, Patty Loveless, and Martina McBride all have a deep and admiring passion for, and one that Faith Hill and Shania Twain could only dream about approaching in terms of quality, song selection, and musicianship. Without any question, this is the album that crowned Linda the Queen of Country-Rock.

I have vivid memories of sitting in a friend's living room in December of 1974 when someone put "Heart Like a Wheel" on the turntable. I recognized the voice immediately. By the second or third track I was mesmerized. I also remember someone saying -- as Ronstadt and Emmylou took on Hank Williams -- "I didn't know you like country and western music" and I heard myself say, "I didn't either!"

As one of the other reviewers said, 27-plus years later this recording more than holds up. I have yet to hear any Nashville-based project that even approaches this level of excellence: choice material by then-unknown songwriters: JD Souther and the McGarrigle sisters along with Lowell George, James Taylor, Dan Penn and others; duets with Emmylou, Souther and Maria Muldaur; sparkling production; the cream of the 70's Los Angeles musicians crop and, that voice.

This recording (along with the Emmylou collaboration "Western Wall") remains my favorite. Ronstadt's contributions to popular music are almost unparalleled and in my mind, it all began with this particular recording.

PLEAE NOTE THIS REVIEW IS FOR THE NEW AUDIO FIDELITY LIMITED EDITION GOLD EDITION MASTERED BY STEVE HOFFMAN

Linda Ronstandt made a slew of terrific recordings during the 70's sustaining her career through the 80's and 90's by tackling everything from the Mexican music she grew up listening to (she's part Mexican)to Big Band standards conducted by Nelson Riddle. "Heart Like A Wheel" mixes some of her most compelling vocal performances ("You're No Good", "Heart Like A Wheel") with some of the strongest material that she and producer Peter Asher ever chose for her albums.

The new Audio Fidelity edition of the album sounds stunning. Every little bit of detail in the original recording is clean and clear sounding without anyone second guessing how it should sound. Audio engineer Steve Hoffman captures the rich sound of the original master staying true to the very qualities that made this such a strong sounding production to begin with--Ronstandt's pure and direct vocal approach.

The CD is available in a limited edition. The insert includes pictures of the original vinyl labels along with credits for the album. The only thing that might have improved this terrific album would have been an outtake or two recorded for the album but not included or the lyrics printed in a booklet for fans of the album.

This is as close to a perfect representation of how this great album should sound. Kudos Mr. Hoffman and thanks for doing it right!

For those of us old enough to be aware of Linda Ronstadt in her Aaron Neville-dueting, spanish-singing, (yes, I must say it) Adult Contemporary (shudder, gasp) incarnation, but young enough to have to unearth her older albums from our parents' mostly uncool record collections, this album is a real revelation. I find that there is often a fine line between the beautifully pitch-perfect and the hopelessly square, which long prejudiced me against Ms. Ronstadt -- lumping her with your Anne Murrays and your Helen Reddys of the AM dial. Somehow her voice seemed almost TOO pure, TOO crystalline, TOO pretty to convey the kinds of rasps and catches that denote real emotion in singing. Well, when I'm wrong, I'm wrong. From the full sass-assault of "You're No Good," to the plaintive depth of feeling in the title track, suddenly I'm mesmerized. A 10-track hypnosis of the soul.

Probably, if you're reading this, I'm preaching to the choir, but if not, stop waffling and just buy this album, play it on a nice sunny Sunday morning, and all will seem right in the world.