Linda Ronstadt is coming home Oct. 5 for an intimate conversation with Tucson.
Ronstadt, a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and one of the most influential female pop singers of all times, will be the guest of the recently resurrected Sunday Evening Forum. The interview series, led by a moderator taking written questions from the audience, was dusted off in March after a 30-year absence. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the guest.
Tucson jazz pianist and Ronstadt’s longtime “musical buddy” Jeff Haskell will moderate the discussion at the Fox Tucson Theatre downtown. Haskell, who has known and worked with Ronstadt since the early 1980s, said topics could range from her multiplatinum, hit-laden career to her recollections of growing up in Tucson. Ronstadt lives in San Francisco.
“She’s got a great sense of humor and she’s quick and she knows what she wants to talk about,” said Haskell, who said no topic will be off-limits including her estranged relationship with Tucson.
Ronstadt has been outspoken about things she doesn’t like about Tucson. In an August interview with the Arizona Republic, she said she left because of Tucson’s “car culture” and she criticized some new downtown buildings as looking “like Stalinist Russia.”
Haskell, who did arrangements on two of Ronstadt’s albums, said he hopes the conversation leans more toward her music career.
“The Sunday Evening Forum has never shied away from controversy,” said Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, a member of the forum’s Founding Board who invited Ronstadt a couple of months ago. “This is a person who has deep roots in Tucson and Arizona. ... I would love to show her all the exciting things that are happening in her hometown.”
