Ronstadt, Springsteen Docs Worthwhile, Don't Go Deep Enough

by Julian Spivey
CNN premiered its documentary “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice,” on New Year’s Day, revisiting the legendary singer’s career in a roughly by the numbers aspect going from start-to-finish and focusing mostly on her career and less on her personal life and decade-long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
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The documentary is directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, who won an Academy Award together for their 1989 documentary “Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt.”

The 95-minute documentary is a must-watch for any fan of Ronstadt’s as it traces her success from her breaking into the Los Angeles music scene in 1967 throughout the end of her singing career when she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2009. The story is told through interviews featuring old bandmates, fellow musicians and friends and family like former manager Peter Asher, former love interest and collaborator J.D. Souther, former bandmate Don Henley and frequent collaborators like Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton.

What ‘The Sound of My Voice’ does exceptionally well is it is a great linear biography of her entire music career and shows how unique Ronstadt was with her ability to jump genres and have hit songs in pop, rock, country and soul – at one point having songs on basically every Billboard chart you could think of. In this manner Ronstadt was a chameleon who could do it all and do it all well and that’s something you just don’t see today and didn’t really see a whole lot of back then either. You know she’s really doing it all when she’s starring in Broadway productions of “The Pirates of Penzance” and showcasing her Mexican heritage with traditional Mariachi music.

What ‘The Sound of My Voice’ left me wanting more of was looks into the personal side and life of Ronstadt. It briefly went into her upbringing, relationships with Souther and California Gov. Jerry Brown, and her battle with Parkinson’s, but didn’t go in-depth enough probably for fear of running too long. But, without these deeper looks it felt like just a supersized version of an old VH1 “Behind the Music” biography.

Because Ronstadt had such a terrific voice and can’t use it anymore because of her disease I truly believe the filmmakers missed out on a big chance to show the true tragedy of her experience. If it had been less by the numbers and more like another music documentary that premiered on CNN in “Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me” I would’ve found it more interesting.

Still, because Ronstadt is such an important and great musical figure, I would recommend it, especially if you’re unaware of her terrific output.

Bruce Springsteen’s documentary “Western Stars,” which was co-directed by him and Thom Zimny, is a more traditional concert film than music documentary as it sees Springsteen perform his entire 2019 album Western Stars from beginning to end while giving some of the back stories and themes included in the songs and album before each performance.  

Because of this “Western Stars” makes for a great companion piece to the album, and thus something all Springsteen fans should watch and will admire and enjoy, but it’s not really the kind of thing one needed to run out to the closest theater showing it when it came out last year (I rented it from Amazon Video).

This isn’t so much “Springsteen on Broadway,” his terrific one-man show he did for more than a year on Broadway that was taped and can be seen on Netflix, but Springsteen seeming to hope it’s somewhat like “Springsteen on Broadway.” “Western Stars” doesn’t feature the kind of storytelling that Springsteen’s one-man show did but is more just nice insight into his writing process of his latest album. Honestly, the film probably should’ve just been released in a deluxe version of the album. It’s what it feels like, more so than a major work of documentary art.  

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