Issue #159 – Linda Rondstadt

 Synonymous with their Michael Nesmith-penned 1967 smash ‘Different Drum’, THE STONE PONEYS never intended to make a chamber-pop masterpiece. LINDA RONSTADT would spend the next five years working hard to escape the hit record she loathed.

In this article extract HUW THOMAS picks up on the second album and that song

Portrait Henry Diltz

Nik Venet gave The Stone Poneys sound a facelift for their second album, summer 1967’s Evergreen Vol 2. Kimmel and Edwards were somewhat sidelined as vocalists in favour of Ronstadt, though their increasingly Eastern-influenced songs remained on the menu. Tracks like ‘I’ve Got To Know’ and ‘Driftin’’ were lavished with stately baroque-pop arrangements, making our three chamber folkies sound like royalty. Venet’s showpiece was ‘Different Drum’, a playful tune The Stone Poneys had half-inched from the Greenwich Village bluegrass group The Greenbriars Boys. The producer heard a cathedral in the song, speeding it up and encasing it in twinkly harpsichord and candied strings. Ronstadt, expecting to record the song with her bandmates, was mortified to find session players and an orchestra waiting for her in Capitol Studio B. “I had no idea there was going to be all these musicians,” she told NPR in 2022. “I didn’t know how to fit the phrasing in. It wasn’t the way I was used to singing it, so it really knocked me off my stride.”

Unbeknownst to The Stone Poneys, ‘Different Drum’ was a Mike Nesmith composition; he’d written it in ’64 but it had been passed over by the producers of The Monkees, perhaps due to the decidedly grown-up lyric, a flustered rebuke to an unwanted admirer. It’s a song built for a rugged drawl, dripping with a certain kind of condescending masculinity. It’s remarkable it found its way to Ronstadt. Her vocal flips Nesmith’s lyrics completely without changing a minced word (not even “I ain’t sayin’ you ain’t pretty”). In Ronstadt’s hands, ‘Different Drum’ is no brush-off but a declaration of empowerment. In an era where women were lumped with fawning, absolving love songs like ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’ and ‘Puppet On A String’, Ronstadt singing “I’m not ready for any person, place or thing to try and pull the reins in on me” stood out like a sore thumb. It’s not a love song or a break-up song. It’s a leave-me-alone song, sung so angelically no earthly force could possibly question it.

Ronstadt didn’t hear it that way herself. She didn’t want Capitol to release ‘Different Drum’, believing that her vocal had suffered against the arrangement, but the clash between Venet’s rigid backing and Ronstadt’s unbound vocal is a huge part of the record’s magic. She doesn’t sound hurried; she sounds resolute, as if she’s found a strength she didn’t know she had. “Linda did more for that song than The Greenbriar Boys’ version,” Nesmith told The Wall Street Journal in 2013. “She infused it with a different level of passion and sensuality. Coming from the perspective of a woman instead of a guy, the song had a new context. You sensed Linda had personally experienced the lyrics—that she needed to be free.” Ronstadt made ‘Different Drum’, well, different.

To read the full article order Shindig! issue #159 here