Linda Ronstadt into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

This is certainly welcome news and comes a day after I received Linda Ronstadt’s Simple Dreams in the mail.

It’s a book filled with great stories about the music she created over a stellar career that began its rise in the late 1960s and peaked throughout the 70s and 80s.

So it is very fitting that Miss Ronstadt has just been announced part of the Class of 2014 of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Artists become eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first recording.

She will be joined by Kiss, Nirvana, Hall & Oates, Peter Gabriel and Cat Stevens.

Miss Rondstadt certainly is part of the soundtrack to my life – to every decade in a different way. The 70s hits that I sang to in my bedroom with those giant headphones on run the deepest: Long, Long Time, Different Drum, When Will I Be Loved, Blue Bayou, Love Has No Pride, You’re No Good, and her terrific remakes of Heatwave and That’ll Be The Day.

Then there was her 80s big band music period with Nelson Riddle that were part of a television special. I was home from college for the summer and convinced my friend host a viewing party because her family had a huge TV.

In 1991, I remember so vividly the time her song Adios, from the Cry Like A Rainstorm album, played on the radio when I was driving along PCH on my way to a party in Malibu. It was one of those perfect blends of song and surroundings that was forever embedded in my memory. Whenever I play that song, I’m in my 20s again and driving along the coast.

That same year, I’ll never forget the duet she did at the Grammys with Aaron Neville of Don’t Know Much (Adios is on the same album). And finally, The Waiting. It was the mid-90s and I saw her perform this song on Letterman and loved it so much went out and bought her CD Feels Like Home the next day. Played it to death.

Here are some musical memories of a voice that will live on forever.