cover image Linda Ronstadt, It's So Easy: An Unauthorized Biography

Linda Ronstadt, It's So Easy: An Unauthorized Biography

Mark Bego. Eakin Press, $12.95 (212pp) ISBN 978-0-89015-775-6

Readers won't be scandalized or even surprised by Bego's ( Aretha Franklin ) ``unauthorized biography'' of the pop singer extraordinaire. The author is obviously a big fan of Ronstadt's, and his biography intersperses the facts of her life with effusive praise of her musical accomplishments. Bego takes us from Ronstadt's childhood in Tucson, Ariz., where she first became ``mesmerized by music,'' through the mid-1960s in Los Angeles as the lead singer for the Stone Poneys, her superstar period as ``the most successful female singer of the 1970s,'' and her forays into opera, jazz and mariachi music during the last decade. Along the way, we learn, rather sketchily, about Ronstadt's affairs with singer J. D. Souther, actor Albert Brooks, former California governor Jerry Brown and filmmaker George Lucas, among others. Bego relies on past interviews from a multitude of magazines and newspapers, and although he has done a capable job of pasting together quotes from various sources to create a coherent chronology, rarely does he attempt to probe beneath the surface of Ronstadt's California cool. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)