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Henk Penseel on the Summer of 77 and Linda Ronstadt

In the Summer of 1977 I met Linda Ronstadt, two months younger than I, a physical attractive country/rock singer. That's of course Linda, not me. She had already a career of a decade behind her, just recently with lots of success in America. Linda came over to The Netherlands to promote her latest album. Two years before she had a hit album in America, Heart Like A Wheel, that reached the first position in the charts, but this record (all vinyl)  was not successful in Europe. So when her new album, Simple Dreams, was released, her record company asked its European affiliates to come with creative ideas to sell her records (there were no cd's yet and the word 'download' had another meaning).

Linda, because of her natural beauty, had had many relationships with celebrities. In that year she was going steady with the governor of California, Jerry Brown. I had read that in an American magazine, which also suggested that Linda might pose for Playboy. In my regular newsletter to the press I mentioned that, attached a nice picture of her, but emphasized her new album. Because of the 'summer gooseberry time' for the press, the release of Simple Dreams, received all of a sudden tremendous media coverage. It became Linda's first major breakthrough in our country and in Europe.

It's an example of the strength of the national media in the seventies to promote artists. In those days a single could be a hit in a far away country and nobody would hear of it in Holland. Nowadays a hit in South Korea, Gangnam Style, is able to conquer the whole world in a few weeks. Anyway, Linda Ronstadt made many records after that, received many awards, but in spite of her beauty, she was never married.

MSc Student - Henk Penseel on the Summer of 77 and Linda Ronstadt

WUP 13/12/12