I have no idea where in Silver Spring his studio was, but I love to think that I-12 years old and soon to be in the thrall of Linda Ronstadt-was probably no more than a few miles away from the creation of a piece of this seminal record. A snowstorm came, and there was a houseful of musicians, one of whom was Paul Craft, who wrote "Keep Me From Blowing Away," which she decided to record as soon as she could-which in this case was at the nearby Silver Spring studio (who knew?) of the engineer George Massenburg, whom she ended up working with many times later in LA. She came down with the flu in 1974 while passing through Washington with a Jackson Browne tour and ended up staying behind to recover at the Bethesda house of John Starling, a member of the Seldom Scene whom she had met through her friend Emmylou Harris. I find this is one of the most stunning facts in the book. Linda recorded "Keep Me From Blowing Away," from Heart Like a Wheel, in Silver Spring, Maryland, where I grew up. Saguaros produce an extravagantly voluptuous white blossom, which is the bravest gesture I can imagine in an environment so purely hostile to plant growth." - Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir. They are the cleverest of water hoarders and can expand their leathery green skin to capture as much as a ton of additional water. These enormous plant beings (I can think of no other way to describe them) grow within a few hundred miles of Tucson and no place else on the face of the earth. Instead, we had the giant cacti known as saguaros. I wondered what kind of a place would have such an abundance of lollipop trees and lush green meadows that didn't even have to be watered with a hose. "The place where I grew up bore no resemblance whatsoever to the pictures in the little books I read as a child. It's amazingly well written, if highly selective and a little imbalanced-a long, vivid, and transporting chapter on her childhood in Tucson followed by chapters of varying lengths tracking her career, dwelling on landmarks like the making of her breakthrough album, Heart Like a Wheel, and virtually skipping over some others, such as my all-time favorite of hers, Hasten Down the Wind. I did buy her book, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, and devoured it in a little more than a day. Another chance, perhaps the last, missed. and I went to Philadelphia for the day to have dinner at one of my favorite restaurants. It could have happened just a week ago when she was in Washington for the National Book Festival, plugging her new memoir-on my birthday no less-but D. Mary, even Bruce Springsteen (whom I feel lucky have seen once in my life-35 years ago, and he was filling stadiums then!)-the opportunity has never been right and/or has rarely presented itself to see Linda. Unlike other musical acts I've been anywhere from interested in to borderline obsessed with over the years-Fleetwood Mac, Carly Simon, Emmylou Harris, Judy Collins, Iris Dement, Peter, Paul and
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