Free Simple Dreams ~ A Musical Memoir by Linda Ronstadt Page A

knew. Gram was singing lead, and Bernie and I added the harmony parts. Keith was playing guitar and soaking up everything Gram had to show him. All good musicians learn from one another this way. After a few hours, Bernie noticed it was two in the morning and said he needed to make the long drive back to Topanga Canyon. I had moved to Hollywood by then, and he said he would drop me off. Gram twisted his choirboy face into a pout and asked if I would stay and go through the George Jones repertoire. Jones’s material was based on duets with Tammy Wynette, so we could sing them without Bernie supplying the third part. Gram assured me that he could take me home because my house was close to the Chateau Marmont. I stayed. We went through George Jones, and then Keith played “Wild Horses,” a new song that he and Mick had just written.
    Gram was salivating over this song and begged Keith to let him record it before the Rolling Stones did. This was a bold request, as writers who record don’t usually give up a song before they release it themselves. I was surprised when they allowed him to use it on the next Flying Burrito Brothers record, a year before they would include their own version on the album Sticky Fingers . I wanted the song too but knew I wasn’t going to have it.
    It was about five in the morning, so I asked Gram if he could take me home as promised. He knit up his brow. “You see, dearie,” he said (Gram called people dearie, maybe because he was condescending to me, maybe because he grew up in the South, or maybe a little of both), “I only have my motorcycle up here, and I’d have to take you home on it.” I blanched. I wasn’t about to climb on a motorcycle with Gram in any condition, and his had deteriorated considerably after Bernie left. I hadn’t beensmoking the joint they were passing back and forth. I had tried marijuana several times, but in the words of my friend and longtime assistant Janet Stark, “When I smoke pot, it makes me want to hide under the bed with a box of graham crackers and not share.” I didn’t have any objections to them smoking but knew it didn’t get you as loaded as Gram seemed to be when he came back from one of his little excursions out of the room.
    It had been a long night, and at about six, we went into the kitchen to see if we could find something to eat. Gram hoisted himself up on the kitchen counter and began to sing something, except we couldn’t make out what it was. He was swaying in a large circle from his perch on the counter, and I was afraid he would fall and hurt himself. He was talking, but we had no idea what he was saying. I had never seen anyone in his condition. Keith and I hauled him off the counter, wrapped his arms around our shoulders, and helped him back to the living room. We lowered him down on one of the sofas, where he passed out, saying something about a blinky. I took it to mean that he was cold and covered him with a blanket.
    Keith moved under his own steam to the next horizontal surface and proceeded to dreamland. That left me sitting for the next several hours, still in my itchy television makeup, wishing for my flannel nightgown. There was nothing to do but wait until ten o’clock when Herb’s office opened, and I could call and ask someone to come and get me. I never went to another all-night jam session without my own very sober ride home.

    In the spring of 1970, I met two people in the Troubadour who would become important to me later. One was David Geffen, the former college roommate of my Hart Street pal, Beverly Hillbillies TV writer Ron Pearlman. David introduced himself to me oneevening, and I found him to be as Ron had described, with a saucy sense of humor and a restless, penetrating intelligence. He had a cozy manner, a confidential way of conversing, and unrelenting, irresistible charm. He and his former William Morris mailroom coworker Elliot Roberts became Troubadour regulars. Keen observers, they started a