July 20, 2004
Why don't you come to your senses?
Linda Ronstadt made the mistake of saying nice things about Michael Moore at a concert in Las Vegas last night, during her encore.
Ronstadt's comments drew loud boos, and some of the 4,500 people in attendance stormed out of the theater. People also tore down concert posters and tossed cocktails into the air."It was a very ugly scene,'' Aladdin President Bill Timmins told The Associated Press. "She praised him and all of a sudden all bedlam broke loose.''
Timmins, who is British and was watching the show, said he didn't allow Ronstadt back in her luxury suite afterward and she was escorted off the property.
He didn't allow her back in her suite? What the fuck? Didn't she have luggage?
While Timmins has said he refuses to let Ronstadt play at the Aladdin again, this isn't quite as dramatic as it first sounds, since she wasn't contracted to play there regularly; this was a one-shot concert.
The thing that ticks me off the most about this story is actually a specific line from the AP article:
Ronstadt's antics "spoiled a wonderful evening for our guests and we had to do something about it,'' Timmins said.
Antics? Antics? Antics are when Mark E. Smith drunkenly knocks an amp into the audience, or when Courtney Love...well, when Courtney Love does pretty much anything. Expressing political views does not constitute "antics".
As for Timmins's stated reason for his decision to give Ronstadt the bum's rush, would he also have had her escorted off the premises if she had been totally off key during her performance of "Desperado"? "Her sloppy interpretation of the Eagles' 1973 classic spoiled a wonderful evening for our guests and we had to do something about it." Come on, man. Have the strength of your convictions, at least.
Posted by Francis at 04:11 AMI think it's likely Timmins already had a bug up his but vis-a-vis Rondstadt and simply used this as an excuse. Here's a report from someone who was at the concert, taken from a letter written to the National Review's Corner:
My wife & I were at the Linda Ronstadt performance in question, at the Aladdin in Las Vegas, and quite frankly, Aladdin President Bill Timmins' account of what happened is complete crap. There was mixed booing and cheering at Ronstadt's pro-Michael Moore comment, and that was about the extent of the "bedlam" that supposedly broke out. I saw no posters being torn down or cocktails being thrown in the air, and if people stomped out of the theatre unhappy, it was because 1) that was the last song Ronstadt performed; it was her encore; and 2) she mainly sang her standards repertoire, with the Nelson Riddle orchestrations, and a large part of the crowd wanted to hear more of her rock-'n'-roll stuff; she got the biggest round of applause for doing a lackadaisical run-through of her version of "Blue Bayou."Posted by: Eric Berlin at July 20, 2004 06:26 AMFrankly, my suspicion is that Timmins is way overdramatizing what happened, in order to justify giving Ronstadt the boot. It simply wasn't that big a deal.
Have you seen how much Vegas concerts cost? If I had dropped $100 to see Linda Ronstadt only to be told to go spend ANOTHER $10 on a movie about death and stuff I'd be pissed also.
And then I would go to the buffet.
Posted by: ugarte at July 20, 2004 09:54 AM