Rock Venus. The songs of Linda
Ronstadt. Jane Clifton withClare Moore and Rosie Westbrook in the Banquet Room
of the Adelaide Festival Theatre. Adelaide Cbaret Festival. June 14-15 2018.
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
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| Jane Clifton sings the songs of Linda Ronstadt at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival |
Cruelly afflicted with
Parkinson’s disease, legendary Rock and Country and Western singer Linda
Rodsradt is no longer able to sing. It is a shocking fate for a singer who
astounded the musical world with such classics as Paul Anka’s You’re No Good, Blue Bayou, Heart Like a
Wheel and Don’t Know Much wih Aaron Neville as well as countless over
songs, often in collaboration with oher amazing artists from Frank Sinatra to
Bette Midler. In the intimacy of the Banquet Roon at Adelaide’s Festival
Centre, the phenomenal Jane Clifton, backed by her adrenalin charged musicians
on keyboard, drums, electric guitar and bass pays homage to the amazing talent
of the Seventies icon of song
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| Jane Clifton - Photo Claudio Rascella |
Clifton’s passionate homage
verges on adulation, and an audience, familiar with Ronstadt, share in the
sheer ebullience of Clifton’s performance. Interspersing song with anecdote and
bibliography, Clifton explains the vital role that horses and ponies played in
Ronstadt’s life, the inventive talents of a family of inventors, her various
affairs and her singing career from Tucson, Arizona to the Big Apple. It’s a
broad tapestry and it takes a dynamo songstress to swing along from Jazz to
Rand B to Country and Western, Rock and Pop, Motown and Pop. What singer can
traverse this range and pay tribute to a legend whose legacy leaves behind eleven
Grammy Awards and an honoured place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“We’re going to stretch cabaret”
Clifton tells an enthusiastic and packed audience. And she does. The audience
feels the energy of her song and the triumphant accompaniment of her feisty
band. As long as there are singers like Clifton with the power and the passion
to celebrate the magic of a legend of the Great American Songbook classics, the
memory of Linda Ronstadt’s contribution to the music world will pass on to
future generations. At tonight’s performance, many recalled with sweet
nostalgia a past, but her performance of Rock
Venus is proof positive that the songs of yesteryear will endure into the
music of tomorrow.
From Smokey Robinson’s The Tracks of My Tears to Roy Orbison’s Blue Bayou, Clifton reveals the soul and
longing for love of the human heart. Ronstadt believed that song should exorcise
emotion and leave us filled with love and joy.
As the audience joined in with Clifton’s rousing rendition of Buddy
Holly’s That’ll be the Day”, it was obvious that the spirit of Linda Ronstadt
filled the Banquet Room and Rock Venus would be a highlight of this year’s Cabaret
Festival.
