Ronstadt defends her big finale

Three days after the dust-up in the desert, Linda Ronstadt said she had no regrets about using her concert microphone to amplify the politics of filmmaker Michael Moore and his big-screen polemic “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

“I think it was a modest thing I did,” the 58-year-old singer said Tuesday as she reflected on a Saturday night show at the Aladdin Casino and Resort in Las Vegas that ended with a portion of the audience reacting angrily to her comments. The fans weren’t the only ones riled up -- the casino president was in attendance and has since banned Ronstadt from the venue.

There have been about 100 calls for refunds, but Ronstadt, who was in Los Angeles preparing for her Tuesday night show at the Universal Amphitheatre, said she will continue to give fans food for thought from the stage.

“This is an election year. I want people to get their head up out of their mashed potatoes and learn something about the issues and go and vote,” she said by phone. “I’m not telling them how to vote. I’m saying, get information about the issues.”

What the singer said just before the final encore in Las Vegas was the same stage line she has been using to introduce the song “Desperado” around the country since she saw the Moore documentary: “I’ll say, I think there’s this guy who is a great patriot and I think he loves his country deeply and that he’s trying to get the truth out ... then I say his name is Michael Moore and I’ve just been to see his fine movie ‘Fahrenheit 9/11.’ ”

Ronstadt, a longtime liberal activist, has often shared her political and social views, whether she was singing at the No Nukes concert series or jabbing at Enron executives by giving them a pointed dedication of “Straighten Up and Fly Right.” Through the years, though, Ronstadt has never heard a hall so powerfully divided each night between hisses and hurrahs. She recalled hearing it the first night she mentioned Moore’s film.

“At first there’s just silence, then there’s ‘Yeah!’ and then there’s ‘Boo!’ and then the audience starts fighting with each other,” she recalled. “You know how they say we are just polarized down the middle? I’ve done this all across the country and I’m telling you, it’s like my independent poll. I have never seen a reaction like this, in all my years of touring.”

According to press accounts of the Las Vegas show, Ronstadt’s comments were met with loud boos, tossed cocktails and defaced concert posters in the lobby. Bill Timmins, president of the Aladdin, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying: “It was a very ugly scene. She praised [Moore] and all of a sudden all bedlam broke loose.” The executive said he didn’t allow Ronstadt back into her luxury suite and she was escorted off the property. “As long as I’m here, she’s not going to play,” Timmins told the AP. Timmins was no longer available to discuss the matter, a casino spokeswoman said.

Ronstadt said the casino management is guilty of some hyperbole. “They didn’t throw me out. I didn’t even know there was trouble. I didn’t know they were mad .... Those places operate like little city-states. They are all-powerful. And I had already said I never want to come back.”

Ronstadt’s scrap in Vegas comes within days of Elton John complaining that singers are pressured to eschew political commentary and a few weeks after Neil Young bemoaned the music industry impulse to neuter political songs. Ronstadt said her career zenith in the 1970s and ‘80s is long gone and that in quasi-retirement mode she has the success and boldness to say what she thinks. “Clear Channel can’t threaten to not play my records because they are not going to play them anyway,” she said of the radio conglomerate that has been frequently criticized for muting criticism of the Bush administration.

Ronstadt said she keeps the comments about the film compartmentalized and brief -- too much political revelation, she says, can tarnish a concert.

“I know it’s hard for an audience.... If I go to a show and if I find out someone is a right-wing Christian or a Republican, and I really like their show, it still puts kind of a cloud over it to know,” she said. “But I’ve kind of got used to that. I don’t particularly like to be preached to, so I’ve limited my remarks to just saying I think [Moore is] a great American and a great patriot and that I recommend that they see his movie.”

Ronstadt has a few West Coast dates left and the management at one of them, Konocti Harbor Resort and Spa, has called to ask what they might expect. Ronstadt said she won’t be changing her show.

“We have to stick together,” she said. “I just think we can’t take this lying down. It’s like the Weimar republic.... These [neo-conservative] people are taking over the government. People are sound asleep, and I don’t think this is the time to back down.”