Tucson native Linda Ronstadt opens up about Parkinson's in CBS interview

Cathalena E. Burch  Arizona Daily Star  Feb 1, 2019 

Linda Ronstadt 

Linda Ronstadt says she's not afraid of dying, but she is afraid of suffering from the effects of Parkinson's disease.

She made the comments in an interview with "CBS Sunday Morning," set to air at 9 a.m. Sunday, Feb. 3. 

Ronstadt also said she is hopeful they will find a cure for Parkinson's, which she was diagnosed with in early 2013. She went public with the diagnosis in August of that year and said at the time she had been experiencing symptoms for years before that included not being able to sing.

Tucson native Ronstadt, 72, performed her last hometown concert in 2007 at the AVA at Casino del Sol. She has returned twice since for speaking events at Fox Tucson Theatre.

Ronstadt told "CBS Sunday Morning" host Tracy Smith that she realized something was wrong with her voice as early as 2000. And while she can no longer sing — “I can’t even sing in the shower," she told Smith — she isn't angry.

“When you’ve been able to do certain things all your life, like put your shoes on and brush your teeth or whatever, you – when you can’t do that, you sort of go, ‘What’s this?’” says Ronstadt, who sold more than 100 million records in her nearly five-decade career that landed her in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. “You know, what’s happening here? Come help me with this. And then you have to learn to ask people to help, and that – that took a little doing. But I do that now, because I need the help.”

Linda Ronstadt at Tucson's Symphony Cotillion Ball in 1977.

In the interview, which covered her career and touched on her recent theater "conversation" events around the country including at Fox Tucson Theatre in 2014 and last year, Ronstadt expressed confidence that researchers will one day find a cure for Parkinson’s. 

“I’m sure they’ll find something eventually,” she tells Smith. “They’re learning so much more about it every day. If not, I mean, I’m 72. We’re all going to die. So, they say people usually die with Parkinson’s. They don’t always die of it because it’s so slow-moving. So, I figure I’ll die of something. And I’ve watched people die, so I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of suffering, but I’m not afraid of dying.”

"CBS Sunday Morning" airs from 9 to 10:30 a.m.

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