The songs chosen were “All My Life”, “Goodbye My Friend”, and “All Walk Alone”. Interestingly, with this return to form, Linda Ronstadt again chose three of Bonoff’s songs for her multi-platinum album, Cry Like A Rainstorm, Howl Like The Wind. The title track, “New World”, is one of our favorites. This one includes some her best songwriting and recordings. It wasn’t until 1988 that Bonoff released her next (excellent) album New World. It was released in 1982, and although it contains the hit “Personally”, it was her weakest album. Karla Bonoff’s third album is Wild Heart Of The Young. Here’s the song, see if you think it would have sounded great on the radio: “Baby Don’t Go” featured Andrew Gold and Kenny Edwards (who co-wrote it with Karla) on guitars and harmony vocals. I still have trouble believing it wasn’t a hit. There’s one song on it that’s extremely well-crafted and catchy. Karla’s second album, Restless Nights (1979), is also a record you could just drop the needle on and enjoy…so many good songs. That doesn’t mean Karla Bonoff didn’t sing beautifully, write great songs, and release solid albums. With Ronstadt’s following, Bonoff’s songs became much better known (and the royalties would be large), but Karla was never able to come close to Linda’s level of popularity. It might have been a mixed blessing when Linda Ronstadt recorded her songs. She had just one Top 20 hit, “Personally”, which was an old cover song. It’s amazing that Karla Bonoff never really broke through to Radio, or on the charts.

Here’s a photo of Karla taken less than a month after we first saw her. We knew what her encore song would be, because she hadn’t performed “Falling Star” during her set. In fact, she gets what few opening acts get, an encore. So she opens the concert, and the crowd is extremely responsive to her performance. We always liked to get to know the opening acts, so we bought Karla Bonoff’s album.īesides the songs she wrote for Ronstadt, the album has a couple of songs that should have been hits… “I Can’t Hold On”, and “Isn’t It Always Love”, plus the beautiful “Falling Star”, and really, the whole album is good. We had heard of Bonoff, because she had been a backup singer for Linda Ronstadt, and had written three songs that appeared on Ronstadt’s Hasten Down The Wind album…”Someone To Lay Down Beside Me”, “Lose Again” and “If He’s Ever Near”.

She had just released her self-titled album (above). In late 1977, we bought tickets to Jackson Browne’s “Running On Empty” concert in Omaha, which was set for January, 1978.

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