When Neil Young was looking for a female vocalist in 1977, he called his neighbor, Linda Ronstadt, who recommended Nicolette Larson. At the time, the singer was at Rondstadt’s home in Malibu, going through some songs he had written, and they both started singing through some of the harmonies together and clicked.
“I didn’t know much about Neil Young,” remembered Larson in a 1978 interview. “But we went over and sat by the fireplace, and Neil ran down all the songs he had just written, about twenty of them. We sang harmonies with him, and he was jazzed.”
Credited together as the Bulletts, Ronstadt and Larson cut vocals on Young’s American Stars ‘n Bars album at his La Honda ranch in California. “We [Neil and Crazy Horse] worked out the songs in a room of his house,” said Larson. “And just when we had the songs down, Neil said, ‘Thanks a lot, we’ve got the album.’ He was recording all the rehearsals secretly in another room.”
Larson continued working with Youngheard from Young again when he asked her to come to Nashville to work on his album Comes a Time and front his Gone with the Wind Orchestra studio band. “He told me to sing whatever I wanted,” recalled Larson. “You can hear me trying to work the parts out on the album.”
Larson’s work on Comes a Time helped her land a contract with Warner Bros. Records and release her 1978 debut album, Nicolette. Produced by Ted Templeman (Eric Clapton, Van Halen, Aerosmith), the album featured Little Feat keyboardist Billy Payne and guitarist Paul Barrere, Ronstadt and Michael McDonald on backing vocals, and Eddie Van Halen on guitar on “Can’t Get Away from You,” among a longer line of musicians.
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“Last in Love”
Along with covers of Sam Cooke‘s “You Send Me” and Young‘s “Lotta Love”—the latter earning her a No. 1 on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart—the closing track on Nicolette, “Last in Love,” was one of the original songs she recorded for the album.
Written for Larson by the Eagles’ Glenn Frey and the band’s longtime collaborator J.D Souther, “ Last in Love” is centered around the naivety of falling in love.
Every now and then
Voices on the wind
Call me back to the first time
far away and clear
You can hear the tear drops
Falling for the last in love
If I let you down
All I can say is “I’m sorry”
Now, it’s’ all over town
So I don’t want to hear it from you
Please don’t look away, it’s hard enough to say
This could go on forever
When the night is clear
I can hear the teardrops
Falling in love for the last time
A year after its release, Souther covered “Last in Love” on his 1979 album You’re Only Lonely. More than a decade later, George Strait shared his rendition of the song on his 1992 album, Pure Country, a soundtrack to the film of the same name.
Larson released her final album, Sleep, Baby, Sleep: Quiet Songs for Quiet Times, a children’s music album, in 1994, three years before she died at age 45 from complications of cerebral edema.
In 2006, a tribute album to Larson, A Tribute To Nicolette Larson – Lotta Love Concert, was released from a February 1998 concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium with performances by Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris, Jimmy Buffett, Bonnie Raitt, Carole King, Joe Walsh, Little Feat, Dan Fogelberg, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and more.
Photo: Paul Natkin/Getty Images
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