Las Vegas Weblog

RONSTADT DRAWS THE QUEEN OF DIAMONDS
THE ALADDIN BEATS HER ‘CAUSE IT’S ABLE

During Linda Ronstadt’s “Canciones de Mi Padre” concert tour in 1988, stories abounded of irate fans demanding their money back at the box office, upset that Ronstadt was singing entirely in Spanish, and not her usual folk, or folk-rock, or rock, or country, or new-wave, or popular standard. (Uh, so much for “usual” there.) “Canciones de Mi Padre” Spanish? Who’da thunk it?

By all rights, that should have topped the charts for Most Groundless Overreaction in at least Ronstadt’s concert career, if not the history of live music in general. But as many of you know by now, the Canciones incidents were surpassed in caprice this past weekend. Saturday night, the Aladdin Hotel-Casino had Linda Ronstadt escorted off the property—without even being allowed to return to her suite and pack herself—and barred from returning to the premises when some in attendance apparently revolted after she dedicated her encore number, “Desperado,” to Michael Moore and praised his film, Fahrenheit 9/11.

Ronstadt may have pissed casino execs off well before the concert began. Last Friday, she gave an interview in the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s arts-and-entertainment “Neon” section, ostensibly meant to highlight the concert the following day. However, the interview kicks off with her trashing the Aladdin, recalling the property’s shady past—mobbed-up in the 1970s, profligate ownership in the 1980s—and likening her appearance in a hotel-casino in general to being a shill. And Ronstadt was a little pissed off herself. Her concert was being advertised as “The Greatest Hits Tour,” which it wasn’t at all. (She would blame the Aladdin onstage: “That was news to us. We didn't know it was 'The Greatest Hits Tour.' That is something they cooked up here in Vegas.. . .They are gooood at that.)

But that interview should also have tipped the Aladdin off to what was coming:

The singer's political profile -- including her late '70s relationship with former California governor Jerry Brown -- are a past edition that does linger. "I've been dedicating 'Desperado' every night to Michael Moore, trying to get people to go see 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' " she says.

"They say the country is evenly divided, and boy is that true. One half of the audience cheers and the other half boos."

There it is. Thirty-six hours before she went on stage, Las Vegas readers already knew that she was going to make that dedication. And the Aladdin should have braced for an expected negative reaction.

By the way, what exactly was that reaction? Initial reports by the R-J’s gossipeur Norm Clarke the next day, were limited to “[a] handful of patrons immediately walked out of the Saturday concert.” By Monday, Clarke—not exactly a bastion of reliability, you should know—described a fuller picture:

Many walked out during the show, one concertgoer tossed a cocktail on her poster, others defaced her posters and the box office was "a mob scene" of people seeking refunds, according to an Aladdin spokeswoman.

This echoed the Associated Press, which reported on Monday, “People also tore down concert posters and tossed cocktails into the air,” and quoted Aladdin president Bill Timmins: "It was a very ugly scene. She praised [Moore] and all of a sudden all bedlam broke loose."

By Wednesday, descriptions of the ruckus were spiraling out of control. The London Independent gave Timmins’ account as

... a frenzy of indignation...[the audience] throwing cups at the stage, storming out of the auditorium en masse and ripping down promotional posters as they stomped to the box-office to demand their money back.

But KLAS-TV news anchor Paula Francis tells a different story, and unlike Clarke, she was there. (And unlike Timmins, she has no reason to spin.) As she told the R-J in Tuesday’s edition:

"I was so stunned to read in the newspaper that anyone had a negative reaction.. . . Everyone who was leaving when I was leaving was just thrilled. They thought it was a good concert."

At the end of an hour's worth of singing, "she got a standing ovation, then she came out and did the ('Desperado') encore," Francis said. "There were loud boos and there was quite a bit of applause. But everyone calmed down right away and seemed to enjoy the rest of the encore."

The article goes on:

Other concertgoers said the audience was unruly and hard-drinking from the beginning. Some expected a classic rock hits revue and were confused by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra performance of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" that opened the show.

“Canciones” all over again. “She didn’t sing the songs we wanted to hear” has been the house whine at every Ronstadt concert in the last 16 years.

There’s also this letter to “The Corner,” the blog of some magazine called The National Review:

My wife & I were at the Linda Ronstadt performance in question...and quite frankly, Aladdin President Bill Timmins' account of what happened is complete crap. There was mixed booing and cheering at Ronstadt's pro-Michael Moore comment, and that was about the extent of the "bedlam" that supposedly broke out. I saw no posters being torn down or cocktails being thrown in the air, and if people stomped out of the theatre unhappy, it was because 1) that was the last song Ronstadt performed; it was her encore; and 2) she mainly sang her standards repertoire, with the Nelson Riddle orchestrations, and a large part of the crowd wanted to hear more of her rock-'n'-roll stuff; she got the biggest round of applause for doing a lackadaisical run-through of her version of "Blue Bayou."

Frankly, my suspicion is that Timmins is way overdramatizing what happened, in order to justify giving Ronstadt the boot. It simply wasn't that big a deal.

And a Las Vegas Sun staffer recounts her experience at the concert in today’s edition (um, a little late, guys):

...what sounded like 25 percent of the crowd erupted into loud boos, which were quickly overtaken by about half the audience cheering her and drowning out the naysayers. About 20 percent of the audience, some continuing to turn around and boo, filed out of the theater, many shaking their heads and muttering.
...
As for reports that the concert posters were defaced, I didn't notice. My friend and I did look at them on the way out...

To everyone outside the Aladdin, summarily booting Ronstadt off the property was the definition of precipitousness. So much so that one wonders at the Aladdin’s motives. Let’s parse their story. From yesterday’s R-J:

Aladdin officials said Monday the decision to evict singer Linda Ronstadt from their hotel Saturday was not a partisan political response but an attempt to "defuse the situation" with an angry crowd.
...
"We needed her off the property," [hotel spokeswoman Tyri] Squyres said of Timmins' decision to check the singer out of her room and escort her from the hotel. "She wanted to incite the audience, and she incited them to the point where they were very upset."

Huh? How does hustling Ronstadt off the property after the concert and out of everyone’s sight “defuse the situation”? And as the New York Times opines, “if [the fans’] intemperate behavior began to worry the management, then they were the ones who should have been thrown out and told never to return.” Not to mention the eyewitness accounts cited above that contradict the “bedlam” story. The article goes on:

Squyres said...the hotel's position would have been the same had Ronstadt taken the opposite political stand. "It's about using our venue for political commentary versus being an entertainer," she said. "She was hired to entertain, not to preach."

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Either the Aladdin tossed Ronstadt out to “defuse the situation” of angry, clamoring reactionaries, or they did so because she crossed some line by making political comments onstage; they can’t have it both ways. Or is the Aladdin suggesting that had Ronstadt promoted President Bush’s re-election, her liberal fans would have stormed out in a similar manner? Please. Unless it’s a folk singer “selling out” by plugging in his guitar, lefties generally don’t react to a perceived political betrayal of a beloved performer by trashing the joint. At least not among Ronstadt’s brand of fans, anyway. At best, they boo and hiss, maybe walk out...and weep in disappointment. (This may account for the difference in political effectiveness between the left and right: the left is content to blame themselves, the right looks to blame someone else. Like it’s not their own fault that they didn’t know Ronstadt’s politics. Jerry Brown, for cryin’ out loud!)

But back to deconstructing the Aladdin’s spin. From Monday’s AP story:

Timmins, who is British and was watching the show, decided Ronstadt had to go— for good.. . .

Ronstadt's antics "spoiled a wonderful evening for our guests and we had to do something about it," Timmins said.

Timmins said it was the first time he sent a performer packing.

"As long as I'm here, she's not going to play," Timmins said.

Does anybody else reading all this come to the conclusion that Timmins was personally offended by Ronstadt’s remarks, and that’s why she was hustled straight to her tour bus? By the way, every article has mentioned in passing Timmins’ Britishness (although he’s actually Scottish). The insinuation seems to be that since this is an internecine American quarrel, he can’t have a political agenda himself. Anyone buy that?

Presciently, Ronstadt ended her Friday “Neon” interview with this line:

"I keep hoping that if I'm annoying enough to them, they won't hire me back," she says with a laugh.


POSTSCRIPT: Norm Clarke reports in this morning’s R-J that Planet Hollywood’s Robert Earl has promised to invite Ronstadt back once the Aladdin is transferred and becomes the Planet Hollywood Hotel & Casino, as is expected to happen in September. KLAS-TV anchor Paula Francis, meanwhile, has found her comments misconstrued by the likes of Bill O’Reilly as supportive of Ronstadt’s endorsement of Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11, and is “convinced now that [the melee] happened, and I just missed it.”

COMING SOON: ‘CASINO’ vs. ‘CASINO’

A look at the relative merits (or lack thereof) of Fox’s “The Casino” at the Golden Nugget and the Discovery Channel’s “American Casino” at Green Valley Ranch Station.

My column, “Stop Making Sense,” in the


With its newest member a well-connected attorney who’s represented gaming-industry clients on numerous occasions, and the MGM Mirage-Mandalay merger set for review sometime soon, in whose interests will the Nevada Gaming Commission act—the casinos’ or the public’s?

MEGABUCKS SAFER BET THAN BUSH vs. KERRY vs. NADER?


It’s a topsy-turvy world: Nevada’s slots players have more protections than American voters, and the state Gaming Control Board can teach a thing or two to fifty state governments. Who knew?

An editorial in the New York Times a couple Sundays ago, “Gambling on Voting,” compares and contrasts the myriad uncertainties surrounding electronic voting with the GCB’s strict safeguards regarding slot machines, video poker, and all forms of electronic gambling equipment used in state casinos. Editorial writer Adam Cohen actually took a trip to the GCB’s laboratories to see for himself. [Insert praise for Cohen’s diligence that is actually hidden dig at the writers of the Times’ semi-skewed Las Vegas-based “American Dreamers” series here.]

Some choice excerpts:

The Gaming Control Board has copies on file of every piece of gambling device software currently being used, and an archive going back years. It is illegal for casinos to use software not on file. Electronic voting machine makers, by contrast, say their software is a trade secret, and have resisted sharing it with the states that buy their machines.

...

...A company that wants to make slot machines must submit to a background check of six months or more, similar to the kind done on casino operators.. . .

When it comes to voting machine manufacturers, all a company needs to do to enter the field is persuade an election official to buy its equipment. There is no way for voters to know that the software on their machines was not written by programmers with fraud convictions, or close ties to political parties or candidates.

All of it is pretty damning, and more than a little bit disturbing. Especially when you consider that that “close ties to political parties or candidates” is a thinly veiled reference to electronic voting outfit Diebold, Inc., and its CEO’s pledge in a fundraising letter, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president [in 2004]." Eep.

Check it out here.

(The Times editorial is part of its series, “Making Votes Count,” and will remain available on its website for the foreseeable future. The New York Times requires free registration to access their site—a bit of an annoyance, to be sure, but I’ve been registered there for several years without any long-term nuisance. Then again, the e-mail address they have for me is six years out of date.)