Linda Ronstadt with Eagles – Silver Threads & Golden Needles

“Silver Threads and Golden Needles” – Single by Linda Ronstadt from the album Don’t Cry Now. Released in 1973.

“Silver Threads and Golden Needles” is a country song written by Dick Reynolds and Jack Rhodes. It was first recorded by Wanda Jackson in 1956.

In the video below, Ronstadt joined the Eagles onstage during the taping of an appearance on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. The original lineup of the country-rock crossover stars backs Ronstadt as she tears through an energetic performance of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles,” a classic song she turned into a Top 20 hit when she released it as a single from her 1973 album Don’t Cry Now.

“We’d like to introduce someone who was very instrumental in putting our band the Eagles together,” Glenn Frey states, calling Ronstadt “our favorite girl singer.”

Frey first met Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner when Ronstadt recruited all of them to back her in her solo band. Each of them was already a veteran of the burgeoning country-rock scene in Los Angeles; Henley had previously played drums in a group called Shiloh, which Kenny Rogers first discovered in Dallas and brought to Los Angeles to record, while Frey had worked in a duo called Longbranch Pennywhistle with J.D. Souther. Meisner had played in Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band, and Leadon had performed with the Flying Burrito Brothers prior to playing with Ronstadt.

Ronstadt brought them together as a group of country-rock “all-stars” for her Silk Purse Tour in 1971, and they made their live debut with her during a performance at Disneyland on July 12, 1971, which turned out to be the only concert they ever played with her. The chemistry between the band members was so undeniably special that Henley and Frey approached Ronstadt to tell her they were splitting off to form a new band of their own, leaving her to hire an entirely new group as they formed the Eagles.

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