Introduction
A lullaby sung at full heart: the kind of comfort that doesn’t deny the dark, it simply stays with you until morning comes.
What makes this 1975 television performance so quietly unforgettable is its timing: Linda Ronstadt was standing at the threshold of superstardom, yet she chose to pause the momentum and sing a song that doesn’t chase applause. “You Can Close Your Eyes” isn’t built like a showstopper. It’s built like a hand on the shoulder—steady, intimate, almost whispered—even when it’s delivered under stage lights and broadcast cameras.
The song began life in the early 1970s, written by James Taylor and first appearing on Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon (released April 1971). It was also used as the B-side to Taylor’s No. 1 single “You’ve Got a Friend.” In other words, it arrived in the world the old way—quietly, almost accidentally—waiting on the reverse side of a hit for the listener who didn’t rush to lift the needle.
By late 1974, Ronstadt had already proven she could turn other people’s songs into personal weather, and she placed her studio cover as the closing track on Heart Like a Wheel (released November 19, 1974). That album would become her commercial breakthrough, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard 200—a roaring achievement built, paradoxically, on her ability to make tenderness feel strong rather than small. And there’s a poignant thread connecting Taylor’s original and Ronstadt’s reinvention: both recordings were produced by Peter Asher, who understood that the song’s power lives in its restraint—the way it refuses to over-explain what love is doing while it’s trying to hold itself together.
Then came Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, the kind of show that could turn a living room into a front-row seat. The episode widely circulated with Ronstadt performing “You Can Close Your Eyes” is listed in official episode guides as the installment featuring Ronstadt alongside Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, plus Vassar Clements, John Hartford, and a comedy segment by Steve Martin—dated November 20, 1974 in syndicated records. (Many fans and TV-archivist listings remember it as airing in early 1975—one reason the performance is often labeled “1975” in uploads and collectors’ notes.) Either way, it belongs to that same brief, glowing corridor of time: the Heart Like a Wheel era, when her voice sounded like it had discovered its true size.
The meaning of the song is deceptively simple: rest, I’m here, the world can spin without hurting you for a moment. But under that gentleness there’s a second, sharper truth. The lyric admits, almost offhandedly, that the singer may be gone one day—yet the song will remain, something the other person can still sing when absence arrives. It’s comfort with a shadow at its edge, which is why it feels so real. It doesn’t promise permanence. It promises presence—now.
Ronstadt’s gift in this performance is how she honors the lullaby without turning it into fragile glass. She sings as if the room is smaller than it is, as if the microphone is close enough to catch the soft parts of breathing, as if reassurance is a practical act, not a poetic one. The band behind her stays respectfully out of the way; the arrangement doesn’t “dress up” the feeling. It simply carries it—like a road carries a car at night, like a porch light carries someone home.
If you watch closely, the most moving thing may be what doesn’t happen. There’s no melodrama, no vocal flexing for its own sake. The performance relies on a harder skill: self-control in the service of emotion. That’s why it lands with the weight of memory. It sounds like the kind of song people once heard on late radio, when the day had finally stopped demanding things and the heart could admit, in a quieter voice, what it needed.
And when she reaches the line about singing the song “when I’m gone,” it doesn’t feel like tragedy. It feels like legacy—one person handing another a small, durable candle. Not to banish the night, but to make it livable.