POP/ROCK - March 23, 1988

Linda Ronstadt has had it with San Francisco . . . or more specifically with its hometown scribe, Herb Caen. . . . When Ronstadt paid $2.55 million recently for a home in the city’s Pacific Heights district, Caen not only mentioned it in his widely read San Francisco Chronicle column . . . he printed the address. . . . The singer now wants to sell. . . . Describing Caen as “a creep,” Ronstadt said the incident made her “not like the house, and it made me not like the neighborhood, and it made me not like the city, and it made me not like to live there. That’s the end of it.” Caen--when contacted--was slow to repent. About running the address: “It’s a well-known mansion, the Drew School (a boys’ school). It would be kind of like buying Pickfair--everybody knows where it is. . . . I don’t know why she called me a creep. It’s a creepy business I’m in. I don’t mind being called a creep. I like the publicity. . . . I shouldn’t have printed the address. I won’t reprint it, but I’m sure she’ll sell the house.”