About Joni Mitchell
She was born Roberta Joan Anderson in Alberta, Canada, in 1943. At nine years old, she contracted polio and ended up bedridden for a large part of her childhood. It affected her muscle growth and she started singing to exercise her diseased lungs. By her late teens, she was becoming part of the Canadian folk scene. She gave up a child for adoption after an unplanned pregnancy and then married folksinger Chuck Mitchell. When they divorced in 1967, she went to New York City.
That same year, she met David Crosby at a club in Florida and followed him back to Los Angeles where he helped her get a record deal. She released her first album, Song to a Seagull, in 1968 with Crosby producing. He saw his role as presenting her music as “intimately and directly as possible.” CM She would become an instrumental part of the Laurel Canyon folk scene.
Joni Finds Musical Success
By 1970, she was was already “widely regarded as one of the best songwriters of her generation.” CM She had three albums under her belt and “had already written hits in ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ and ‘Woodstock,’ but she was moving away from her folk beginnings into a more crossover style.” TB She “was running away from success and emotional security and running towards its opposite.” CM
“The lovely Ladies of the Canyon” EW’12 proved that Joni Mitchell was a songwriting powerhouse.” CQ Its follow-up, 1971’s Blue, “was a revelation: as simultaneously rigorous and freewheeling as jazz, and as lyrically resonant as the Bard.” EW’12 It “cemented her as one of the greatest to ever live.” CQ
“Released when Mitchell was just 27, Blue captures her at the intersection of two romantic whirlwinds.” CQ She ended her relationship with Graham Nash in 1970 and “began her storied love affair with James Taylor, who performs on many of the album’s songs.” CQ She “took her damaged heart to Europe, where she wrote some sad songs, most likely for Nash, and some love songs, most likely for James Taylor.” MM-11
She said, “I was so thin-skinned and delicate that if anybody looked at me I’d just burst into tears…I felt so vulnerable and naked in my work. I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty, more and more revelation in order to give it back to the people so that it strikes against the very nerves of their life, and to do that you have to strike against the very nerves of your own.” CM
Blue “painfully documents the harsh truths of twenty-somethingdom, when you’re old enough to realize all you have is yourself but still young enough to hold onto a glimmer of hope.” CQ “For young women struggling with moody boyfriends the world over she became a wise older sister who knew how they felt.” TB The album suggests “life is inherently lonely, but armed with little more than just her pristine voice, an acoustic guitar, and a piano, Mitchell assures us that we’re never the only lonely ones.” CQ
The Quintessential Confessional Album
“We’re accustomed to hearing ultra-confessional lyrics in popular music now, but Joni Mitchell was one of the first artists to make that brave leap in her songs.” PM “No one ever dissected their personality on record with a sharper scalpel than Joni Mitchell. And she never did it better than on Blue.” CM
“‘Write about what you know’ is advice few have followed as thoroughly as Mitchell did on this set of laments” BL in which she “exposes a fragile, battered heart in an exquisitely sad and lovely song cycle.” UT These are “tales of love and loss…etched with stunning complexity.” AM at “a time when she had no defenses at all.” MM-37 It “was about as personal as songwriting had ever been.” MM-47
She herself said, “Blue is partly a diary…It’s me moving through the backdrop of our changing times.” MM-22 She also said it was “probably the purest emotional record I will ever make in my life.” TB She elaborated to say,
When country singer/songwriter Kris Kristofferson heard the songs, he said, “‘Joni, save something for yourself.’ It was advice she chose to ignore.” BL
The Recording
“As befitted these intimate songs, the sessions comprised mostly just Mitchell and her longtime engineer Henry Lewy. Mitchell accompanied herself on guitar, piano and dulcimer” CM with help on some of the tracks from Stephen Stills, James Taylor, Russ Kunkel, and Sneaky Pete Kleinow. “The rest is undiluted Mitchell.” CM
The Influence of Blue
The ingeniously straightforward Blue…set a new bar for breakup albums and still remains the standard by which any acoustically inclined singer/songwriter today will be compared.” PM “She shaped the songs of decades to come” RV with this “brutally bleak masterpiece.” VB It is “the quintessential confessional singer/songwriter album;” AM it “redfined autobiographical songwriting.” MM-3
She also became known for unusual guitar tunings. As James Taylor said, “Joni invented everything about her music, including how to tune the guitar. From the beginning of the process of writing, she’s building the canvas as well as she is putting paint on it.” CM
In addition, her “voice was a complex instrument.” CM She “sings more like a jazz singer than a folk artist. There’s a playfulness in her phrasing that avoids the songs becoming self-pitying dirges.” CM
The Songs
“From the bare arrangements of acoustic guitar and piano with maybe a hint of dulcimer, to the lyrics” TL her “songs are raw nerves” AM which “paint a picture of a vulnerable and pained woman.” RV “Mitchell whittles her journal entries and melodies down with poetic economy and relies on her falsetto to add the dramatic tension.” TL
Here are insights into the individual tracks.
“All I Want”
All I Want is “an aural postcard from the edge of feeling,” MM-24 featuring “more raw emotion and nerve than anything Mithcell had done before." MM-24 It “highlights Mitchell’s desire to escape loneliness in the arms of someone who loves her. Mitchell and James Taylor provide flamenco-flavored accompaniment as she describes her perfect mate: ‘I want to talk to you, I want to shampoo you, I want to renew you again and again.’” RV “you might think you hear a rhythm section. It’s actually just Mitchell alone, slapping her dulcimer’s strings in a calypso beat while a drone adds a tinge of contemplation.” MM-23
“My Old Man”
“My Old Man is “one of the great hymns to domesticity,” CM written about her time with Graham Nash. He was also inspired to write the famous “Our House” for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. However, Joni “realized she was not the marrying kind.” CM It “sounds like a farwell song to Graham Nash. The acknowledgment of a great and nurturing love between two people but in the end love is not enough.” CM
That song, ‘Blue,’ and ‘Little Green’ have not much more than voice with piano or guitar. THe lyrics are haunted by journeys and lovers.” TB Tracks like “All I Want,” “My Old Man,” and “Carey” are “the brightest, most hopeful moments on the record” AM but “are darkened by bittersweet moments of sorrow and loneliness.” AM
“Little Green”
In 1965, Joni had a child with a man who flew the coop. After an agonizing six months, she decided to give the child up for adoption because she didn’t have the means to provide for her. She wrote Little Green in 1967 about the experience. It is “a deeply moving song” CM in which she “tries to be unsentimental, especially at the end when she announces that she doesn’t apologize for her decision to say goodbye.” CM
“Carey”
“Carey is an unabashed song of lust. The subject of the song is the red-headed chef Cary Raditz with whom Mitchell had an affair while she was staying in an alternative community on Crete.” CM The “European trip…deeply resonates through Blue, and incorporated aspects of the Mediterranean into her music.” MM-85 She discussed it at a BBC radio concert in October 1970, saying “This instrument is an Appalachian mountain dulcimer. You can tune it any way you want to. I’m going into a tuning now that I call Matala tuning, because I found it as well as the song I’m going to play in Matala, Crete.” MM-85
The song also “employed light percussion and bass, two guitars and her own multitracked backing vocals, but generally the record has a sparse sound.” TB
“Blue”
The title cut is “a hymn to salvation supposedly penned for James Taylor.” AM “It’s hard to think of a more emotionally naked song…where Mitchell exposes her pain like a folk-inflected Billie Holliday.” RV “For Mitchell, blue is more than an emotion or a style of music, but also the nickname given to her lover.” RV
“California”
“California is another song from her European vacation. It’s a song about the global community of beautiful people, including Raditz. She travels through France and Spain but the pull of home is too great.” CM
“This Flight Tonight”
She used “unusual tunings that gave unique chords, as evident on the likes of This Flight Tonight. She once observed, ‘For some reason, once I got the open tunings I began to get the harmonic sophistication that my musical fountain inside was excited by. Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come.’” TB
“River”
The “heart-wrenching hit River” PM “is one of the most powerful songs, Mitchell, or anyone, has ever penned.” CM It expresses “remorse, a desire to escape herself or at least that part that is inclined to be cruel.” CM
It has practically become a Christmas standard being covered by the likes of James Taylor and Sarah McLachlan. Mitchell longs to “’quit this crazy scene’ of sunny snowless Christmastimes and skate away on the frozen river of her youth.” MM-86 She had left her native Canada in 1968 for Laurel Canyon in California at the encouragement of David Crosby.
“A Case of You”
A Case of You is “one of the greatest ever lusty love songs.” PM “There is no better love song.” CM It was written in part for Leonard Cohen, with whom Joni Mitchell had a romance before either had released an album. He is “the only songwriter other than [Bob] Dylan who Mitchell admits as an influence.” MM-97 She said, “those two are my pacesetters.” MM-97 On “her most truehearted recording” MM-103 she scoffs at Cohen’s portrayal of himself as “constant as a northern star.” MM-104 Whether or not you enjoy this album as a whole depends “entirely on your tolerance for sincerity, but even cynics concede the greatness of lines like, ‘I could drink a case of you and still be on my feet.’” TL
“The Last Time I Saw Richard”
The Last Time I Saw Richard “closes the record with a narrative that juxtaposes different outlooks on life and where they lead.” TB Critics and fans alike have assumed that this is a reference to Mitchell’s first husband, Chuck Mitchell. While some lyrical details fit – like him staying in Detroit a few years after Joni left – she “never said anything about the song referring specifically to Chuck.” MM-112 “The song may be about her first husband but it’s also a statement about Joni Mitchell’s own ambitions.” CM She said, “It doesn’t matter who the guy is…Too much attention is put on the gossip and not the art. It doesn’t matter who it is.” MM-112
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