Celebrating Joni Mitchell on her 81st birthday. —Ed.
My great ambivalence about Joni Mitchell, she of the beret and the aloofly confessional lyrics, is best expressed by the critic Robert Christgau, who addressing her 2000 LP Both Sides Now wrote, “My favorite Joni story is that they tried to do a TV special on her and none of her old friends would pitch in. Even if it’s a dumb rumor or a damned lie, it’s a hell of a metaphor for someone who loves herself so much nobody else need bother, and yet another reason to scoff at her concept song cycle about the rise and fall of an affair. But after decades of pretentious pronouncements on art, jazz, and her own magnificence, this very if briefly great singer-songwriter proves herself a major interpretive singer.”
It’s no mystery Mitchell thinks very highly of herself, but it can be argued she has good reason. There has never been another folk-rock-jazz artist like her; she possesses a voice as clear as a bell and a mode of phrasing that is all her own, with which she sends her semi-confessional lyrics out into the world. That’s the good part, along with her remarkable songwriting skills. The bad part is that if her music sometimes reminds me of that of Steely Dan, it unfortunately lacks their sense of irony and humor.
But that’s just carping. Mitchell may be a prima donna with delusions of grandeur, to say nothing of jazz-lite and boho pretensions, but her music is beloved by many, and admired at a great distance by numerous other folks like yours truly. I mean, I love “Coyote” and “Raised on Robbery” and even “Free Man in Paris,” despite its beatnik affectations and the vocal contributions of those two horrible, horrible people, David Crosby and Graham Nash. (Okay, so only the former is horrible. Sorry, Graham.) Why, I even have a sneaking admiration for her failed 1979 homage to the great jazz bassist Charles Mingus, which she kinda screwed up by recruiting members of that middling jazz-fusion band Weather Report as sidemen. But her early work terrifies me and her later work leaves me stone cold.
Ms. Mitchell was the official chronicler of life in Laurel Canyon as seen from a woman’s perspective in the early to mid-seventies, and her gimlet eye for the condemning detail is unsurpassed. And Lord knows Laurel Canyon deserved everything she dished out; not for nothing did Neil Young, a fellow Canadian, write “Revolution Blues,” which imagined a kind of dune buggy apocalypse Manson-style that would kill Laurel Canyon’s pampered and self-indulgent stars in their cars.
Not that Mitchell ever went that far. No, she was a parvenu of the personal, not a harbinger of doomsday, and she had insight into herself as well, as she freely admits in “People’s Parties,” where she sings, “I wish I had more sense of humor/Keeping the sadness at bay/Throwing the lightness on these things.” And she also freely admits she has dangerous tastes in men on the wonderfully brisk “Help Me,” a characteristic she also confesses to on the equally great “Raised on Robbery,” which on second thought probably isn’t confessional but comes as close to writing a great rock song as Mitchell ever got.
As for the Steely Dan connection, it gets no clearer than on “Car On a Hill,” “Trouble Child,” and “Just Like This Train.” I have no idea what it means—did they all go to the same rock school?—but it cannot be ignored, and demonstrates as much as anything the way musical inbreeding occurs. A sound gets around, and before you know it you sound like everybody else sounds, because you’ve unconsciously or consciously glommed onto that ubiquitous sound, which was what happened, I suspect, in some many instances in the recording studios of tight-knit El Lay and its environs.
Anyway, 1974’s Court and Spark remains Mitchell’s most successful LP (it was kept from going Number 1 by John Denver’s Greatest Hits) and she took her good old time recording it as she explored new sounds, particularly jazz, with which to augment her musical palette. It was on this LP that she went from folkie to something more, and the innovations definitely gave a broader sound to her music.
Not everybody loved it; Mitchell herself once recounted how she played it for Bob Dylan, who promptly fell asleep. I think his reaction was, well, overly narcoleptic, but I can relate to where he was coming from; Court and Spark is unfailingly pretty, but not particularly exciting, with the exception of the surprisingly raucous “Raised on Robbery,” on which Robbie Robertson played guitar, the boho anthem “Free Man in Paris,” on which José Feliciano handled electric guitar duties, and “Help Me,” which was a big hit because it’s as catchy as they come. And then there’s the playful and jazzy cover “Twisted,” which proves she isn’t totally devoid of a sense of humor. She even brought Cheech and Chong into the studio to interject some backgroud chatter.
As for the jazz inflections, much thanks goes to Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, who bear much responsibility (or should I say guilt?) for helping to shape that ubiquitous El Lay sound I talked about above. Scott’s flute provides the famous opening to “Free Man in Paris,” with its immortal lines, “You know I’d go back there tomorrow/But for the work I’ve taken on/Stoking the star-maker machinery/Behind the popular song.”
The L.A. Express also helps propel the jaunty “Help Me” and the hard-driving “Raised on Robbery,” and goes Steely Dan on “Car on a Hill” (with its odd middle section), the mid-tempo and oh so pretty “Just Like This Train,” and the captivating “Trouble Child.” And they’re all over the beatnik-flavored “Twisted,” on which Mitchell, who really shows off her vocal chops, explains her reluctance to ride a double-deck bus because there’s no driver on top.
On some tunes the folky Mitchell sticks to her guns; on the title track she keeps things simple, and lets the piano do all the heavy lifting, as she does on the slow-moving and strings-driven but lovely “The Same Situation” and on the equally lovely “Down to You.” Meanwhile on “People’s Parties” it’s the acoustic guitar that predominates. As for “Help Me,” it boasts a sophisticated arrangement but still sounds like a folk-rock song to me.
Look, there isn’t a bad track on this LP, which helps to explain why it remains many people’s favorite Mitchell album. The title track may reek of the Laurel Canyon sound, which is to say it may be too pretty for its own good (even she acknowledges “she couldn’t let go of L.A.”), but it’s still a strong number, and listening to the album you come to realize just how diverse its songs, which initially sound too much like one another, are.
Mitchell may not win any popularity contests amongst her fellow musicians or anybody else, but in the end it can be said that her ego, which I’ve read in several places is enormous, is, if not particularly likeable, earned. Or to put it another way, you might not want her at your party, but you might want her LPs at your party, and that goes double for this one.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
