Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
The male skew here probably says more about the well - our "shabby
genteel" old time neighborhood here in cyberspace than about Ms.
Mitchell's fan base ... and looking forward to Michelle's take ...
I recall from the period 1967-1983 - when I was paying closest
attention to Ms. Mitchell's output, women were as keen, but not more
so, than us guys ... my friend who was most excited about Ms. Mitchell
in the mid 1970's Hejira-Mingus period was a teenaged African American
who'd escaped his low prospects Newark neighborhood for the limitless
possibilities of Bezerkeley ... he thought Hejira was the greatest
thing ever and came to it through following Wayne Shorter ...(to Jaco
to Joni ...)
  

    
Not everyone here is male...

<Was my sis a freak, or did Joni strike a meaningful emotional chord
to
her female peers?>

This was one of those things I'd hoped would get touched on in the
book.  Baez is the only female collaborator I know of ('Dida') - except
for that seemingly isolated trio of Mitchell, Mama Cass, and Mary
Tavers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aYAUE6is7I


Mitchell saw herself as a painter first and her meetings with Georgia
O'Keeffe appear to be a kind of pilgrimage to an admired woman.  Both
were in a worlds dominated by men - apparently by choice as much as
circumstance.
  

    
Joni was the soundtrack for significant portions of my life, from the
early singer songwriter stuff on into the jazz connection. How many
times did I sing and play her songs in my life? I could not count. How
often do fragments of her songs still come to me in moments? At least
weekly, but what is significant is the fragments are mostly up to Blue,
and fewer later. Being able to sing riffs -- and have them stick in
little parts of my brain -- seemed harder with the later work. I would
find myself listening "across" pieces, rather than diving INTO a single
song and getting those lovely little bits into my gray matter. 

It was like the early stuff was resonating with my personal
experience. The latter stuff took me to other places where I could
float away from the personal stuff. 

And I thought I had all her discs, but doing catch up reading, I can
see I missed some. Hmmm..

Just one small side story. At college, I was pals with a guy who for
some freakin lucky stroke got to work in the studio when Joni was
recording. I remember we were working a late shift in the language lab
where we had to duplicate audio tapes and it was a boring, mindless job
when he told me this story. I sat there, gobsmacked. I would have done
anything to hear more stories, but he held them very close. It was
almost like he had a religious experience and could not talk about it.
But it was at that moment that I understood Joni had sway with guys,
because up to that moment, I never found the guys around me cared a
whit about Joni's music. 
  

    
Your experience with Joni Mitchell's music is something that happens
to certain musicians.  They almost achieve sainthood and their fans
can't or won't move from a certain artistic period. They are caught in
amber almost.

This happened to Miles Davis.  He was way beyond just playing lyrical
ballads but his fans kept asking for that.  It went in the reverse
direction for John Coltrane.  Most of his fans got into his later
spiritual work and couldn't or wouldn't go back and appreciate his hard
bop playing.

I think they should write the wikipedia article for this phenomenon
using Joni Mitchell and Blue.  
  

    
So happy to see such great responses were posted here while I was
away.  More on the phenomenology of listening to and absorbing Joni's
body of work in a bit. Love what you wrote about that, Nancy.  

Women definitely identified with Joni's music in great numbers.  It
seems like half the boomer women I meet can sing at least a few lines
from the BLUE album, if not all of it . For a look at Joni through the
lens of second-wave feminism, see Sheila Weller's GIRLS LIKE US (It's
also pretty dishy, if you're into that).    

But so have African-Americans.  One of the most rabid JM fans I ever
heard of was a former Black Panther who kept HISSING OF SUMMER LAWNS in
steady rotation on his turntable.   

And so have gay men.  When I asked Joni about Hejira, she said, “I
think it gave melancholy its proper due—the melancholy of mate bonding
difficulty. And I think that’s why it affected the gay male population
as deeply as it did. It picked up a big gay following.” I received a
bunch of mail from gay men who said their special connection to Hejira
was affirmed when they read this quote in my book.    

Like everyone, Joni is in part a product of her culture and
environment, so it can be useful to consider her life and work in terms
of identity politics.  But I'm not sure Joni is a representative woman
of her generation (any more than Georgia O'Keefe was a representative
woman of hers). That's why I'm more interested in Joni's creative
process.  
  

    
Prince is an enormous Joni fan, and you can really hear it in his work.
  

    
Oh, and I meant to add, after saying I'm not sure Joni is a
representative woman of her generation . . . that I think what makes
Joni's work relatable to such a variety of people is her unique
combination of poetic insight and musical expression . . . so that's
why I'm more interested in her creative process than in her gender.  
  

    
John wrote about the experience of coming to Joni's work all at once
vs. hearing each record at the time of its release.  

He asked: "Any thoughts to the differences in listening experiences?
Is there something about this with Mitchell that might be different
than with another artist?"

When I started listening to Joni's music in 1988, I discovered her
entire discography (up to that point) as a piece.  Blue, Wild Things
Run Fast, Mingus, the whole shebang.  I heard Blue, loved it.  I also
heard and appreciated Mingus, amazed that she'd written lyrics that fit
Mingus's tunes so perfectly, and that she sang more like another
instrument in the band than like a traditional vocalist.   And I heard
Wild Things Run Fast, which I didn't originally like much.  But I took
it as part of the entire Joni package.  The record wasn't a departure
from the Joni music I loved; it was just another record in her entire
body of work, one I happened not to like as well as others.  I didn't
come to it with expectations that had built year after year, release
after release.   

I can only imagine the experience of a Joni fan who on the other hand
heard these individual albums as they were released. (Would love to
hear from more of you who did). Someone who was introduced to Joni
through Ladies of the Canyon. A year later comes Blue, which makes this
fan feel as if she's somehow tapped into his feelings and articulated
them for the first time. Fan eagerly anticipates next recording.
There's For the Roses & Court and Spark, which has a different sound,
but she's still continuing her inquiry into the nature of modern love.
It's still relatable. Then comes Hissing of Summer Lawns.  It's too
different: Joni's critiquing the upper middle classes and messing
around with Burundi drum samples?  Not only are this fan's expectations
frustrated, but because he's so closely identified with Joni's music,
because he's come to expect Joni to articulate his feelings and
experiences through her music, he even feels a little betrayed by this
new direction.  

Not saying everyone who disliked Hissing also felt betrayed, though
some fans sure did.   

Someone (David?) mentioned Miles Davis, too. Similarly, I wasn't
around to experience Miles going electric in real time.  So when I
started listening to his music, Bitches Brew was just part of the
entire Miles discography for me, along with Kind of Blue. 

   
  

    
I failed the boyfriend test in 1970 by not showing sufficient enthusiasm
for Donovan.  (Which was a bad rap; I understood his music and appreciated
it for what it was, and I'd heard more of it than she had.)

From what I could tell the women I knew then felt the songs about love
and self on Joni's first few albums so personally that they didn't need
or want to share them with men.  Or with me, anyway.  Her impossibly
high, impossibly pure singing and all those suspended chords created a
space of feelings about somewhat-idealized relationships that may not
have been directly applicable to real relationships.  I'm hearing
"Michael From Mountains" in my head while I type this.

I first heard Joni's songs sung by Judy Collins and Buffy Ste. Marie and
Tom Rush.  What made me want to go back and hear more was Dave Van Ronk's
recording of "Chelsea Morning", which showed off her amazingly catchy
rhythms and wonderfully evocative images.

The first of her albums that I bought when it was released was "The
Hissing of Summer Lawns".  It seemed revolutionary at the time, more
so for me because I hadn't listened to "Blue" or "Court and Spark".

Looking now at what's on it only a few of the songs are jarringly new and
different ("The Jungle Line", "Shadows And Light").  The arrangements are
a departure.  They're lush and gorgeous, far from the stark simplicity
and purity of her folk period.  Maybe this was her "Dylan goes electric"
moment.  The biggest change is that she seemed to have completed her
move away from the introspective hopeful fragility of her early work,
now considering whole relationships including their darker prospects.
  

    
I'm one of those who's acquired Joni's albums as they came out -
starting with "Song to A Seagull" and going on to "Shine" - I missed
one - I think... Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm ... 
I started seeing Joni in clubs even (or really just) before "Seagull"
came out ... and it was Tom Rush's version of "Urge for going" that
brought her to my attention - then I found out several of my friends
were already big fans - seeing her at the 2nd Fret in Philly (one of
these friends became her very good friend, too - and that's how I got
to meet her a few times...)
I was a guy (still am, I believe) but her words and music were
captivating from the very first - and almost every album STILL evokes
my mental states from the time it was released - even the two cuts I
got into on Shine (yeah... just two) ... my women friends from the time
(they were girls then, but identified as women) never assumed Joni had
more to say to them ... maybe she didn't ...

Let me say I'm a big fan of "Wild Things..." since it came out and
have never understood why folks dis it, and a lot of folks do ... OK -
it was a blatant commercial play - and it FAILED! (commercially) - but
it's still got some great Joni Mitchell songs (Chinese Cafe; You Dream
Flat Tires) played with flair and intensity by some of LA's finest
(Steve Lukather, Vinnie Colaiuta...)

It was interesting to to watch my son, now an 18 year old aspiring
composer and musician, develop his appreciation for Joni Mitchell - our
home iTunes server was the main source of his musical education, so he
too had her entire oeuvre available at once.  He immediately took to
Joni, from when he was about 9.  When he was 15, by then a pretty
sophisticated musician, he surprised me by saying he thought - and
assumed everyone agreed with this - Turbulent Indigo was her best
album! - I got him to concede Hejira was at least as good ("but only
'cuz of Jaco!" he said) - his favorite Joni Mitchell cover: Paul
Desmond's ca. 1972 instrumental version of "song to a seagull" ...
  

    
Reading back again, I realize that some of Joni's songs that I love I
heard through the voices of others. But letting my mind unspool, I can
eventually hear back to Joni's. Interesting. 
  

    
I wonder if Joni has mentioned covers of her songs, and whether she's found
them successful or otherwise?

(I have a favorite: Jason Falkner's rocked-up "Both Sides Now.")
  

    
And here's some Joni news: 

Taylor Swift may be tuning up to play another blonde music legend on
the big screen: Joni Mitchell.

The country superstar is eyeing a part in "Girls Like Us," Sony
Pictures and Di Bonaventura Pictures' take on Sheila Weller's biography
of Mitchell and two other big voices of her generation: Carole King
and Carly Simon.

Swift is attached to the project, but there is no deal on the table at
this point, and the feature hasn't yet been approved, according to an
individual familiar with the situation.

"House" executive producer Katie Jacobs optioned Weller's 2008 book
about the trio of singer-songwriters and is slated to direct from John
Sayles' script. Lorenzo di Bonaventura is producing.

More:
<http://news.yahoo.com/taylor-swift-might-play-joni-mitchell-biopic-233550397.h
tml>

I've read the book and it gave me The Horror. I can't believe Sayles
signed on to do the script. Well, maybe I can...
  

    
In my old age I find it kind of funny that Mitchell is seen by so many
women (and men!) as an iconic female voice representing the female
experience.  I think it's the high-pitched vocals and a superficial
read of the lyrics, coupled with a few of her frillier, girly and
slightly twee early tracks.  But even on her first record you have
tracks like "Nathan La Franeer" and "The Pirate of Penance" which are
just dark and eerie and I think incredibly masculine underneath the
veneer.  Her viewpoint and attitude is often so resolutely not feminine
the effect is somewhat disconcerting, like you're witness to some
implausibly convincing drag act.  She'll make an observation or share a
thought that you'd assume could only come from a man, and then moments
later offer another you'd think could only come from a woman.  So
Mitchell sounds like a woman, but if you listen she often isn't really
speaking in a woman's voice ("Woodstock", which you'd think was written
by CSNY).  

I think it's that androgyny just beneath the surface that spoke to gay
men long before Hejira dropped, with its compelling themes of flight
and solitude, featuring an observer often somewhat disconnected from
their current environment (hmmm, can't imagine why that disc would be
so popular with the gays).  For example, "Down To You" off Court &
Spark is the best summary of the same-sex pick-up experience I've ever
encountered.  The Pet Shop Boys couldn't say it better.  It can't have
been her intention, but again she seems to have an innate ability to
touch on deeper truths of emotions and relationships that transcend
gender, even orientation - a knife of observation that cuts all ways.

That album is also home to "Free Man In Paris".  Very good friend of
mine, indeed.

And when she dropped the angel hair from her lyrics, dropped her voice
an octave and picked up an orchestra or a jazz band to back her, I
think that made her work more overtly androgynous and accessible to
men, especially gay men.  I vaguely recall Bob Dylan once remarking in
an interview that there weren't any great female songwriters, and when
the journalist responded, "What about Joni Mitchell?" Dylan's brief
reply was something like, "She's not really a woman."

I can't think of any male songwriters with the same ability to
transcend gender.  They all seem a bit limited to me compared to La
Mitch, forever rooted in their male identity.  Bowie in his glam heyday
did bend genders and orientation, but more as a delightful act and a
springboard to a different musical space.  With Mitchell it's just
intrinsic and seemingly effortless and not a vehicle for anything else
(except perhaps getting to that deeper truth, although I suspect it's a
result of that quest, the effect and not the cause).  It's asexual -
unlike most gender-bending acts - having nothing to do with
orientation.

Joni had been on my "to listen" list for literally a couple of decades
before I started buying.  Loved "Help Me" when I was a kid, was
familiar with "Both Sides Now" thanks to Judy Collins, and my uncle
(gay!) had her first three records when I was little, so I'm sure I
heard them all when I was a toddler (there was something so familiar
about their sound when I finally purchased them for myself 25 or so
years later).  

I started with Court & Spark back around 1990, followed it with
Hissing, then skipped forward to Chalk Mark In A Rainstorm for some
reason.  Backtracked to Blue and For The Roses, then picked up Hejira
and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter.  Skipped way forward to Night Ride
Home.  Finally got her first three (Seagull, Clouds, Ladies of the
Canyon), then got Wild Things (a huge disappointment) and Mingus.  Got
Dog Eat Dog, and picked up my first "new" Joni record Turbulent Indigo
when it was released (which I think is easily her best post-Mingus
work, although Wild Things probably has better songs, and Night Ride
Home has its moments - especially "Two Gray Rooms", which come to think
of it is about a same-sex romance).

I guess I took the Slaughterhouse 5 approach to her oeuvre.

>Let me say I'm a big fan of "Wild Things..." since it came out
>and have never understood why folks dis it

Because it sounds like a sell-out after Mingus.  Which I could totally
forgive if it was any good, but it's not.  The production is half
generic 1981 pap and half Court & Spark, which clashes instead of
meshes and drags what it turns out were some well-written songs (like
"Love") down to its crummy level.  

Feh.
 
  

    
Gee, I wonder -- as I always do -- what the artist would say about that
last paragraph? "Sell-out" implies she held her nose while making it,
and I doubt very much that's the case, or that someone else forced her
to do it, and somehow I don't think that's the case, either. 

Maybe she actually liked what she was hearing on the radio at the time
and decided to echo a bit of the current production values in her own
work. I bought it new, and while it hasn't aged well it always sounded
to me as if Joni's having a lot of fun. Too bad she didn't call you --
you could have set her straight.
  

    
<<"One of my favorite compliments that I ever received was from a
Black blind piano player, Henry, I don't know what his last name was.
And said to me, "Joni, you know, you make genderless, raceless music."
And I thought, well, I hadn't set out, you know, saying "I'm going to
make genderless, raceless music," but in some part of the back of my
mind, I did want to make music that crossed -- I never really liked
lines, class lines, you know, like social structure lines since
childhood, and there were a lot of them that they tried to teach me as
a child. "Don't go there." "Why not?" "Well, because they're not like
us." They try to teach you those lines. They start at about 12. And I
ignored them always and proceeded without thinking that I was a male or
a female or anything, just that I knew these people that wrote songs
and I was one of them. >>

http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=678
  

    
Scott, you asked about Joni's response to covers of her songs.  

Joni praises Tina Turner's performance of "Edith and the Kingpin" on
Herbie Hancock's RIVER: THE JONI LETTERS.  

Joni to me: "She got the read right, the read on the lyrics. It took
three days to get that vocal out of her and she was practically in
tears. It was very difficult for her. They had to explain it to her,
every word.  Because she’s never had to sing that way.   But whatever
the effort was I just love her performance.  And most songs do not
require that.  I mean they had to break it down so she knew what she
was singing about, because it is a play, it’s not just singing in one
mood and shaking your hips." 

(I wrote the press bio for this record, so I spoke with Herbie and
producer Larry Klein about "Edith" as well. The following is adapted
from the press bio. Just have to share it, cause I find Wayne's take on
the tune so amusing). 

Capturing the tune’s mood led others in the band to altogether
different perspectives. While Tina Turner channelled the noirish
nightlife characters of “Edith and the Kingpin,” Wayne Shorter
responded on tenor saxophone from a more peripheral vantage point. 
Herbie explained how Wayne found new character in the tune: “When we
were talking about the tune, Wayne said, ‘I’m going to be like one of
the cats at the bar who’s talking to some of the chicks or something,
or be part of the hubbub going on over at the bar at the club.’ Now,
that’s not in the lyrics but I realized that’s a brilliant part to
play.  Because the song is not just about the characters in the
lyric—Edith and the Kingpin.  It’s also about the characters that are
there in the environment or scene that the lyric is based off of.”

I'm a big fan of RIVER. Herbie often uses my press bio for RIVER as
his personal bio. If you're interested:

https://www.facebook.com/herbiehancock/info
  

    
That's a great quote, <chrys>.  I'd read that years ago and then
forgot about it.

And now that I think about it, reflecting on something I said last
night, maybe *that's* why so many women connected with Mitchell as
well.  It's not that she was a strong female voice necessarily - it's
that women were hearing something *other* than a male voice and
sensibility (or a female voice of the era, which like most of the male
voices tended to concern itself with things stereotypically female for
the times).  Women had this whole inner life that wasn't being fully
reflected much in the broader culture, and suddenly here were these
thoughts and feelings that had gone unreflected being bounced back at
them. 

As for Wild Things, in interviews that's exactly what Joni says
inspired the sound of the record - she liked what she was hearing on
the radio and in bars and clubs, especially The Police, and Wild Things
was drawn from that.

Sorry, but I can't help it if it sounds like a sell-out to me (even if
it sincerely wasn't, which I totally believe).  I think I can't get
over the feeling it's a sell-out because the Court & Spark / New Wave
combo just lands with such a thud (to my ear).  If she'd intentionally
set out to sell-out and it had *worked* for me, I'd probably applaud it
as an artistic triumph.  Hell, there are acts who did by far their
best work I think after selling out.  I don't think artistic integrity
is worth a hell of a lot if the product doesn't connect with me,
anyhow.

As it stands, it's not all that far-removed from the Ethel Merman
disco record - Mitchell layered over something trendy and not
particularly well-done.  It sounds ridiculous to me.  You said it
sounds, "dated," which implies it's kinda a has-been.  But for me, I'd
argue it's a "never-was".  I actually think it's worse in some ways
than the oft-berated Dog Eat Dog, although again the songs are
better-written.

Hey, every unit off the assembly line can't be a Maserati.  Even
Jehovah had to rest on the 7th day.
 
  

    
Ed, yesterday also brought news of a possible Joni performance:  

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liz-smith/joni-mitchell-comeback_b_1438032.html

Taylor Swift as Joni. Well, she strikes me as an incongruous and even
bizarre casting choice. But that entire project is foreign to my
sensibility and alien to my understanding of Joni and her work.       

A couple of books about music/musicians I'd love to see adapted for
the screen: BUT BEAUTIFUL by Geoff Dyer and especially THE BEAR COMES
HOME by Rafi Zabor. Oh, and Michael Ondaatje's COMING THROUGH
SLAUGHTER.  
       

  
  

    
That is a great Joni quote, Chrys. Joni says she's made "genderless,
raceless music," and I wholeheartedly agree.  

The thing is, though, she's sometimes identified as a black man.  

Joni's said she'll launch her autobiography with this sentence: “I was
the only black man at the party.”

She means it as a metaphor for having been misunderstood. But Joni
also means it literally.  She once went to a Halloween party in
Hollywood costumed or disguised as a black pimp.  Later she named this
character or alter ego "Art Nouveau." He's on the cover of Don Juan's
Reckless Daughter. 

A weird thing to put forth without commentary . . . but that's all I
have time for now, and I want to mention this before I forget.  
  

    
"Furry Sings the Blues" is one of the great moments in music in terms
of confronting the debt that white musicians owe to the black
experience and the distance that can never fully be bridged.  It
certainly doesn't say everything that could be said about the subject,
but it says a lot.  
  

    

That Tina Turner/Herbie Hancock performance is superb.
  

    
Yeah.  I enjoyed Tina Turner singing a jazz tune.
  

    
Rafi Zabor's book would make a great movie, now that we have good CGI
that could make a saxophone-playing bear credible visually. And anyone
here who hasn't read it should seek out a copy: it's probably the best
book about how music is made ever written. 

Certainly when I read the gossipy, trivial "Girls Like Us" I didn't
see "Soon to be a major motion picture" written on the cover. But that'
the kind of journalism on popular music history people want,
apparently.
  

    
"But Beautiful" would make a wonderful movie that would be enjoyed by 15
people.