Joni Mitchell turns blue and righteous

  Blue  (1971)

Thinking about it now, the Stellenbosch Municipal Library, my favourite destination after the CNA and Sygma Records, must’ve had a progressive buyer for contemporary pop. The library offered, as to be expected, a good selection of classic music albums, some jazz and a lot of spoken word stuff, but also an excellent selection of contemporary pop and rock though always mainstream stuff.

 

The library had Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Harvest, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Déjà Vu, MU and Songs From the Wood (both by Jethro Tull), various Cat Stevens albums, and probably others I don’t recall, and. for the purpose of this piece Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon (1970) and Blue.

 

I borrowed all these records mostly from curiosity and not necessarily because I  was a fan of, for example, Cat Stevens or Jethro Tull, and because I’d read of, or heard of, some of the artists without hearing any of their music on the radio. This was specifically the case with Joni Mitchell.

 

Mitchell’s literate, confessional, folky style of music was not at all my taste when I was 12 or 13, when loud, fast was my preferred style. Over the years my taste has broadened and I can now listen to many different genres and styles with appreciation and enjoyment but when Blue was released, it was not a record I’d have paid money for or wanted in my collection. Being able to listen to it for free was a blessing and satisfied my curiosity.

 

Ladies of the Canyon was, initially, the more fun album of the two, with well-known songs like “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Woodstock” and “The Circle Game” but Blue caught up too, and the amazing thing was that it’s tunes could be as catchy. Just as I know “Woodstock” best from its versions by Mathews Southern Comfort and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.  I know “This Flight Tonight” best in the Nazareth version, which is not a million miles away from the way Mitchell performs it on Blue.  My other favourite tracks from the latter album are “My Old Man,” “Carey,” “A Case of You” and “The last Time I Saw Richard.”

 

The impact of Blue fifty years ago is obviously no longer as visceral or intellectually appreciative when one listens to the record now but I do love the basic, and often quite tough, acoustic backdrops to the songs, Mitchell’s evocative lyrics and the way she makes them both intimate and universal. 

 

Over the years, and probably because I was a teenager in the Seventies, much of the singer songwriter era appeals to me, though not all of it, because it’s still not a genre I particularly favour, but at least partly because the backing musicians were highly proficient session people who did not rely on studio gimmicks, synthesisers or digital enhancement to make music that feels as organic and honest as the confessional lyrics of the singer songwriters. There are many musicians mining the same vein today, and it seems to me that there’s a revival, but they record in modern studios with modern techniques and, for me, the music isn’t as intimately joined to the hip with the lyrics anymore for this reason. Alternatively, when the musicians rely on simple acoustic guitar backing, the arrangements and intricacy of the melodies often make them sound incredibly twee to me and just grate on my nerves.

 

Joni Mitchell may not have the first folkie type to write in the style she perfected, or as radically progressed in her musicianship and styles, but she was pretty good at it and expressed views and emotions the younger musicians repeat today, with minor tweaks for contemporary mores and the zeitgeist, as if theirs are the very first insights into the human condition and interpersonal relationships.  Life is cyclical and every generation seems to disavow the same basic principles afresh, as if their parents never taught them anything and I guess it’s part of our maturing process  that we start out thinking that our parents are old idiots who have no comprehension of the current experience of their children or other young people, yet when the children become parents an elder citizens they, in turn, are eviscerated as old fogeys out of touch with the times.

 

Mitchell’s personal songs appeal, whether they’re strictly autobiographical or not, because they seem to be about real people and actual situations and not merely “universal” truisms that are intended to be vague enough to apply to just about anyone who listens to the song. For the Mitchell afficianado general truths, or just insights, can be extrapolated from the particular, and that’s the great strength of her work.