When you listen to Joni Mitchell, do you hear a nuanced vocal, innovative open chord copied later by an admirer like Prince, or something even more? Perhaps you hear an artist who has written some of the most original, first-person narrative stories that Rock/pop music has ever produced? Could Joni Mitchell be a visual artist in every sense of the description? Joni is a seminal influence on many singer/songwriters producing works today. Here are a few of my favorite tracks.

“Yes, that was when I came off the road. I had a friend at that time I was very close to and who was on the verge of tremendous success. I was watching his career and thinking that as his woman at that time, I should be able to support him. And yet it seemed to me that I could see the change in his future would remove things from his life. I felt like having come through, having had a small taste of success, and having seen the consequences of what it gives you and what it takes away in terms of what you THINK it’s going to give you – well, I just felt I was in no position to help. I knew he needed someone to support him and say it was all wonderful. But everything I saw him going through was ludicrous because I’d thought it was ludicrous when I’d done it. It was a very difficult time, and the song was written for that person: ‘In the office sits a poet, and he trembles as he sings, and he asks some guy to circulate his soul… okay on your mark red ribbon runner.’ Like, go after it, but remember the days when you sat and made up tunes for yourself and played in small clubs where there was still some contact and when people came up and said – maybe they did before, but you didn’t care, you know? Ummm, well, I’ve got to clarify that – it is appreciated when someone says it and genuinely means it, and you can see it’s moved them, maybe changed them a little. Like, I’ve been moved by some performances and unable to tell them from my side because I know what it’s like to receive praise. It’s a very difficult thing to give sincerely and communicate that sincerity.”

Joni Mitchell from Discogs

Canadian musician, songwriter, and painter born November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and Rock And Roll Hall of Fame (Performer) in 1997 (See Siquomb Publishing Corp.).

Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Western Canada and then busking on the streets of Toronto. In the mid-1960s she left for New York City and its folk music scene, recording her debut album in 1968 and achieving fame first as a songwriter (“Urge for Going”, “Chelsea Morning”, “Both Sides, Now”, “Woodstock”) and then as a singer in her own right. Blue, her starkly personal 1971 album, was voted #30 in Rolling Stone magazine’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list of 2003. Mitchell also had pop hits such as “Big Yellow Taxi”, “Free Man in Paris”, and “Help Me”, the last two from 1974’s best-selling Court and Spark. In 1965, she married Chuck Mitchell (2) until they divorced in 1968.

Mitchell’s distinctive harmonic guitar style, and piano arrangements all grew more complex through the 1970s as she was deeply influenced by jazz, melding it with pop, folk, and rock on experimental albums like 1976’s Hejira. She worked closely with jazz greats including Pat Metheny, Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius, Herbie Hancock, and on a 1979 record released after his death, Charles Mingus. From the 1980s on, Mitchell reduced her recording and touring schedule but turned again toward pop, making greater use of synthesizers and direct political protest in her lyrics, which often tackled social and environmental themes alongside romantic and emotional ones.

Mitchell is also a visual artist. She created the artwork for each of her albums, and in 2000 described herself as a “painter derailed by circumstance.” Mitchell stopped recording over the last several years, focusing more attention on painting, but in 2007 she released Shine, her first album of new songs in nine years.

In 2020, Mitchell started Joni Mitchell Archives, a series of releases containing previously unreleased material from her vaults and box sets of the studio albums.

In a fitting tribute to Joni Mitchell, the TNT network presented an all-star celebration at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on April 6, 2000. Many legendary performers sang Mitchell’s songs, including James Taylor, Elton John, Wynonna Judd, Bryan Adams, Cyndi Lauper, Diana Krall, and Richard Thompson of Fairport Convention fame. The emcee was Ashley Judd. Mitchell herself ended the evening with a rendition of “Both Sides Now” with a full 70-piece orchestra. (description from Wikipedia) This concert has never been re-broadcast nor released in any form for sale. I do not own the copyrights to any of the material contained herein and present this event for fair use and historical purposes.

Now we arrive at Songs to a Seagull. 1968. A ripe creative Aquarian period. This song was clearly written about the decimation of marriage to Chuck Mitchell-the lowlight. My personal Joni favorites involve the exploration of the human condition in first-person narratives (loss, love, living the universal human experience-the difficulty of a life lived).

The first Joni album I attentively listened to was Court and Spark. Humans have routinely been introduced to seminal creative artists achronologically.  Each recording finds you where you are at and sometimes leads you back to the earlier formative work.  Court and Spark is a master teacher for a young impressionable Aquarian.  We were impressed and to this day find Court and Spark sonically optimal, impressionistically mixed, just the right alchemical hybrid of Joni open chord pop, jazz, and folk.