I never really liked Joni Mitchell. I can begrudgingly admire her for her fierce individuality and sense of experimentation and for the doors she opened for other musicians – especially women – but I’m put off by her meandering singing style, her obtuse lyrics, and her too-earnest folksiness (John Lennon once reportedly told her early in her career that she could make a fortune if she’d only throw some strings into her arrangements – of course she refused, and made a fortune anyway). Her fans are legion and rabid, but she leaves me pretty cold. With two notable exceptions.
Both Sides Now, which is probably her best and best-known single song – having been covered by everybody from Judy Collins to Leonard Nimoy (no, really) – is the very first song I remember hearing. I was around four or five and lying on the backseat of a car, being driven somewhere in Seattle at night (well before child safety laws took all the fun out of being a kid in a car). I was looking up through the back window at the sky and at the neon signs that would swim into view and disappear. It was a magical moment, looking up through the manmade stars to the real ones beyond, watching the colored lights drip and flow through the windows. And on the radio, Joni sang
Bows and flows of angel hair and
Ice cream castles in the air and
Feather canyons everywhere,
I’ve looked at clouds that way…
I didn’t really understand the lyrics, but those images of ice cream castles and feather canyons crystallized with the gorgeous flowing colors I was watching into a perfect moment – my first – and one that remains my earliest concrete memory. Later, at preschool, I tried to dredge up the tune, and found I could keep it in my head as long as I didn’t try to sing it out loud. Once I opened my mouth and started singing, the tune would get warped and twisted and, frightened, it would run away until I shut up and sat still for a minute. And then it would return. It was about that time that I had this great dream about being on a ship with a friend of mine. There were pirates and gumballs and music and colors and it was fantastic. I came rushing in to school to talk to him about it and was shocked to realize that he hadn’t really been there in my dream, that it was just my imagination. It was my first realization that there was stuff in my head that was for me alone and that I would never be able to get out and share with anybody. I have since listened to Both Sides Now – now that I can understand the lyrics – and find it a profound and beautiful song, both lyrically and musically.
And then there’s River, from the one great Joni Mitchell album I’ve heard, the iconic Blue. First and foremost, it’s one of the best sad Christmas songs I’ve ever heard. With all the frenzied joy to the world and all that forced goodwill towards men (but not, apparently towards women), it’s easy to lose sight of how sad the holidays can be sometimes. And how much worse it is to be feeling blue when there’s all this hysterical forced happiness around. Starting with a somber and slowed musical quote from Jingle Bells, River quickly drifts into longing and self-pity and regret – feelings which are simultaneously ignored and heightened during the Christmas rush. With it’s opening lines, Joni makes it clear that
they’re cutting down trees and
Putting up reindeer and
Singing songs of joy and peace
but that’s them, not her. It’s a perfect evocation of the holiday alienation that can occur, where everybody else seems to be enjoying themselves and getting into the spirit, while you sit inside yourself, watching everybody else with longing and contempt, wondering what’s the matter with you, sinking deeper into the dark blue sea. It’s a beautifully sad song that doesn’t end so much as just fade away into nothing, the repeated piano notes trickling down to icy oblivion.
Stylistically, River is cut from the same deep indigo cloth as the rest of Blue. A heartbreaking album, the songs weep with simple beauty and tragedy. Even the happier songs have a melancholy edge while the sad ones pull you into a quiet pool of despair. But it isn’t suicidal, angry, hopeless despair, it’s that quiet despair that leaves you exhausted, sitting on the couch in twilight, pondering your stupid life and the holes you’ve cut in it, too sad to cry, too tired to sleep. Joni Mitchell was reportedly so sad during the recording of this album that she’d lock herself in the control room and just cry, squeezing tears onto the tape.
