A text from the archive, written for Mitchell’s birthday on November 7th.
So Joni Mitchell is turning 80. When I was asked whether I would like to write a personal tribute to mark the occasion, I had to think for a moment. My relationship with Joni Mitchell is, in keeping with her music, a bit more complex. I am a huge admirer of Joni Mitchell. However, I’m not a superfan. I don’t actually know exactly why that is. It’s not as if I haven’t tried to get closer to her over the years and read a lot about her and listened to her music. Nevertheless, for me as a songwriter, other artists have always been a little more influential and have picked me up more. I know that sometimes it’s just because you have to discover the right people for you at the right time.
And that brings us to the key word: time. When ROLLING STONE asked me to write something about Joni Mitchell, I had a lot of time for a week because I had to travel a lot by train. So I thought it would be a nice opportunity to delve deeper into Joni Mitchell this week while I travel by train through Germany.
So much for the theory. In practice, my endeavor is of course a lot more complicated and less idyllic than I had hoped. Either the WiFi doesn’t work or I find myself sitting on the floor in the corridor near the toilets in completely overcrowded trains due to various train cancellations and delays. One couldn’t imagine a more unglamorous setting in which to engage with Joni Mitchell’s work. But now okay. Of course it couldn’t be too comfortable either. “I’m always running behind the time,” goes a Mitchell song. “Just like this train/ Shaking into town/ With the brakes complaining.” So it all fits somehow.
Here’s what I know, my starting point so to speak: Joni Mitchell is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, songwriter and guitarist of our time. That is undisputed. Fact. She is also a great singer. However, since it still happens very often today that female songwriters are primarily reduced to their voice, I don’t want to discuss their voice any further here.
However, I can prove that she is one of the greatest songwriters: Even if, like me, you have a rather Nordic cold and have to be in the right mood to endure the emotionality of some Mitchell originals, the countless cover versions of her songs speak for themselves other language. Their songs are universal and work in so many different ways it’s mind-boggling. If you locked me in a windowless room for three days and only played Buffy Sainte-Marie’s version of “The Circle Game” to me, I wouldn’t be bored for a second and I would feel thoroughly entertained. What a version, what a song!
I also know that Joni Mitchell, like every great artist, has gone through different phases and everyone actually means a different Joni Mitchell when they talk about her. My Joni Mitchell is the one from the first four albums. You could say her folky records, although Joni Mitchell’s genres are a thing.
Songwriters move like fish in the ocean who recognize each other when they are related because you can recognize the signature of the shared role models or influences on each other. Most folk songwriters take their cues from other folk songwriters; they often also play in the adjacent genres of country and blues.
Joni Mitchell made “folk music” in the broadest sense on her first albums, but according to her own statement, her biggest and most formative influences as a songwriter came from jazz. You can already see this on the early albums in the complex harmonies and melodies, some of which are very untypical for folk.
So Joni Mitchell doesn’t swim in a group, but alone. And when you look at what else Joni Mitchell does, you get the feeling that she’s her own ocean and not just a little fish in it. It is its own genre.
In fact, according to Mitchell, she is actually “a painter” who “applied the principles of painting to songwriting.” And so I’m no longer sure whether the standards that apply to other songwriters can even be applied to them. Over the years, Joni Mitchell continued to work as a painter alongside music, but she only sold her paintings in very rare exceptional cases. The works are almost never shown; instead they hang in their houses. Her sentence “I sing my sorrow and I paint my joy” is famous. Why should you sell joy? Who knows if you can get them back.
Since I know her first albums best, I’ll first dedicate myself to the three that all of my checked-out musician friends love and which they swear are “the best albums ever made”. Namely “Court And Spark” (1974), “The Hissing Of Summer Lawns” (1975) and “Hejira” (1976). I’ve always avoided these albums because, ignorantly, I always secretly fear that music will immediately degenerate into “moody” as soon as you open the door to jazz. Spoiler: That happened here to a reasonable extent, they are good albums and you can listen to them. But what I find most fascinating is that all three albums managed to protect the songs. You immediately notice that these are songs written by a songwriter and not the result of jams with jazz musicians. That’s what you hear in songs. Joni Mitchell’s songs stand untouched on their own. No matter who plays which instrument on which albums.
Of course, Joni Mitchell’s guitar playing also stands out on these albums. She’s not just good. She is very good. And original. In her Wikipedia article you can find the information that the US ROLLING STONE ranked her 72nd among the “best guitarists of all time”. She’s the highest-ranked woman on this list, which is, well, not surprising, but still questionable. You can think what you want about these lists, Joni Mitchell perhaps doesn’t play guitar solos like Jimi Hendrix and of course otherwise pushes herself much less to the fore with her playing than probably most of the men on this list, because she plays the guitar used as an accompanying instrument and not as a solo instrument. But what she delivers technically and harmonically in passing is so complex and unique that in my opinion she belongs at least in the top ten of this list.
And then of course there are the different guitar tunings. I also started early with the so-called Open Tunings or Alternate Tunings. With open tunings, you ideally tune the guitar so that when you don’t put a finger on the strings and play all the strings, you have a chord (e.g. D major). This allows you to accompany yourself more freely. It’s especially helpful in songwriting if you want to outsmart yourself. If you’ve already written fifteen songs with the same chord progression, at some point it will be difficult for your brain to think of new melodies if your hands are always playing the same thing. Joni Mitchell has reportedly used no fewer than 57 different guitar tunings throughout her career. Originally, however, it was only an emergency solution: Due to polio as a child, she lost strength in her left hand and had to think about something to still be able to play the guitar.
You can come up with amazing ideas through open tunings, and once you start, you usually don’t stop so quickly. However, the whole thing also has its pitfalls. For one thing, you have to be very organized when using different tunings. There are quite a few songs from Die Heiterheit’s early work that I really have no idea how to play because I scribbled the guitar tuning used on some college pad and the key to the song can no longer be found . On the other hand, you have a big problem live if you have to completely retune your guitar after every song because the different tunings get out of hand (which it almost always does).
When you play in a band like Die Heiterheit, you quickly get used to playing too many songs with different moods live. If you’re a big band, you have a guitar tech with you who tunes the different guitars and then hands them to you so there’s no break. And if you’re Joni Mitchell, the undisputed queen of open and alternate tuning, someone will build you a guitar that can stay in standard tuning, but is connected to a system that has the different tunings stored and the signal from the normally tuned guitar can be converted into different tunings as needed without having to retune the guitar after every song. Brilliant.
Then of course there are Joni Mitchell’s lyrics. What is striking, especially in this day and age, is the absence of cynicism. Even at her young age, there seems to be an ancient wisdom within her that is second to none. She is far from moralizing or making accusations. Even her break-up songs are full of tenderness, grandeur, dignity and, yes, poetry. Unforgettable is the note with which she allegedly broke up with Graham Nash: “If you hold sand too tightly in your hand, it will run through your fingers.” Anywhere else that would be a refrain.
There are songwriters who make you feel like you’re looking into a gaping, deep abyss with every song. At first glance, Joni Mitchell gives you the feeling that even the abysses are lined with clouds and feel comfortably soft. But it only looks like that at first glance. The clouds make the abysses even more dangerous because you can’t see where you’re stepping. And at the latest when you want to surrender to this abyss, you realize that clouds are not weight carriers and that you simply fall through them. And that the abyss, despite all its beauty, is just an abyss.
On YouTube you can see an interview that Elton John conducts with Joni Mitchell in her living room. Finally he says about the location of the conversation: “Every corner of this room is Joni. Everything is Joni. It’s the most special room I’ve ever been in.” And that’s how it is with everything in the Joniverse. Every one of her pictures is Joni. Every one of her albums is Joni. And every one of their songs is Joni. Down to the last note, down to the last corner. The pure essence. Not watered down. Completely unadulterated. Even if it scratches other genres. And you have to do that first.
Our author STELLA SOMMER is a singer, songwriter and musician. With her project Die Heiterheit she has released four albums with songs in German since 2010. On her solo albums – the double album “Silence Wore A Silver Coat” was released last year – she sings in English.