A six part audio feature about the life and music of the renowned singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, presented by Rebecca Blundell.
Joni Mitchell Part One: The Circle Game
Joni Mitchell - The Circle Game Photo: Joni Mitchell
Canadian-born, Joni Mitchell moved to New York in early 1967 and worked in the folk scene in Greenwich Village, though she felt sure it was about to collapse. She started to compose in earnest and had the foresight to set up a music publishing company, which would ensure she got the money she was due from royalties.
As soon as she devoted her attention to composition, Mitchell started to struggle with the standard guitar tuning. She found it difficult to express the musical ideas in her head with the standard vocabulary. So after exploring open tunings, she began to experiment by tuning her guitar to a chord that expressed the emotion she was feeling, or the environment she was in, and then writing the song with that chord as the base tuning. She ignored key centres and standard chord progressions, just focusing on what she was trying to express. The one thing she was sure of was that the pop-standard major and minor triads were incapable of expressing much.
Mitchell’s personal philosophy has a lot to do with a particular circle, the Native American Medicine Wheel, which traces a person’s life from beginning to end, around the wheel. Part 1's overview of Joni Mitchell and her music follows Mitchell’s life through in reference to the wheel.
Music Details for Part 1:
Composer, Work, Label & Catalogue Number
Joni MITCHELL, The Circle Game, Reprise 7599 27450
Joni MITCHELL, Urge for Going, Reprise 9362 46326
Joni MITCHELL, Come in from the Cold, Geffen GEFD24302
Joni MITCHELL, Little Green, Reprise CD2038
Joni MITCHELL, Michael from Mountains, Reprise CD6293
Joni MITCHELL, Big Yellow Taxi, Reprise 7599 27450
Joni MITCHELL, Blue, Reprise CD2038
Joni MITCHELL, Blonde in the Bleachers, Asylum 7559 60624
Joni MITCHELL, Raised on Robbery, Asylum 7559 60593
Joni MITCHELL, Car on a Hill, Asylum 7559 60593
Joni MITCHELL, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Asylum 7559 60332
Joni MITCHELL, Don't Interrupt the Sorrow, Asylum 7559 60332
Joni MITCHELL, Hejira, Asylum 7559 60331
Joni MITCHELL, The Tenth World, Asylum 701
- Mingus speech -, Coin in the Pocket, Asylum 7559 60557
Joni MITCHELL, The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines, Asylum 7559 60557
Joni MITCHELL, Underneath the Streetlight, Geffen GEFD2019
Joni MITCHELL, Dog eat Dog, Geffen GEFD24074
Joni MITCHELL, Shiny Toys, Geffen GEFD24074
Joni MITCHELL, Tea Leaf Prophecy, Geffen GEFD24172
Joni MITCHELL, Ray's Dad's Cadillac, Geffen GEFD24302
Joni MITCHELL, Turbulent Indigo, Reprise 9362 45786
Joni MITCHELL, Sex Kills, Reprise 9362 45786
Joni MITCHELL, At Last, Reprise 9362 47620
Joni MITCHELL, Stay in Touch, Reprise 9362 46451
Joni MITCHELL, No Apologies, Reprise 9362 46451
Joni MITCHELL, The Circle Game, Nonesuch 7981
Joni Mitchell: Part 2 - The '60s Recordings
"Songs like tiny hammers hurled at bevelled mirrors in empty halls"
Joni Mitchell Photo: Wikicommons
At the time Mitchell's lyrics were mainly very candid accounts of her love-life and descriptions of the places she visited. Her philosophy of life, skill as a wordsmith and use of idiosyncratic guitar tunings are all in evidence.
Music Details:
Composer, Work, Label & Catalogue Details
Joni MITCHELL, Ladies of the Canyon, Reprise 7599 27450
Joni MITCHELL, I Had a King, Reprise CD 6293
Joni MITCHELL, Night in the City, Reprise CD 6293
Joni MITCHELL, Cactus Tree, Reprise CD 6293
Joni MITCHELL, Both Sides, Now, Reprise 7599 27446
Joni MITCHELL, Chelsea Morning, Reprise 7599 27446
Joni MITCHELL, The Fiddle and the Drum, Reprise 7599 27446
Joni MITCHELL, Woodstock, Reprise 7599 27450
Joni MITCHELL, For Free, Reprise 7599 27450
Joni MITCHELL, Big Yellow Taxi, Reprise 7599 27446
Joni MITCHELL, Carey, Reprise CD 2038
Joni MITCHELL, All I Want, Reprise CD 2038
Joni Mitchell: Part 3 - Fame takes its toll
"The lights go down and it's just you up there"
Joni Mitchell, Laurel Canyon, CA, 1970. Photo: ©Henry Diltz/courtesy of Morrison Hotel Gallery
Rebecca Blundell looks at Joni Mitchell's life in the early '70s from the recording of Blue which ended in Mitchell's emotional collapse, through her journey into more externally focussed lyrics and the social commentary of The Hissing of Summer Lawns.
Musically, Mitchell moves from folk into rock and roll-influenced material, and starts working with jazz musicians
Music Details:
Joni MITCHELL, For the Roses, Asylum 7559 60624
Joni MITCHELL, A Case of You, Reprise CD2038
Joni MITCHELL, River, Reprise CD2038
Joni MITCHELL, For the Roses, Asylum 7559 60624
Joni MITCHELL, You Turn me on, I’m a Radio, Asylum 7559 60624
Joni MITCHELL, Let the Wind Carry Me, Asylum 7559 60624
Joni MITCHELL, Judgement of the Moon and Stars, Asylum 7559 60624
Joni MITCHELL, Free Man in Paris, Asylum 7559 60593
Joni MITCHELL, Help Me, Asylum 7559 60593
Joni MITCHELL, Blue, Asylum 202
Joni MITCHELL, Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire, Reprise 7599 27446
Joni MITCHELL, Harry's House / Centrepiece, Asylum 7559 60332
Joni MITCHELL, Edith and the Kingpin, Asylum 7559 60332
Joni MITCHELL, The Jungle Line, Asylum 7559 6033
Joni Mitchell: Part 4 - Joni and the jazz bassists
"Now we are black and white, embracing out in the lunatic New York night"
Photo: You Tube
Rebecca Blundell looks at the three albums Joni Mitchell made with fretless jazz bass player Jaco Pastorius in the late '70s.
Mitchell's alter ego, the black man Art Nouveau made an appearance on the album cover of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and intrigued the terminally ill Charles Mingus into asking her to work on his last project.
Mitchell explores elements of world music and jazz.
Music Details:
Composer, Work, Label & Catalogue Details
Joni MITCHELL, Goodbye Porkpie Hat, Asylum 7559 60557
Joni MITCHELL, Coyote, Asylum 7559 60331
Joni MITCHELL, Amelia, Asylum 7559 60331
Joni MITCHELL, Black Crow, Asylum 7559 60331
Joni MITCHELL, Paprika Plains, Asylum 701
Joni MITCHELL, A Chair in the Sky, Asylum 7559 60557
Joni MITCHELL, Goodbye Porkpie Hat, Asylum 7559 60557
Joni MITCHELL, God Must be a Boogie Man, Asylum 7559 6055
Joni Mitchell: Part 5 - Joni takes on the '80s
"If you had that house/ car/ bottle/ jar your lovers would look like movie stars"
Larry Klein Photo: CC BY-SA 3.0
Rebecca Blundell looks at Joni Mitchell's music in the '80s and her disdain for the social and political climate of the time.
Her new husband Larry Klein fuels her interest in the synthesizer age and becomes her co-producer.
Mitchell dedicated Wild Things Run Fast to Larry Klein with the words “Special thanks to Larry Klein for caring about and fussing over this record along with me".
Klein’s sense of bass and drums was good for her, and he helped mix the album. The couple were married soon after its release. They then went on an almost year-long tour with Mitchell’s new band, Refuge, which took in Europe, the US, Japan, Australia and even New Zealand. Mitchell and Klein released the film Refuge of the Roads that combined footage from the tour with home movies in 1984.
Includes music from Wild Things Run Fast; Dog eat Dog; Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm and Night Ride Home.
Music Details:
Composer, Work, Label & Catalogue Details
Joni MITCHELL, The Reoccurring Dream, Geffen GEFD24172
Joni MITCHELL, Love, Geffen GEFD2019
Joni MITCHELL, Man to Man, Geffen GEFD2019
Joni MITCHELL, Chinese Café, Geffen GEFD2019
Joni MITCHELL, Tax Free, Geffen GEFD24074
Joni MITCHELL, Ethiopia, Geffen GEFD24074
Joni MITCHELL, Number One, Geffen GEFD24172
Joni MITCHELL, Lakota, Geffen GEFD24172
Joni MITCHELL, Night Ride Home, Geffen GEFD24302
Joni MITCHELL, Cherokee Louise, Geffen GEFD24302
Joni MITCHELL, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Geffen GEFD24302
Joni Mitchell: Part 6 - the '90s onwards
"It's life's illusions I recall, I really don't know life at all"
Joni Mitchell - pictured in February 2015 in Los Angeles Photo: AFP
Rebecca Blundell looks at Joni Mitchell's recordings from the '90s onwards, a time where Mitchell was beginning to be formally acknowledged as one of the most important song-writers of the 20th Century.
Mitchell felt that the end of the century was a good time to reflect on the music that had gone on in the last hundred years, and for someone who was appalled with the mediocrity of the current scene, it was an opportunity to turn the clock back and offer a tribute to earlier singers and composers.
She chose songs that closely resonated with her own thoughts and experiences and that traced the stages of a relationship from beginning to end. She also included a couple of re-makes of her own songs, A Case of You and Both Sides Now. The album was recorded in London with a 70 piece orchestra including members of the LSO. The conductor and arranger was Vince Mendoza, and Larry Klein came along to co-produce the recording.
Includes music from Turbulent Indigo; Taming the Tiger; Both Sides Now and Travelogue, on which Mitchell performs a selection of her own works with orchestral arrangements.
Mitchell has constantly evolved over her career, starting with folk, of which she says “I did it because it was easy, and I could make 15 bucks a night so I could smoke”. She then moved on to rock and roll, where she says she wasn’t enough of a druggie to fit in, then on to jazz and world influenced material, and finally into the use of classical orchestral arrangements. Joni Mitchell cannot be easily categorized, and along with some of the most memorable artists in music history, she has not been willing to compromise her vision for critics, fans, record labels, or anyone else who has had the temerity to criticise.
Music Details:
Composer, Work, Label & Catalogue Details
Joni MITCHELL, Both Sides Now, Reprise 9362 47620
Joni MITCHELL, Last Chance Lost, Reprise 9362 45786
Joni MITCHELL, The Magdalene Laundries, Reprise 9362 45786
Joni MITCHELL, Not to Blame, Reprise 9362 45786
Joni MITCHELL, Man from Mars, Reprise 9362 46451
Joni MITCHELL, Taming the Tiger, Reprise 9362 46451
Joni MITCHELL, Facelift, Reprise 9362 46451
Joni MITCHELL, Both Sides Now, Reprise 9362 47620
Joni MITCHELL, The Sire of Sorrow, Nonesuch 79817
Joni MITCHELL, Hejira, Nonesuch 7981
First broadcast: 30/07/2006
