Brian Eno’s favourite Joni Mitchell album
Brian Eno is a force unto himself, a founding member of the inimitable Roxy Music, one of the most highly sought-after producers of all time, and the head progenitor of all things ambient. As such, Eno has a truly encyclopediac knowledge of music.
One particular album that Eno loves is Joni Mitchell’s 1974 release Court and Spark, a record that he considers, “An almost perfect album.” He added, “Apart from one mistake – there’s a joke song on it. I think jokes should never be on records, they just don’t last.
Apart from the joke song, Eno feels that, “The record is such an incredibly serious record, it’s one of the most grown-up records ever made in that the things she’s talking about and thinking about are such serious and complicated emotional situations. It’s one of the only records where I actually care about the lyrics. I really listen to the lyrics and think about what she’s trying to say.”
Court and Spark is Mitchell’s sixth studio album and has been considered as her pop album, though it incorporates the classic Mitchell folk-rock sound that she developed over the first part of her career, whilst simultaneous delving into moments of jazz.
Noting the genre of the album, Eno said, “I’ve always said that country music is grown-up and she came more out of country than out of pop. Whereas pop is always about the problems of adolescence really, hooking up with someone and whether she really likes you or not, when you get to country music it’s about mortgages and divorce and things like that [laughs]. It seems to me to be about real-life, grown-up issues and so seems much more interesting to me lyrically.”
Eno also explained that the album had a big influence on his own Another Green World album. He said, “It’s incredibly complex. I remember buying this album when it came out in 1974 because I know it had a big impact on what I was working on at the time, which was Another Green World. When I heard this record I really thought that I’ve got to change what I’m doing. But the change was actually to do with recording practices as much as anything else.”
He added, “I think I learned a lot from that album and have listened to it as much as any album I’ve ever owned. It was about professionalism or something like that. If you’re doing an album, someone’s going to be engineering, get somebody good! Get somebody who is going to approach that task creatively. I learnt that some people can do certain things really well so just let them do it. Don’t get in their way.”
