The first band who truly understood Joni Mitchell: “Too much melody”
It wasn’t uncommon for legendary artists to dip their toes in and out of bands during the course of the 1960s and ‘70s.
Think about all the supergroups that emerged from musicians who were otherwise great solo artists: Cream with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce or Crosby, Stills and Nash, who bravely added Neil Young into the fold during ‘70. Even artists who were so clearly designed to be solo artists still had a go at collective creativity.
But it never felt like Joni Mitchell ever needed to. While she wasn’t shy of a jam here and there, her wandering creative spirit was best left to itself, where it could roam free and follow the crucial lead set by her own lyricism.
It made her one of the masters of the album format. While there are plenty of hits that Joni Mitchell fans could throw back at me, it was less about the quick fix of brilliance and rather the slow release of a narrative and musical concept, bleeding from the guitar or piano she would write it on.
But come ‘74, Mitchell was fed up with her genius living in the shadows of mainstream success and decided to combat it. Court and Spark was by no means a commercial sellout, but instead saw Mitchell cleverly pivoting her sonic ideas to exploit an industry loophole: form a band and you will find yourself swiftly on AM radio.
“Back in the early days, hits were on AM, and I was an FM artist or an album-oriented artist,” she explained. “And you have to understand that there was – to go on to AM, you had to have a band. I couldn’t find a band that could play my music until my sixth album. And when I did, it was a jazz band. You know, the LA Express.”
It was as close as Mitchell got to being in a band, but more crucially than ticking a radio-based box, the band helped pivot Mitchell from her trusted brand of acoustic folk and into a more nuanced jazz-influenced style that gave her some much-needed evolution. But as ever, there was a portion of the critics who couldn’t grasp this change and said that in pursuit of jazz rhythms, Mitchell lost her melody altogether.
She continued, “So I entered into that world, because some of the reviews from this last tour said that my music was not rhythmic and that there was no melody. The problem is that there’s more rhythm there than they can cope with. And a lot of times, we’re not dealing with the four major beats, because we know where they are.”
Concluding, “All right, we know where they are. So where they’re saying there’s no, in fact, there’s too much. There’s too much melody.”
Despite the melodic concerns, it became a commercial triumph for Mitchell. Sure, she designed that somewhat by leveraging the band loophole, but moreover, she achieved it by remaining true to her narrative style while compositionally evolving. It was still classic Mitchell from a lyrical standpoint and went a long way to proving that she could pivot in any direction and still be one of the very best.
