Joni Mitchell discusses “one of the most amazing performers ever”
Being an artist is as much about performance as it is songwriting. You can make the best music you can think of in the studio, but there’s an art to taking those same sonic paintings and putting them on a stage for the rest of the world to hear. Although Joni Mitchell tended to float on the air whenever she graced audiences with her presence, she admitted that the best performances she ever saw came from watching Prince.
Then again, Mitchell was never one to perform in the traditional sense. She definitely had moments of levity in her shows where things would liven up, but the best parts of her live albums tended to be in capturing the subtle intricacies of her performances, whether that be the way she enunciates certain words or brings out different instrumentation for different tracks.
But that kind of subtle approach didn’t seem to be part of Prince’s vocabulary. He could slow things down when he wanted to, but where’s the fun in that? Rock and roll should be about a spectacle, and Prince gave you the perfect package whenever he performed live, often pushing himself to the limit whenever he performed to the point where his body looked like it couldn’t take anymore.
There shouldn’t typically be that much overlap between Prince’s and Mitchell’s work, but Mitchell knew exactly what she saw once he debuted. Jimi Hendrix may have electrified audiences years before, but Prince was the kind of person who laid everything out on the table on any instrument he touched and made everyone envious, awestruck, and hot and bothered at the same time.
While Mitchell has been around through legions of rock and roll history, she still thought that nothing compared to Prince, saying, “[He’s] one of the most amazing performers I have ever witnessed. He has some of the best parties in Hollywood, maybe even the world, and I know I’m missing a great one tonight.”
If you peel back the many layers of Prince’s work, Mitchell’s delicate approach to music isn’t that far off. Prince was always an avid fan of Mitchell’s work and even went so far as to cover a handful of her songs, including ‘A Case of You’, which ended up on Piano and a Microphone 1983 shortly after his death.
In fact, one of the greatest similarities between Prince and Mitchell doesn’t even come from rock and roll; it comes from jazz. Although jazz isn’t typically looked at as the coolest genre for rock fans, Mitchell’s exquisite use of players like Jaco Pastorius and Larry Carlton took her already-masterful songs to new heights on albums like Hejira.
While Prince blended every genre under the sun into his repertoire in the 1980s, he did have a few moments of jazz riffing as well, including making an entire album with a jazz band called The Rainbow Children. It’s one thing to talk about the overlap of styles, but both songwriters were cut from the same cloth emotionally as well.
Whenever you heard a Prince song or a Joni Mitchell song, it wasn’t because they were obligated to make it. These tracks were something deep within their soul that they needed to get out, and more often than not, the results were absolutely blinding.
