‘Cactus Tree’: The Joni Mitchell song influenced by Bob Dylan
The fact that Joni Mitchell was often compared to Bob Dylan in their approach to songwriting rubbed her up the wrong way, and she has gone on record several times, stating her distaste for her contemporary, one time even calling his dental and oral hygiene into question.
However, back in 1968, before the comparisons had been made, Mitchell admitted in an interview that she was a “late Dylan fan”. She said: “I was almost anti-Dylan, and I made a lot of enemies going around saying [that]. I thought he was putting me on. I couldn’t accept him.”
Mitchell admitted that rejection is just “a trait of [hers]”. Detailing further, she added: “I used to be more outspoken; now I’m more noncommittal until I really figure out what they are saying,” before going to explain why she found it hard with Dylan in the first place.
“The thing was, I shared no experience with Dylan at that time, so the thing was, I thought that a lot of his stuff, the things I thought were ambiguous and were not written honestly, I find out now were just things I had no idea of at that time,” Mitchell noted. “So as I experience some of his experiences, or being some of my experiences to his music.”
Mitchell then explained that her experience with coming around to Dylan was like when she saw Shakespeare perform as it was properly intended. “It’s like I always thought Shakespeare was really worthy and weird, right until I went to Stratford and saw a man who recited Shakespeare like it was really 20th century,” she said. “It lost all that super drama stuff that really turned me off and flowed like 20th-Century English, and I understood it.”
The Canadian folk icon then explained exactly why it’s the same with Dylan as it had been with Shakespeare. “Now, when I listen to him, the things that I thought were just words for word’s sake make sense to me,” she said. “Every single line, even if it’s not the same thing that he’s experiencing, at least I’m experiencing something from what I’m hearing. Like, ‘Yeah, I know what that means to me; maybe it’s not what it means to him.’ So now, this late in the game, I think I’m Dylan influenced.”
Mitchell then admitted that she wrote a song called ‘Cactus Tree’ which was influenced by Dylan “in its melody, even in its style.” Elaborating further, she said: “I even lengthen my ‘A’s’ when I sing it because it sings better. It’s all sort of in monotone. I wrote that after I saw Don’t Look Back, which I think left a big impression on me.”
Revisit ‘Cactus Tree’ below.
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