The masterpiece album Joni Mitchell’s fans couldn’t stand: “Horrified a lot of people”
It seems inconceivable for someone to genuinely claim that they hate Joni Mitchell’s music. Preferences are one thing, but very rarely does a talent like Joni Mitchell enter your life and leave without making an indentation.
While her style might not appeal to everyone, the notion of a person vehemently disliking songs like ‘River’ or ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ with all their heart is akin to saying they hate looking at a sunset or don’t enjoy the taste of air. Mitchell has a knack for capturing pure beauty in her works, yet even she admitted encountering a lukewarm reception when creating the album Blue.
Looking at where she had come from, though, Mitchell did really seem to switch up much in her presentation. She had always been a writer of brilliant folk songs, and tracks like ‘The Circle Game’ were already starting to become classics in the rock sphere, albeit for someone who was a lot more downtempo than the likes of Led Zeppelin.
Mitchell’s music always reflected her, and the end of the 1960s did not exactly treat her well. After getting out of a relationship with Graham Nash and becoming more jaded about love, Blue was the record that felt like her unpacking every piece of her heart to see where she went wrong.
With many more people listening to her music after the success of ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young covering the song ‘Woodstock’, fans weren’t ready to accept a more sombre version of Mitchell. This was the kind of person you listened to when you wanted to appreciate the finer things about the world, so why was she now talking about how everything sucks that she wanted to get away from everyone?
It’s not like Mitchell didn’t feel the backlash on her side, either, telling Rolling Stone, “When I realised how popular I was becoming, it was right before Blue. I went, ‘Oh my God, a lot of people are listening to me. Well, then, they better find out who they’re worshipping. Let’s see if they can take it. Let’s get real.’ So I wrote Blue, which horrified a lot of people, you know.”
Then again, that must have been some strong stuff those naysayers were smoking to think that Blue is anything less than a masterpiece. While Mitchell always left her personal emotions in her songs, no one has ever been more acutely aware of what she’s like behind closed doors than on this album, often sounding like she’s practically crying out in pain.
Let’s all admit it: some of the best music ever is created by negative emotions, and the track is where an artist has an outlet to let all their anger out in a healthy way. There might be a tortured spirit in a song like ‘My Old Man’ or ‘River’, but it’s not about wallowing in that sadness. It’s about getting everything out of one’s head and down on paper so you have something to show.
The rest of the rock world seemed to agree, too, with some of the biggest names in music taking cues from her emotional pain, with everyone from Taylor Swift to Prince shouting her praises over the years. The public may have had cold feet embracing an album like Blue, but when you lay yourself out this openly in song, there’s no one else who can touch you.
All about Blue
There are two prominent motifs that run through Joni Mitchell’s iconic 1971 record Blue — two profound themes are a perfect summation of Mitchell as a songwriter, firstly her intent to share herself more than ever before on this album and secondly to do it while using the often forgotten instrument the dulcimer.
“I was opened up,” Mitchell reflected. “As a matter of fact, we had to close the doors and lock them while I recorded [Blue] because I was in a state of mind that in this culture would be called a nervous breakdown. In pockets of the Orient, it would be considered a shamanic conversion.” The album is seen as one of her most personal and even encouraged Kris Kristofferson to plead with Joni to “saving something for yourself.”
Mitchell picked up her first dulcimer in 1969 at the Big Sur Festival and instantly began playing it, though she admits speaking with Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers that she never really knew how to play one. “I had never seen one played,” remembered Mitchell. “Traditionally it’s picked with a quill, and it’s a very delicate thing that sits across your knee. The only instrument I had ever had across my knee was a bongo drum, so when I started to play the dulcimer I beat it. I just slapped it with my hands.
“Anyway I bought it, and I took off to Europe carrying a flute and this dulcimer because it was very light for backpacking around Europe. I wrote most of Blue on it.” Some of the album’s best songs were composed on the instrument, including ‘A Case of You,’ ‘All I Want,’ and ‘California.’ The instrument permeates the entire album as does Mitchell’s veracity; neither seems attainable sounds, and neither feels wholly of this earth.
With Blue, Joni Mitchell laid down the foundations of pop music as we know it today, and the album should always be considered her best, if not one of the best ever made.
