Joni Mitchell considered Bob Dylan her only contemporary: “We’ve done it very well”
To truly understand Joni Mitchell’s greatness, it’s worth considering when she broke through. In the mid-1960s, there was no shortage of musicianship. The Beatles were, of course, dominating the airwaves, while Bob Dylan was spearheading a folk revival in New York and The Beach Boys were quietly revolutionising the studio in LA.
To be considered the next great musician, you needed to be truly great. But that’s exactly what Mitchell was. She slowly crafted her skills in the decades’ burgeoning folk scene, developing her art of storytelling with nothing more than the humble guitar. Naturally, critics saw a suitable pigeonhole in which to keep her and labelled her the next great folk artist. But by the time she started releasing albums in the late ‘60s, she proved she was so much more than that.
The 1970 album Ladies Of The Canyon put her songwriting in a more sophisticated sound, while a year later on Blue, she proved to be one of music’s most compelling lyricists. The production was minimal on that latter record, but the sonic style was far from folk. Bruised ballads bled over the top of a piano, transcending any real genre.
Nevertheless, such was the nature of art in the latter half of the 20th century that critics simply couldn’t credit her music for being great in its own right. Mitchell was constantly compared to other musicians and particularly those from the folk world. It was a largely reductive take on her world but if she was going to be compared to anyone, Bob Dylan was a fine choice for she herself saw the similarities between the pair.
“I’ve done drama, he’s done drama; we’ve done it very well,” she said, explaining the similarities in their artistry. “But we both have a sense of humour. His is perhaps more apparent in his writing than mine is. It’s in there, here and there, there’s a little bit of comic relief – you know”.
Mitchell continued, “The songs that I write, you see, they’re not really so much for singing – they’re more dramatic. Like Bob’s work, the prettiness of the singer, in the later work especially, is not the point – the point is to bring the words to life like a Shakespearean soliloquy. If you have to talk ’em, whatever it takes, you know! Whereas these old songs don’t have a lot of words and there’s plenty of time to ride the note and float, and they’re real singerly material, and I don’t write stuff like that.”
There’s no doubting that Mitchell had a brilliant voice, one that could flutter through different keys and ranges with relative ease. However, what she explains is the essence of understanding the greatness of artists like her and Dylan.
The brilliance of their artistry isn’t in their flawless performances, but rather the acute sense of humanity that populates their songs. The character with which they sing, inflecting their voices to add colour to whatever poem they have laid down, is where the essence of their greatness lies. And that right there is perhaps the biggest similarity Dylan and Mitchell share.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.