The producer Joni Mitchell thought would kill her love for music: “I just took over”
When you’re as effortlessly talented as someone like Joni Mitchell, there shouldn’t be too many things that would stand in your way when it comes to drawing from your innate passion for making music and writing new material.
Very few artists can claim to have written nine masterpieces, let alone consecutively, but such is the strength of the Canadian folk singer’s run of albums from her debut, Song to a Seagull, up until 1977’s Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, one can easily make the argument that Mitchell barely put a foot wrong in the first decade of her career.
On top of having written and performed everything that appeared on her records during this spell, she also played a massive role in producing the majority of her work, sometimes with assistance from others, and sometimes entirely in her own right. It’s a testament to how singular her work is that she managed to assume full creative control for the majority of her output, and if it were down to the judgments of others, it’s possible that some of her brilliance would have been shielded from public view.
However, it wasn’t originally Mitchell’s plan to self-produce all of her records, and had it not been for a string of bad experiences with external voices trying to have a say in her work, she may not have ever had the intuition to take on such a heavy workload in trying to gain complete authority over the sound of each of her records.
It doesn’t bear thinking about how different records like Blue or Court and Spark might sound if Mitchell hadn’t assumed control over production duties, and during a 1997 interview with Grammy Magazine, she would elaborate on exactly why she took the bold decision to put herself in this position of power when it came to dictating how each of her releases ought to be presented.
While interviewer Daniel Levitin referenced her string of collaborations with Henry Lewy as a co-producer and engineer that began in the 1960s and continued on and off until the early ‘80s, and also commented on how ex-husband Larry Klein took on a similar role from this point forward, her motivation for getting into production was questioned. She explained that it was down to her feeling a sense of disappointment in how her earliest records sounded.
“Well, [David] Crosby produced my first record,” she explained, “and then for the second record, the record company brought in a ‘real’ producer. And after that album, it became apparent to me that if I worked with this guy it would kill my love of music… after that, I just took over myself.”
Referring to Paul A Rothchild as the ‘real’ producer, it’s clear that her remarks about his status are somewhat facetious, if not downright meant to be derogatory towards his work. While he may have been known for working alongside acts such as The Doors and on some of the earliest recordings by Crosby, Stills and Nash, it’s evident that Mitchell didn’t get on with him or feel any sense of appreciation for what he brought to Clouds.
If working with him was sapping all of her enjoyment for making music out of her, then ultimately, her decision may have been one of the best that she made.
