The 1980s singer Joni Mitchell called “the perfect bully”
An artist like Joni Mitchell is often thinking about more than her own voice when making a record.
No one needs to question whether or not she’s good enough to play her own songs, but when looking through some of her best work, she knew when someone could do a much better job at articulating what she’s trying to say than she could a lot of the time. Sometimes it requires having that one extra person, and some of the best records Mitchell ever made have come when she has fed off of her session musicians.
But when looking through a lot of her best records, a lot of the greatest session musicians of all time aren’t the ones who call attention to themselves all that often. Jaco Pastorius was perfect for adding that perfect bassline to every one of her tunes, but it’s hard to see him sticking out at any point. For all of the fantastic runs he had on his own album, he knew that his job was always to serve the song wherever possible.
And when looking through some of the records that she was making after she left the pop sphere, Mitchell was more interested in making songs that had vivid storylines. She could have kept quoting her heart if she wanted to, but if she wanted to make songs that had more nuanced takes on relationships, she needed to have a few more voices that could bring something new to the mix that she hadn’t heard before.
By Mitchell’s standards, though, Billy Idol was always going to be a bit of a wild card. Punk rock was the exact opposite of Mitchell’s strengths half the time she played, and when looking through a lot of Idol’s best work, there was never any point where you looked at him and thought that he could do a halfway-decent version of ‘Both Sides Now’ or anything. He was the ultimate fish out of water when working with Mitchell, but that actually managed to work in his favour.
In the context of the song ‘Dancin’ Clown’, Mitchell needed a voice that sounded intimidating, and she felt that Idol’s forceful punk growl had a much better chance at playing a bully character than she ever could, saying, “I’ll need another voice to deliver a line, because [the songs] are like little plays. Like in ‘Dancin’ Clown’, Billy Idol plays the bully. He’s got the perfect bully’s voice, He’s threatening this guy named Jesse: ‘You’re a push-button window! I can run you up and down. Anytime I want I can make you my dancing clown!’ So you need an aggressive, bullyish voice to deliver that line.”
And while this is one of the wildest collaborations that Mitchell could have used, it’s not like it doesn’t go over well. Idol already that growl in his voice as far back as working on Rebel Yell, and while his contribution isn’t the most aggressive he’s ever sounded by any stretch, it made perfect sense for him to work in this context rather than try and make Mitchell write a song around his voice.
Given the other vocalists on the song, like Tom Petty, Mitchell actually caught Idol at the perfect time as well. This was in between his classics and right before his final major hits on tunes like ‘Cradle of Love’, so getting him to sound like a domineering figure in the tune must have been like a mini version of voice casting, in a sense.
Mitchell was still the one in the centre singing her heart out, but let this be an important lesson to anyone who is making a record of their own. Not every solitary note that ends up on record needs to come from you, and sometimes you need to find those few people who can make their voice sound miles more authentic than you ever could in the right context.
