The album Joni Mitchell claims paved the way for Steely Dan
While Joni Mitchell is most commonly assigned the label of a folk artist, her influences go far beyond that. As she weaved textures of folk, rock, pop and even jazz together, Mitchell’s impact on the musicians around her and throughout history is just as broad as her sound. It’s not an over-exaggeration or a presumptuous argument to claim that Mitchell’s own albums inspired many others, including the work of Steely Dan.
When Mitchell first started with her debut releases, she was a folk star through and through. With her signature finger-picking guitar and her open tunings, the instrumentation of her songs, along with their confessional, storytelling lyrics, contained all the textures necessary to make a stunning folk fabric. But her inspirations were always broader than that, and she was never going to restrict herself to the place she started out.
“You have two options. You can stay the same and protect the formula that gave you your initial success. They’re going to crucify you for staying the same. If you change, they’re going to crucify you for changing,” she told Rolling Stone, “But staying the same is boring. And change is interesting. So, of the two options, I’d rather be crucified for changing.” So when it came to her records from the mid-1970s onwards, her style shifted into a more dynamic sound inspired by genres further ahead.
Most importantly, her work became greatly influenced by jazz as she took inspiration from, or even worked with, some of the biggest names on the scene. She began collaborating with famed bass player Charles Mingus and discussed her love for some of the leaders of the jazz work. Miles Davis was another important name for Mitchell, who said, “He captures and transmits – without words – all we need to know about the situation- in the universal language of tone.”
Her unique mix of folk and jazz, merging the two into her own colour and feel, transformed Mitchell’s work but also transformed the scene around her. As her peers watched her work expand and evolve, it seemed to be that she was daring them to do the same.
“At that time, I was beginning to introduce – for lack of a better word—jazz overtones. Nobody was really doing that,” Mitchell said of her first steps, claiming that people quickly followed. “In the two years that followed, it became more acceptable.” She especially saw that challenge to other musicians being opened up on The Hissing of Summer Lawns and her song ‘Edith and the Kingpin’, claiming that those works inspired one band in particular: Steely Dan.
“When Steely Dan finally made Aja, with some of the same sidemen, it was applauded as a great, if somewhat eccentric, work,” she said. There’s a slight tone of bitterness or annoyance to her comments, as if she did the hard work as a woman on the scene before a band of men swooped in to gain the praise. “I fail even to see the eccentricity of it, myself,” she said, even doubting her own work as she added, “Perhaps there was a weary tone in my voice that irritated people, but there was so much of it that was accessible.”
But Mitchell has gained her roses in hindsight as her more jazz-inspired works are seen for the pioneering and excitedly adventurous releases they’ve always been. No doubt Steely Dan were always a fan, with Mitchell to thank for inspiring their own experimentation.
