The album that made Joni Mitchell want to leave the industry: “My farewell”
You’d be surprised how hard it is for someone like Joni Mitchell to be an artist in an industry like this.
As much as people like the idea of hearing genuine stories from someone who has lived a full life, Mitchell was always at odds with the corporate machine, even when she had some of the greatest records to her name at the time. No one else would have complained about her making a subpar album by any stretch, but even if some musicians couldn’t live without her music, she was quite content to live in a world that didn’t need another one of her songs.
But when you go through a lot of her best records, she was never grandstanding about the quality of her music. There was always a quiet genius about everything that she was doing, and even if it took a lot out of her to make a record like Blue, plenty of people would be able to relate to someone who was going through one of the biggest heartaches of her life in real time on every single song.
That would normally be the landmark achievement for any singer-songwriter, but even then, Mitchell couldn’t really call her own shots as most people would think. She liked the idea of moving on from traditional pop music, but when you’re working for someone like David Geffen, that wasn’t going to happen. She was still going to be looked at for singles, and For the Roses was the first time where she felt like a musical puppet of sorts whenever she started working on her songs.
For one thing, this was the first time Mitchell was brought back to one of her albums, saying that the label didn’t hear a single. Mitchell was never the kind of artist to beg for commercial material by any stretch, but even when compromising, the pettiness in ‘You Turn Me On (I’m a Radio)’ is palpable. She wasn’t trying to make a hit for the sake of a hit, and if that was what the industry was about, she started to realise that maybe she had gone into the wrong business.
Compared to every other rock and roll legend that called their own shots, Mitchell felt like she didn’t have much use for being a pop star if this is what it entailed, saying, “That was my first farewell to show business. I was in Canada, where I have a sanctuary where I still go sometimes, and I had decided to quit show business and get away from all the pressures I felt. To me, this was an unfair, crooked business and it has nothing to do with real talent…. I was up in Canada for about a year and I guess it strengthened my nervous system a little, so I finally came back.”
Then again, this was a much different version of Mitchell when she finally came back to the hit parade. She had become interested in the intricacies of performance, and when working with some of the biggest names in the fusion world, she was no longer trying to make typical rock and roll. She liked the idea of stretching herself out, but that didn’t mean that the rest of the world was in love with it.
Despite records like Mingus being works of genius, the entire music world seemed to shut the door on Mitchell when she stopped making records that were folksy jaunts. But that didn’t really matter to Mitchell anymore. She knew what she was capable of, and with the help of people like Larry Klein, she was going to carry on making music in her way that didn’t necessarily have to conform to what the rest of the rock world was doing.
And looking at the legacy that she carved out for herself, Mitchell is one of the few artists who could claim to have had the exact career that she wanted for herself. It would have helped if the industry had stopped being a nuisance, but when looking through the lyrics to ‘For the Roses’, you could see that the writing was on the wall that she was going to have to break free from the Hollywood model of a pop star.
