The artist Joni Mitchell said no one on the planet could play like: “He just crawls over the music like a fly”
Joni Mitchell is proof that often, when we talk about the greatest guitarists of all time, we misconstrue what that label actually represents.
When people talk about the greatest guitarists ever, their minds usually wander to things like the ‘Eruption’ solo, or something Jimi Hendrix came up with in one of his improvisational, animalistic moments of brilliance. Granted, these are great examples of great pieces of music, but there is a lot more to a good guitar solo than just shredding.
Joni Mitchell is a great example of this, as while she wasn’t exactly an artist who was belting out solo after solo, she did have a way with the guitar which was otherworldly, so much so people tended to watch in awe and try to work out how she was getting such unique sounds out of her instrument. Many a great musician has been quick to point out just how special Mitchell was when it came to putting together her own style of guitar solo.
David Crosby once commented that she was “like a band in the way you approach a chord and string the melody along,” continuing, “She was so new and fresh with how she approached it […] It’s these odd tunings that have tripped up thousands of artists trying to figure out how to get ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ to sound like her ‘Big Yellow Taxi’.”
Not only did Mitchell have an exciting approach towards the way she played and tuned her guitar, but she also wrote songs in strange time signatures, embracing chaotic rhythm when putting together tracks that really stood out for listeners. Tool’s Maynard James Keenan once said that Mitchell was one of the artists he would listen to when learning to put together songs that had off-kilter time signatures attached to them. The fact she helped influence one of the most out-there prog rock bands on the planet really highlights just how much of a talent she is.
Her musical ability is not only represented in what she made, either, but who she listened to and worked with. Mitchell didn’t like partnering up with musicians who were stuck in their ways and could only contribute one specific element to a song. Instead, she liked the idea of teaming up with artists who could pick different aspects out of music, subsequently responding to various chords differently, unpicking every single emotion and decision that went into putting a track together.
It’s for this reason that the ‘woman blue’ enjoyed working with Wayne Shorter so much, as she said the way he saw himself in songs was unlike other artists. “Well, Wayne is indispensable to music because there’s no one like him,” she said, “I like to watch him crawl across the music. He explores it like no one else.”
She went on to talk about what it was like watching Shorter work. “So, what you witness when you work with him in this way is him listening to a piece of music 12 times, actively. Rather than getting an idea for a lick and sticking it in somewhere and refining it, he just crawls over the music like a fly,” she recounted, adding, “He makes these sudden descant drops and he’ll crawl along the bottom […] He’s a total individual. I’m addicted to him.”
