The band Joni Mitchell said “played like one being”
For any great band to get off the ground, potent chemistry is usually the explosive element that launches a career. Even though it might be easy to get the most proficient musicians in the same room and hash out songs together, there’s no telling whether they will go the distance unless they have some rapport. While Joni Mitchell liked to surround herself with excellent musicians on her records, one band stood above anyone else in her mind.
Then again, there’s a good chance that Mitchell could get her point across in her songs with just a guitar and her voice. Even though she may have seen her records as works of art, the singer-songwriter was known for putting on shows that featured her solo on acoustic guitar, creating vivid portraits of her personal life on tracks like ‘My Old Man’ and ‘California,’ with the simplest of means.
When Mitchell did find time to bring musicians into the fold, though, it was never the typical rock and roll session musicians. Across her albums like Hejira, Mitchell had some of the greatest players from the world of fusion at her disposal, working with everyone from Larry Carlton on guitar to bass legend Jaco Pastorius holding down the low end.
Looking back on her musical upbringing, that blend of jazz and big band was as pivotal to Mitchell as artists like Bob Dylan or The Beatles. When looking through her favourite songs, one of the songwriter’s most cherished musical moments came from Duke Ellington working off his orchestra on his version of ‘Subtle Lament’.
While the song is a fairly standard jazz arrangement, it’s the inflexions that Ellington puts into his performance that turn it into something beautiful. Unlike band leaders who like to hold down the primary performance with a bunch of hired guns behind them, Ellington practically plays his orchestra throughout the song, taking bits and pieces from the arrangement to take centre stage as he builds complex layers around them.
Relistening to the song, Mitchell would say that the whole band seems to have a symbiotic relationship with each other, saying, “I love this arrangement – the way the colours change – but it’s the sound of the band – the warmth of it – the heart – the humour – the spiritual synchronisation – that makes this music so inimitable. This is less a band and more a being. They play together like one instrument – one soul.”
Even though Mitchell thinks the song is an example of perfect musicianship, it isn’t above throwing a bit of humour into the mix. Throughout the song, various arrangement choices seem to be thrown together with a touch of humour, as if the band are aware of how they can turn on a dime to create something even better than what their audience initially thought.
It’s easy to see how Mitchell incorporates that relationship with musicians into her studio albums. Across projects like The Hissing of Summer of Lawns, every musician playing on the album seems to be coming from the same spiritual place, always looking to advance the song to a more interesting sonic space than before. Even though many artists have found a way to make an original sound and play it for the rest of time, Mitchell learned from Ellington that as long as there is a solid connection between every musician, anything is possible.
