“They can’t steal”: The musician Joni Mitchell called a musical saint
Joni Mitchell learned a long time ago not to get too attached to any of her colleagues.
As much as she had a lot of fierce competition in the singer-songwriter scene, there’s a good chance no one else could have matched what she was doing when she began venturing outside of the typical folk scene and moving into areas that felt closer to jazz and classical music throughout her career. She clearly had a better handle on what she wanted out of her music, but she felt that some of her favourite artists deserved to be up there in the musical heavens well before they were lionised.
But it’s not like every single one of the folk singers Mitchell came up with was stellar in every single respect. Bob Dylan was a fantastic voice of the people whenever he sang some of his tunes, but it’s not like he necessarily had the best musical vocabulary as everyone. It was easy to pick up his music with one guitar lesson, but Mitchell wanted to uncover songs that no one could have thought of.
That’s probably why she ventured towards abnormal tunings every single time she strapped on her guitar. No one could have possibly figured out what she was doing every single time she came out with a new record, but even if the guitar sounded like it was tuned by an alien, it was about getting certain notes to resonate that could conjure up emotions that no one else could have touched on.
Mitchell was already looking to unpack complex situations in every one of her songs, so nuanced lyrics deserved nuanced chords to go along with them. Not all of them worked from time to time, and there are more than a few people that she lost along the way when she started venturing out of her comfort zone, but it was better for her to take chances than get caught up in one sound for too long.
And when she first began taking chances, she wanted to make sure she had the right people next to her. Hejira featured some of the greatest jazz musicians that anyone could have asked for, but even if Jaco Pastorius played some incredible musical passages throughout her records, she felt that she was nothing compared to what the true jazz greats like Miles Davis could do with a horn in his hand.
Sure, there were classical composers who were in their own world, but even Rachmaninoff had to compete with Davis over her musical heart, saying, “I went through an imitative period, but I’m too much of a loner to be a copycat. That’s why my two patron saints are Miles and Picasso because they are restlessly creative. They can’t stay put. They can’t steal [and] if they steal from others they make it so their own. They dance circles around, you know what I mean and then they incorporate it and it comes out to something of their own.”
And even when Davis was stealing from someone else’s trip, it was evident that he was never going to sound exactly like some of his colleagues. Even outside of the jazz field, hearing him take influence from rock stars like Jimi Hendrix when making Bitches Brew was coming from an entirely different mindset, even if he managed to make his horn sound slightly psychedelic in places.
Not everything that he played was going to be pristine, but that didn’t seem to matter that much to Mitchell. There were some artists focusing on making everything perfect, but sometimes the best artists of all time are the ones that are able to show the humanity behind the playing rather than relentlessly rehearsing songs until they’re perfect.
