The one musician Joni Mitchell said resented her: “That’s my personal opinion”
It’s hard being in the business of making friends when working at the same high standard as Joni Mitchell.
There aren’t many people in rock and roll or pop in general who could ever manage to make that many great tunes throughout the course of their career, and even if they had all of those fantastic musicians behind them, only Mitchell could tell these heartbreaking tone paintings with that kind of musical pathos. No one else could have ever matched what she was able to accomplish on her own, but she felt that her influences did get a little bit resentful over time.
Then again, anyone with half a brain cell would know not to try to compete with what Mitchell could do. Any good songwriter knows that the people want something that they hadn’t heard before, but even by the insane standards that Bob Dylan set, you could at least say that he wasn’t the greatest vocalist in the world. With Mitchell, she was the best musician and poet in Los Angeles, and that meant picking up a few enemies along the way.
But Mitchell didn’t get into the business to hurt anybody. She felt that there was a place for her, even if it wasn’t on the pop charts in any capacity, and when looking at the work that she did with people like Charles Mingus, it wasn’t like she couldn’t make the best music that she could when standing next to her idols. There was a wealth of music she could explore, but she could throw a few digs out there when she wanted.
Because if there was one thing that she didn’t like, it was when artists tried to make a mockery of what real art was supposed to be. She didn’t think that Madonna was everything that she was cracked up to be when she first saw her perform, and while Dylan was one of the greatest songsmiths of her time, she did admit to being a little bit disheartened when she found out that he was making songs that were based on some of the great poets that came before him.
No one wanted to know that their heroes were copycats, but even if Mitchell managed to take it in stride, it was a bit difficult trying to get over what Leonard Cohen was doing. Cohen was shameless when it came to pulling pieces from Albert Camus and infusing them into his work, but when Mitchell tried to give the same verbal tribute to Cohen’s work, she remembered him being a lot more icy to her when he found out that she took one of his lines.
Maybe he didn’t like being given a taste of his own medicine, but Mitchell remembered that Cohen would resent her for a while before eventually making amends, saying, “When I played ‘A Case of You’ for him, he said, ‘I’m glad I wrote that… Leonard got mad at me actually, because I put a line of his, a line that he said, in one of my songs. To me, that’s not plagiarism. You either steal from life or you steal from books. Life is fair game, but books are not. That’s my personal opinion.”
And it’s not like Cohen owned the right to sing about certain things, either. Half of Blue is all about Mitchell picking up the pieces after her relationship fell apart, so it wasn’t out of the question for her to be going through the same heartbreaking situations that Cohen had talked about on his records all the time.
Because, like it or not, part of the human condition means getting your feelings stepped on more than a few times, and while we’re guaranteed to feel that pain every single time we open ourselves up, that doesn’t mean that we can’t find some solace in listening to some of the best musicians that came before us.
