“Developed from the god’s head”: Leonard Cohen believed Joni Mitchell had gifts from a higher power
Songwriting has never been a logical thing for every artist to tackle. There are many people who look at the practice like a job that they have to do every time they get up in the morning, but it’s easy for the best writers in rock history to see their songs as emotional exorcisms of themselves that only come when they have something genuine to express. And while Leonard Cohen made most of us feel feelings that we didn’t realise we were capable of at the time, he knew that he was far from the first one to set foot into that emotional realm.
Compared to what artists like Bob Dylan were doing at the time, Cohen had a firm belief that poetry and music went hand-in-hand. There were some compelling melodies on his debut record, but when listening to a song like ‘Suzanne’, it’s easy to see it as a tone poem brought to life, singing about the heartache he feels for this woman in the same way that the great writers had before him.
There are pieces of his songs that toe the line between being tuneful and poetic, but Cohen never took a single line for granted, either. For all of the brilliant covers that have made of a song like ‘Hallelujah’ in recent years, the real magic behind the song was the work that went into it, with Cohen spending years to crack the code of the tune and writing page after page of verses until he settled on the one he felt rolled off the tongue the best.
The process might sound agonising for anyone to work through, but not every one of Cohen’s contemporaries saw songwriting that way. Some of the best songs of all time might have to do with unrequited love, but when listening to how someone like Joni Mitchell phrases her songs, every single song feels like a massive musical painting brought to life, whether it’s happy or sad.
While Mitchell could get downright bleak when singing the tracks on Blue, she was also never afraid to make positive songs. ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ was a case of her trying to put a happy face on a sad situation, but when ‘The Circle Game’ is the kind of hopeful mantra that every single music fan needs to hear, almost as a reminder that things aren’t over by the time your youth fades and that the world is always wide open for everyone.
“She doesn’t read music and it really is fully developed from the god’s head. She just came out that way.”
Leonard Cohen
Cohen had been woodshedding his craft around the same time Mitchell was writing her tunes, but he felt that she had been touched by some divine presence, saying, “She doesn’t read music and it really is fully developed from the god’s head. She just came out that way. When I saw her detune a guitar, for me, just tuning the guitar is an ordeal. That indicated to me immediately that there was something very remarkable going on.”
There’s no telling where Mitchell was actually getting her ideas, but some of her outlandish approaches to music did feel like it was being channelled from some sort of higher power. The folksy tunes found on her first records were already far different from what everyone else was doing, but after she settled into making jazzy records like Hejira, she was far more confident in crafting every note until it was absolutely perfect.
She might have indicated that she didn’t know much about music, but listening to every one of her melodies, Mitchell always knew exactly what she was doing whenever she got in front of a microphone. All she needed was the right words to be put together to melt every single heart within earshot.
