I’m shocked that she’s still alive. She’s been a heavy smoker since age 9. One rarely sees a photograph or bit of video where she is not either holding a cigarette or smoking. It has ruined her voice, causing her to break phrases that used to be one breath into three or four.
“I’ve looked at life (gasp) from both sides now (gasp) From up and down (gasp) and still somehow (gasp)…”
The article makes me think she needs a couple of new C-cells.
I’ve never known a musician who didn’t have a lot of nasty things to say about the music industry. It sounds to me like she’s just not quite as likely to filter her comments as most others do. Which is what one should expect from a person who made their living singing protest songs.
Mitchell has said that since she had polio as a child, she finds her body breaking down as she gets older. There could be physical pain causing her to be angry.
But she does always seem to come back to certain things in interviews. How much “Hissing of Summer Lawns” was when it came because critics didn’t like her new direction (Spinal Tap quip) and how she liked the fact that Prince said it was one of his favorites. How in the early 1980s she released an upbeat album “Wild Things Run Fast” while music was very negative, which changed a few years later with Foreigner’s “I want to know what love is”. How she ultimately lost her fight to have a “greatest hits” compilation put out because that means the death of back catalog sales and she’s probably more of an “album” artist.
I don’t know if this makes her bitter but her agent advised her in 1969 not to go to Woodstock but to appear Monday night on the Dick Cavett late night talk show since it was nationwide TV. She did write the song about it but a lot of people/groups who were big at the time and didn’t make it on the film/movie saw their careers falter (such as Blood, Sweat and Tears). Perhaps if she had, her career would have been bigger and almost every artist wants popular recognition. Not that it was made into a movie but her set at the 1986 Amnesty International concert was not well received, she quipped “Hey, I’m not that bad”.
But I don’t mind someone speaking their cantankerous mind, in fact I prefer it. And I really appreciate it Mitchell showed her lovely backside in the inner sleeve of “For the Roses”. What other female singer has done that? Yoko Ono doesn’t count as she is not a singer.
She seems to be leaving a trail of bread crumbs. A straight read of that quote is “Dylan merely reflects his influences - I, on the other hand, was a fresh new voice.”
For whatever reason, Mitchell did not have the impact that Dylan had - this is not up for debate from an historical record standpoint. Whether her art was technically better or fresher vs. Dylan’s doesn’t need to be parsed in relation to the era she is commenting on - she was big and respected, but Dylan exploded and that won’t change. She is, barring some later revision we can’t foresee, someplace lower than Dylan in the Pantheon.
She is clearly processing the fact of that.
How little is “little”? Mitchell is internationally famous; I don’t even like her music and I’d know her to see her from a hundred yards away. She’s sold millions of records. She’s still selling records and concert tickets. She’s made millions and millions of dollars from her fame and popularity as a musician.
Exactly how much does a person need before it’s enough?
Perhaps she’s bitter about Bob Dylan selling *even more *millions of records, in which case she’s got a personal problem. But don’t say she’s gotten “little” recognition. She’s gotten assloads of recognition. The musicians who get little recognition are the ones we don’t have threads on the SDMB about 'cause we’ve never heard of them.
I’m pretty sure Judy Collins has. I’m at work so I’m not going to Google “Judy Collins ass.”
I saw Joni Mitchell perform at the first Farm Aid concert, 25 years ago. The whole thing lasted about 13 hours, and she came on around hour 9 or 10, I think.
Halfway through her first song, she began railing at members of the audience for not paying attention to her. “How can you hear the music if you’re talking?” … “Why would you even come here and not listen?” and so forth. Most people were listening, but she seemed offended that she didn’t have the rapt focus of a crowd of tens of thousands that had been there all damn day already.
So I think maybe it’s just her personality.
Not a backside, but PJ Harvey showed her tits on the record sleeve.
Yes, all great social protest singers. But not the first.
Folk music has a long, and I mean looooonnnngg history. In fact, I would venture to say that any secular music from the beginning of time would fit the definition of folk music. It had to. There was no way to record it except teach songs to others and hand those songs down through the generations.
But social protest songs were by no means a phenomenon of the Great Depression. There were songs protesting for women’s sufferage, songs to end slavery, songs to promote secession, songs to protest England’s rule over the colonies. And so forth.
This sort of thing goes back as long as social unrest existed. It’s just that now we have the means to record the songs.
I don’t suppose that it will help her bitterness that in the article that kimstu linked to, when you mouse over her picture it says “Bob Dylan.”
Dylan himself has said plenty of negative things amout his contemporaries.
Anyone interested in early 1960’s folk music should definitely read David Hajdu’s “Positively 4th Strret”–a fascinating look into the works and lives of Dylan, Joan Baez, Richard Farina, and Mimi Baez Farina. My personal opinion is that Farina’s untimely death was the biggest break Joan & Bob got.
My dad, who has always, as far I know, been a big fan of both Dylan and Mitchell, is ridiculously pissed off about this. I wouldn’t be surprised that he and my mom and right now arguing about trashing all of their Joni Mitchell CDs. (My mom would be telling my dad he’s being irrational and he’ll want to listen to them again sometime and my dad would be insisting he is NOT.)
Anyway. Good way to drive off fans.
One of the top books on my list that hasn’t yet been bought and put on my pile (which would then mean it would actually be read in a couple of years…sigh). I don’t know enough about Farina other than the superficial story, but would be interested in hearing more. As Dylan always said, he’s a song and dance man. The fact that he found his voice in an era of historical protest was more a curiosity to him than anything - and his chosen genre, folk, happened to be a central focus of that historical happening and a good vehicle for protest. But he was just using it to move people. Then he moved on.
Since Joni is lambasting Dylan’s voice, I have to recommend his book Chronicles, Volume 1, which is absolutely brilliant - and, by the way, in both its topic (the book is chronicle of how Dylan found his voice as an artist) and execution (the best musician-penned book I think I have ever read) stands as a glaring rejection Ms. Bitter Knickers’s thesis. Just sayin’.
Regarding Mitchell’s talent and recognition as mentioned in the Markxxx and RickJay exchange, above:
Sorry, but I never saw anything really appealing about her, talent-wise. I find her shrill and her voice unappealing. In fact, if it wasn’t for CanCon Rules, I doubt if I would have ever really heard of her, because I seriously doubt that anyone would have given her any radio airplay in Canada otherwise. Of course, the fact that she was chalking up so much (illigitimate) airplay (which was only because she was Canadian, and for no other real reason) didn’t go unnoticed although those elsewhere didn’t realize that it was only because it was against the law here not to play her (and other Canadian artists, of which there were only so many at the time).
Of course, the more you hear something, the more it grows on you and she was able to pick up record sales at home as well. A well-known Toronto DJ once said that he could make a hit out of “God Save the Queen” (the real one) if he played it often enough.
In her prime (long ago), she wasn’t half-bad at writing lyrics, (“The Circle Game”, “Both Sides Now” – both of which were hits for others, I might add) but that’s really all I would give her.
I think it’s hilarious that she wants to call names, when she owes a big part of her career (at the time she was getting established) to government legislation.
It’s sad when the rules say that you have to listen to such crap as “Carey”, but I guess that’s the way it goes.
Ooh - me! Me!
A talented musician, yes, but consider what she won her Grammy for.
I don’t really care whether Mitchell and Dylan are BFF or at each other’s throats; they’re both worth a listen to. Likewise Terry Pratchett is on record trashing J K Rowling (which may or may not be professional jealousy, although I’m sure Pterry has outsold Rowling overall) but I’ll still read both of their outputs.
Actually, the last Harry Potter book outsold the entire Pratchett ouvre. That last cite is a bit iffy, but I doubt that Pratchett has outsold Rowling.
Meh. Both Sides Now has at least that many covers, according to its Wiki page.
Ah. No wonder he’s grumpy (well, that and the Alzheimers).
Well, whether you like Bob Dylan or not, I can understand lambasting his voice. The man is awfully mumbly and needs enunciation lessons.