DEEP BLUE

Beautiful, heartbreaking, reflective. There are good reasons why Joni Mitchell’s Blue is considered a classic album more than fifty years on. It opened stylistic doors for female artists and stands as an exemplar of the confessional singer-songwriter style. Or does it?

The recordings feature Mitchell’s voice and guitar prominently, with piano and dulcimer appearing when she seeks a change in tone. Guests include former lover James Taylor on guitar (four songs) with some subtle percussion by Russ Kunkel now and then. Steve Stills pops in with a bass guitar while guitarist 'Sneaky' Pete Kleinow offers touches of pedal steel colouring. But front and centre it is Joni Mitchell’s voice, presenting her songs of love, of loss, of searching and most of all… of feeling.

On Blue Mitchell shows us that emotion is a pathway to wisdom, or at least towards an acceptance of suffering, which is certainly one kind of wisdom. Her travels are a metaphor for the journey of self, whether leaving dying relationships or yearning to return for a fresh start. Knowing the times in which Mitchell was navigating the sometimes choppy waters of intimacy—while simultaneously striving for success as a solo female artist—it is tempting to paint her as just another love-lorn hippy chick looking for a half-way decent bloke. Songs like "My Old Man" and the vibrant "A Case Of You" tend to support this picture. But there is so much more to both Joni and these songs. Read the lyrics, really sit with them, and you discover depths and currents rarely found in popular music.

"Little Green", for example, is a heartbreaking tale of giving up a child for adoption. The young mother sings "call her green for the children who have made her" while noting that the father has abandoned his partner and infant for California because it is "warmer there". Not just loss, but repressed anger too.

California is an iconic destination, either heading towards it in hope, or returning to it, yearning. The song of that name shows traveller Joni out in the world, partying in Spain yet telling the hip crew it is for "a week, maybe two, just until my skin turns brown, then I’m going home to California". That willingness to notice and stay with all the discomfort of unbidden emotion is the core characteristic of Mitchell on Blue. She travels, escapes, stays, parties, flies, but knows—just like Neil Finn in the Crowded House song—that everywhere you go you take the weather with you. Indeed, like Tolkien’s Aragon in Lord Of The Rings, this artist knows "Not all who wander are lost".

The enduring appeal and potency of Blue lies in this indeterminate space between autobiography and observation, between experience and introspection. We see and hear a woman discovering a potency and self-determination uniquely her own. The lover who sings "I could drink a case of you, darling, and I would still be on my feet" is the same Joni Mitchell who, five years later, wrote the wry yet deeply authentic "Coyote" for another classic album, Hejira.

Blue is full of loss and wandering, certainly. Yet sharing the journey is not a downer. In fact it has offered great comfort and catharsis to fellow travellers through the years. Joni Mitchell’s honesty encourages us to find our own voice, to sing our own song.

© Bruce Jenkins—December 2022