50 Reasons to Love Joni Mitchell’s Blue

(Part 2)

FOR the past five decades, Joni Mitchell’s album Blue has been passed down like a ceremonial rite, a family heirloom, a holistic balm for the rawest kind of heartbreak. To mark its 50th anniversary, The New York Times asked more than two dozen artists and writers to speak about its enduring power. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.

TRACK 1 - “ALL I WANT”

JAMES TAYLOR (musician) — I played on “A Case of You,” “Carey,” “California,” and “All I Want.” Those were songs that Joni had written while she was traveling the previous year, and she wrote most on an instrument called a three-string dulcimer, which is a very mobile and very simple instrument. But it left me a wide-open opportunity to pick whatever chords would work with the melody and her spare accompaniment on the dulcimer. That was great fun for me.

ROSANNE CASH (musician) — James Taylor’s guitar playing, it’s got a weird sound to it. If you were recording an acoustic guitar today, you would go, “Well, that’s too bright and it’s got no reverb or resonance on it. Let’s soften it up. Let’s make it a little darker, warmer sounding.” And yet it was exactly right for what she was singing. And if you hear that guitar sound right now without hearing anything else, you would go, “Oh, that’s from Blue.” This is a weird thing to be a revelation, given my childhood and my family, but I understood for the first time that a woman could be a songwriter. She just laid it out in these almost journalistic lines that were still so poetic, so dark, and I thought, “That’s what I want to do.”

BRANDI CARLILE (musician) — When I was in my early 20s, T Bone Burnett tried to play Blue for me. This is something I’ve since talked to Joni about, and she thinks it’s hilarious. It got to the lyric, “I want to talk to you, I want to shampoo you,” and I was so averse. I was like, “Ugh, turn it off, that is the most sappy, feminine…” At the time, toughness was really important to me. I wanted to have a wide gait and electric guitar and scream and yell. Then I met my wife, who is a Joni Mitchell mega fan. We were driving up in northern Michigan and we brought albums to play for each other. She was playing Blue. And I was laughing about the lyric, and she got upset and insulted by that, and she wanted me to go deeper and understand what it was that I was so averse to. I was like, “It’s just silly, it’s not tough, it doesn’t mean anything.” And she was like, “Do you know what ‘Little Green’ is about?” She told me, and played me the album and didn’t talk to me for like two hours. It was really profound for me. Because not only was I totally falling in love properly for the first time, I was having to re-evaluate what I thought “feminine” meant.

ARLO PARKS (musician) — What I love so much about this song is that it is full of contradiction and conflict. There’s a real sense of exploring what it means to be present and alive in a moment. And there’s the detail in the second verse: “I want to talk to you, I want to shampoo you.” That’s just such a funny, sweet reference to caring about someone in the most specific ways. There’s something about the guitar that feels like an animal, just running around. I think it weirdly mirrors the way she sings, “Traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling.” It feels like she was trying to hold onto something or keep up with something, and she’s journeying within herself.

DANIELLE HAIM (musician, Haim) — (Sings) “When I think of your kisses my mind seesaws …”

ESTE HAIM (musician, Haim) — I always thought it was “my mind sees stars,” like in cartoons when they get knocked unconscious and there’s stars going around their head. Danielle actually corrected me.

DANIELLE HAIM — I always wanted to be the girl with the boyfriend and never was. This is what I would put on and be like, “Oh my God, I want to wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive, do you want to dance with me, baby?” Just the idea of a fun partner to go out and dance with and have fun. We all started out playing drums, so rhythm has always been something we put in our melodies. With Joni, her rhythms are so unique. Even just the way that she plays guitar or the dulcimer, it’s almost a percussion instrument.

TRACK 2 - “MY OLD MAN”

GRAHAM NASH (musician) — I must confess that when Blue was released, I listened to it, of course, and then I didn’t for many, many years. It was an intense time for Joni and I. Obviously there are a couple of songs on the record that I recognize, from when she would write them in the house, that involved me. “My Old Man,” “River.” She finished the album after we parted, but for many months I saw her there writing this stuff. It was a fascinating process to see, I must confess. It’s as if she tore her skin off and just released all her nerves into music.

I was repairing the house in Laurel Canyon, I was actually laying the kitchen floor when I got a telegram from Joan saying that our affair was over, officially. And she put it in a very interesting way. She said, “If you squeeze sand in your hand, it will run through your fingers.” I thought, “got it.” And that was it.

After I processed everything that happened to Joan and I, it took me a couple years, but I then sat down, smoked a big one and really listened again to the record. She is an incredible songwriter, and when she pours her heart out into a song, and it’s about you — it’s this combination of sadness and delight.

Blue still makes me sad.

DANIEL LEVITIN (producer, neuroscientist, author) — For one of my books she and I talked about this state of ambiguity that she had always tried to retain in the chords. Until she found Jaco Pastorius for

Mingus, every bass player insisted on knowing what the chord was, so that they could play the root, because that’s what they were taught to do. And she didn’t want any roots because, like trying to define something with a word, that pinned it down. In “My Old Man,” there’s a lot of points where you don’t know if she’s playing a major or a minor, because she leaves out the third. That’s powerful.

RENÉE FLEMING (musician) — I sang “My Old Man” in a live concert, because it’s perfect for a soprano voice. There are a lot of octave jumps, and that’s not usually the realm of pop unless you’re a virtuosic singer. She really had that extreme vocal range.

She’s been a touchstone my entire adult life. I’m sure I wanted to be her: that she wrote everything, that this was personal to her. It was very uncomfortable to be a feminist at that time, when it was not a positive word. And Joni Mitchell was just living it. She didn’t talk about it. She just lived it. You felt that she went her own way.

DANIEL LEVITIN — Very few artists have accomplished what she did, which was to burrow into so many people’s sense of self. Joni got right into people’s emotional centers in the brain.

TRACK 3 — “LITTLE GREEN”

JUDY COLLINS (musician) — I was always intrigued with “Little Green” because it is a story that touches my heart. It’s all about the relationship between mothers and children. She gave up a child; I knew because it was, let’s say, bandied about between a few women that I knew and a couple of guys in New York who were very close to her. But it’s something that she was not talking about at that time, openly. And after Blue, I think writing the song must have created a window through which she could see that it was more than all right to talk about. It was essential to talk about. And then she was able to discover her daughter and have a relationship with her. It’s a disaster followed by a miracle, which is what we love in songs, don’t we?

DAVID CROSBY (musician) — “Little Green” expresses a vulnerability in her that I did not think she would be willing to do in front of the world, and I was amazed that she did. She doesn’t pull her punches, man. And she doesn’t pull her punches on herself, either. She understands that she’s caused pain.

MUSTAFA (musician) — What she taught us through her catalog is how to honor every feeling. There’s such a rich melancholy, but then the melancholy was so beautiful that it was something that you wanted for yourself as well. She was almost like the rapper of folk music. The narratives were so rich and so colorful. It is all incredibly beautiful, but it felt like stream of consciousness, like a freestyle. It feels like there’s no editing between her and the song.

CORINNE BAILEY RAE (musician) — Carole King had a child early, and she used to drop the child off in the day care at the Brill Building, which I think was probably just a kind of playpen behind the reception desk or something. And then she and her partner would just go upstairs and work all day. Because they had to work and that was their job — songwriter. But if you want to be Joni Mitchell the touring artist, at that time that requires you to not have a baby with you. I can’t imagine the sort of emotional wrench of feeling like, “I’ve got all this music inside me and I want to free it, and I want to travel, I want to see the world, I want to fall in love.” I can’t imagine that, but also: “I have this child, and I have to look after them and protect them.” I feel like that must’ve been a weight for her, in terms of feeling she had to have made the right choice. She has to make it work.

JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND (musician) — The year I graduated college I was living in the city with my friend Nancy, and we listened to Blue all the time. We were trying to make it in New York but not really able to accomplish anything on our days off because we would drive down to the Jersey Shore to take care of her mom, who had cancer. Her mother was the person I based my character Kiki off, years later. Our favorite song on the album at the time was “Little Green” — we’d just listen to it over and over. One time we were stoned and Nancy was like, “A little green, that’s all we need — just a little money, honey!” Obviously, we all know what the song is about now, but it was weird how, to us, that song became about money. But then when I was listening to the record more recently, I realized that so much of the record is about money. She’s always talking about things and, you know, in “River,” “I’m gonna make a lot of money, then I’m gonna quit this crazy scene.” It’s about rich hippies, basically. Even now, when she makes appearances, she’s basically always wearing Issey Miyake. I mean, she’s a classy broad.

TRACK 4 — “CAREY”

RUSS KUNKEL (musician, played drums on the album) — Something most people don’t really give her enough credit for is that she’s a great rhythm player. I mean, if she played drums, she would be a great drummer. If you just listened to any one of the songs, listen to “Carey,” the rhythm of it is right there.

STEPHEN STILLS (musician) — I just remember finding the songs incredibly challenging, and then I would relax and suddenly realize that it was actually quite simple. Playing bass on “Carey” was a matter of happenstance, because I actually could understand the underpinning in all those weird tunings. I was absolutely mad for her. She just had this thing that was ethereal and gorgeous and down to earth and loving and hard-core. One time we were at a party and she came up behind me and then she starts running her fingers through my hair, which is very soft and fine. And someone said, “Joan, what are you doing?” And she said, “I’m reacquainting myself with Stephen’s hair.” With a look that said, don’t ask another question.

JUDY COLLINS — One of the lines is “My fingernails are filthy, I got beach tar on my feet.” Who would write that in a song, but Joni Mitchell? It’s an amazing turn of phrase.

GRAHAM NASH — I didn’t enjoy “Carey.” It’s not fun to have your old lady off on some Greek island with another man. But I did get the kitchen floor done.

TRACK 5 — “BLUE”

BONNIE RAITT (musician) — I can’t think of another piece of music that touches me in the same way. I was so amazed at the melding of melody and the chords that she chooses. And it’s so stripped bare with just the piano. The bridge especially spoke to me because that’s right where I was at then. You know, “acid, booze” and “grass.” I had just been dumped into that whole world, being a young adult and taking a look around. It was still very enticing and very intoxicating. I was only 21 and she was holding a lantern to what was going to happen to me in my life.

CHAKA KHAN (musician) — It was a good piece for me to listen to when I got off the stage and back on the tour bus, and I’ve got on my nightgown and I’m lying on the bed and the bus pulls off in the night. On the road, many times I contemplated just throwing this (expletive) in the pail. Once or twice, I thought about ending it all. I was that depressed. And she pulled me back.

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT (musician)

— I’ve sung many of her songs now, and each one is its own wild journey that you have to completely dedicate yourself to. There’s no tossing off a Joni Mitchell song. And arguably, “Blue” is one of the summits. I was actually quite afraid of singing it for a long time. I was set to, for her 75th birthday, and it was really daunting. Not so much because it’s so difficult but just because of her interpretation. It’s so unique, personal and kind of dramatic. It’s almost like a sled that you get on, and then you just go down the hill and hopefully not fall off.

WAYNE SHORTER (musician) — She called me to play with her, and when we started talking, she talked like a painter. And she played sort of like that.

JAMES TAYLOR — That was written after we parted company. I find that difficult to separate from the way I feel about the song. It’s a darker song. “Crown and anchor me/Or let me sail away.” I can’t tell you anything other than that it has a deep impact. — © 2021 The New York Times

(To be continued.)