American Song
American Song is a podcast that traces the origins and development of American - and ultimately world-wide - forms of modern musical entertainment. Over time, we will trace every major genre from its origins through the current day.American Song looks at the development of our music through the lens of social, political, and economic changes that were occurring in each case, and we'll feature the most important musicians in each genre.Every episode is chock-full of the music we love and where possible, we include archival interviews so you can hear about, in the actual words and voices of these great musicians and singers, the motives and passions that drove their creativity.
American Song
The Singer-Songwriters Part Two: Personal Truth
In these days, when people play fast and loose with truth for the purpose of personal gain at the expense of important things like rights, and even survival, I hope this episode, and the next one help us all regain a little sanity and peace.
Personal Truth takes you on a powerful journey through the birth of the singer-songwriter era, spotlighting artists who didn't just sing about the world—but cracked themselves wide open to show us their own. Starting in the fertile grounds of Greenwich Village’s folk revival, we trace Judy Collins’ leap from classical prodigy to folk icon, discover how her mentorship helped launch the poetic brilliance of Joni Mitchell, and explore how deeply personal songwriting reshaped the music landscape.
From the haunting honesty of Blue to the communal power of We Shall Overcome, and the electric turning points of Dylan and Elton at the Troubadour, this story is as much about music as it is about the courage to be vulnerable. These artists weren’t just performers—they were truth-tellers, risking emotional exposure to connect with something universal.
If you've ever been moved by a lyric that felt like it was written just for you, you’re already part of this legacy. Dive in and discover how raw truth, vulnerability, and fearless authenticity led American music in yet another bold direction.
In this Episode:
MUSIC
Jackson Brown: Lives in the Balance
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Concerto for Two Pianos
Judi Collins
- John Riley
- Barbara Allen
- Loch Lomond
- Both Sides Now
Joni Mitchell
- Both Sides Now
- The Circle Game
- Chelsea Morning
- Cactus (audience recording from The Troubadour)
- Car On a Hill
- Down to You
- River
- Lesson in Survival
Elton John - 60 Years On
INTERVIEWS
Judi Collins
Pete Seeger
Gordon Lightfoot
James Taylor
Elton John/ Joni Mitchell
Nigel Olsen
Links to Related Episodes
The Second Folk Revival: A Passing of the Torch.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1622638/episodes/10030031-the-second-folk-revival-a-passing-of-the-torch
1960’s Folk Music: How the Fire Spread
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1622638/episodes/10030131-1960-s-folk-music-how-the-fire-spread
The Other Side of Fusion: Jazz Rock
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1622638/episodes/12426684-the-other-side-of-fusion-jazz-rock
Join our community and continue your journey through American Song: Visit us on Facebook.
There, you'll get more information, video content, and more about the music and personalities covered in all our episodes.
The singer-songwriters grew out of the ‘60s folk renaiisance that started in Greenwich Village, the same place Bob started. A young woman named Judy Collins was also making a name for herself in that scene, around the same time.
From the start, Collins was a musical prodigee. She got her start playing classical piano; at 13 she was already doing recital performances of Mozart pieces such as his Concerto for Two Pianos and she could have gone that way except that she was attracted to the emotional immediacy of folk artists like Pete Seeger. These were the days of the huge sing-along folk concerts and wanting to move in that direction she traded in her 88 keys for six strings, and recital halls for small clubs in Greenwich Village. In ’61, she released her first album, called A Maid of Constant Sorrows. Judy was 22 years old.
For the next five years, from ’61 to ’65, Judy drove her career down the middle of the folk lane, creating a niche for herself as a talented interpreter of traditional folk songs and covering traditional folk chestnuts like
John Riley: A traditional ballad that tells the story of a woman whose lover returns after a long absence
Barbara Allen: One of the most widely known and performed traditional ballads in the English language. It tells a tragic love story with themes of unrequited love, death, and regret.
Loch Lomond: The folklore that goes along with this song, Loch Lomond, says the song was written after overhearing two captured Scottish soldiers conversing in an English jail cell. One faces execution and the other expects to be returned to Scotland via the "bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.” The one to be executed is telling his comrade they’ll meet again at Loch Lomond, he via the "low road" mearning the After Life and the other via Freedom.
Wild Mountain Thyme: In the late 1700’s, there was an Irish poet named Tannahill who wrote a song called, “Will Ye Go, Lassie” that began with the lines:
“Let us go lassie, go tae the braes o’Balquidder,
Where the blaeberries grow among the bonnie bloomin’ heather.”
Then, in the 1950’s, a Scot, named Frank McPeake, wrote this song, Wild Mountain Thyme that referenced these lines with a totally different melody. This is an interesting song, since It’s an example of the parallel folk movement that was happening in the UK at the same as the US folk movement in the US. England’s folk scene pulled from that country’s very old collection of folk songs just like our movement resurrected early American folk songs like John Henry and Erie Canal. It was one of the reasons some American artists, like Paul Simon, moved to England in those years. Check out the American Song episodes one and two from season 2, in 2022 for more on that! Links are in today’s show notes.
Back to Judi. To grow as an artist, she challenged herself to explore new styles. Like just about everybody else in the sixties, she’d been influenced by the arrival of Bob Dylan first, and then the Beatles, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. It’s crazy to think of those times when all these artists were fresh on the scene, making history as the went. Who wouldn’t have been inspired by that constant flow of inspiration?
Judi’s album, Wildflowers, released in 1967 and had her recording of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now on it. She’d first heard the song over the phone, during a late-night call with Joni.
Joni recalls this story about writing this song. She says,
“I was up in a plane. I was reading Henderson the Rain King, and in the book he was up on a plane flying to Africa and he looked down on clouds and he mused that he looked up at clouds, but he’d never looked down on them before. [You know the line, I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now] So that was where the germ of the idea for the song came from.”
Joni had recently moved from Canada to Greenwich Village to work as a folksinger – where she met Al Kooper. We’ve talked about Kooper before; he was the original founder of Blood Sweat and Tears, and also had cleverly worked his way into playing organ in Dylan’s band during the recording of Like a Rolling Stone. We talked about Blood Sweat and Tears and Al Kooper in my episode, The Other Side of Fusion: Jazz Rock, back in March, 2023. Links are found in today’s show notes along with the other past show links I’m mentioning.
Joni Mitchell: Both Sides Now
As a friend of both women, Kooper was in a position to open doors for Joni and to help Judy continue her growth out of the folk genre. Judy actually released Joni’s song in ’67, and won the Grammy for it in 1969, the same year that Joni released her own – and much differently arranged version of the song!
Between the folk musicians and the singer-songwriters, you had a mentoring sort of relationship. Since the arrival of the British Invasion bands, and the swing away from folk towards electric, heavier rock, their had been a decline in the folk music scene, first occasioned when Dylan plugged in
https://youtu.be/PCGPhzWWgco?si=Wac8mtl9IZ1iwky2 I don’t believe you….
https://youtu.be/a6Kv0vF41Bc?si=73UCKZTb_pBIcW7- Like a Rolling Stone
When he wasn’t leading huge folk sing-alongs at his concerts around the nation, Pete Seeger teaching an entire new generation to play guitar, via his album “The Folksinger’s Guitar Guide”. He started at the most basic levels, how to tune a guitar using a pitch pipe, finger positions for simple chords, how to use a capo - or established artists like Judy Collins who was actively promoting the songs of younger musicians like Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Something new was being cultivated. Joni Mitchell was one of those musicians.
Like some of the others we’ll talk about, Joni was Canadian and she grew up in the Saskatoon, a prairie town in Saskatchewan. Beginning on ukulele because her mother looked down on Country Music, by the late fifties, she was already picking up guitar. She dropped out of her art program at the Alberta College of Art and Design, and began performing folksongs in Calgary coffeehouses before she made it to the Yorkville part of Toronto.
Canada’s answer to Greenwich Village, Yorkville was the incubator for great Canadian talent like Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn. It was here, in Yorkville’s coffee houses, that these young artists developed their skills, experimented, collaborated, and built their early fan bases. For some context, here’s Gordon Lightfoot to tell us about this place in Canadian folk history.
Anyway, this was the place where Joni Mitchell first began making a name for herself. And the song she wrote, but Judi Collins recorded first, Both Sides Now, was a song she played in Yorkville’s folk clubs. Here’s Joni’s own version of the song.
Her other early compositions had a similar feel. Like this one, The Circle Game
And this one, Chelsea Morning
The music called Joni’s music the new wave in folk music, and they marketed her records that way – to folk audiences. This was years before she’d go deeper into jazz, where she would record albums with jazz greats like Charles Mingus or Jaco Pastorius, for instance. Her lyrics – and the lyrics coming from other young musicians who were also playing in those Yorkville clubs, like Leonard Cohen, were a new approach though.
The songs were more introspective. And that was just fine by the critics, as long as the music retained a less polished (Judy Collins) and more traditional feel, and less pop (like Judas/ Dylan was accused of). The hardcore folk fans hoped that Joni, and others could stir new life into folk’s dwindling audience. Joni’s label, Reprise records, specifically nudged the record distribution companies in key folk markets, like Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Dallas and St. Louis, to actively promote her records. A letter from Reprises’ National Sales Manager said, “
Joni, as you probably know, is an extremely important artist for us not only because of theThe singer-songwriters grew out of the ‘60s folk renaiisance that started in Greenwich Village, the same place Bob started. A young woman named Judy Collins was also making a name for herself in that scene, around the same time.
Judy Collins
Mozart Concerto for Two blends into Pete Seeger on banjo
https://youtu.be/KM2WP4DztCo?si=gJUA6uP4t5-qKnQZ&t=96 Mozart
From the start, Collins was a musical prodigee. She got her start playing classical piano; at 13 she was already doing recital performances of Mozart pieces such as his Concerto for Two Pianos and she could have gone that way except that she was attracted to the emotional immediacy of folk artists like Pete Seeger. These were the days of the huge sing-along folk concerts
https://youtu.be/M_Ld8JGv56E?si=qKsFjUPthLBSUFpF We Shall Overcome
and wanting to move in that direction she traded in her 88 keys for six strings, and recital halls for small clubs in Greenwich Village. In ’61, she released her first album, called A Maid of Constant Sorrows. Judy was 22 years old.
For the next five years, from ’61 to ’65, Judy drove her career down the middle of the folk lane, creating a niche for herself as a talented interpreter of traditional folk songs and covering traditional folk chestnuts like
John Riley: A traditional ballad that tells the story of a woman whose lover returns after a long absence
Barbara Allen: One of the most widely known and performed traditional ballads in the English language. It tells a tragic love story with themes of unrequited love, death, and regret.
Loch Lomond: The folklore that goes along with this song, Loch Lomond, says the song was written after overhearing two captured Scottish soldiers conversing in an English jail cell. One faces execution and the other expects to be returned to Scotland via the "bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.” The one to be executed is telling his comrade they’ll meet again at Loch Lomond, he via the "low road" mearning the After Life and the other via Freedom.
Wild Mountain Thyme: In the late 1700’s, there was an Irish poet named Tannahill who wrote a song called, “Will Ye Go, Lassie” that began with the lines:
“Let us go lassie, go tae the braes o’Balquidder,
Where the blaeberries grow among the bonnie bloomin’ heather.”
Then, in the 1950’s, a Scot, named Frank McPeake, wrote this song, Wild Mountain Thyme that referenced these lines with a totally different melody. This is an interesting song, since It’s an example of the parallel folk movement that was happening in the UK at the same as the US folk movement in the US. England’s folk scene pulled from that country’s very old collection of folk songs just like our movement resurrected early American folk songs like John Henry and Erie Canal. It was one of the reasons some American artists, like Paul Simon, moved to England in those years. Check out the American Song episodes one and two from season 2, in 2022 for more on that! Links are in today’s show notes.
Back to Judi. To grow as an artist, she challenged herself to explore new styles. Like just about everybody else in the sixties, she’d been influenced by the arrival of Bob Dylan first, and then the Beatles, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. It’s crazy to think of those times when all these artists were fresh on the scene, making history as the went. Who wouldn’t have been inspired by that constant flow of inspiration?
Judi’s album, Wildflowers, released in 1967 and had her recording of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now on it. She’d first heard the song over the phone, during a late-night call with Joni.
Joni recalls this story about writing this song. She says,
“I was up in a plane. I was reading Henderson the Rain King, and in the book he was up on a plane flying to Africa and he looked down on clouds and he mused that he looked up at clouds, but he’d never looked down on them before. [You know the line, I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now] So that was where the germ of the idea for the song came from.”
Joni had recently moved from Canada to Greenwich Village to work as a folksinger – where she met Al Kooper. We’ve talked about Kooper before; he was the original founder of Blood Sweat and Tears, and also had cleverly worked his way into playing organ in Dylan’s band during the recording of Like a Rolling Stone. We talked about Blood Sweat and Tears and Al Kooper in my episode, The Other Side of Fusion: Jazz Rock, back in March, 2023. Links are found in today’s show notes along with the other past show links I’m mentioning.
Joni Mitchell: Both Sides Now
As a friend of both women, Kooper was in a position to open doors for Joni and to help Judy continue her growth out of the folk genre. Judy actually released Joni’s song in ’67, and won the Grammy for it in 1969, the same year that Joni released her own – and much differently arranged version of the song!
Between the folk musicians and the singer-songwriters, you had a mentoring sort of relationship. Since the arrival of the British Invasion bands, and the swing away from folk towards electric, heavier rock, their had been a decline in the folk music scene, first occasioned when Dylan plugged in
https://youtu.be/PCGPhzWWgco?si=Wac8mtl9IZ1iwky2 I don’t believe you….
https://youtu.be/a6Kv0vF41Bc?si=73UCKZTb_pBIcW7- Like a Rolling Stone
When he wasn’t leading huge folk sing-alongs at his concerts around the nation, Pete Seeger teaching an entire new generation to play guitar, via his album “The Folksinger’s Guitar Guide”. He started at the most basic levels, how to tune a guitar using a pitch pipe, finger positions for simple chords, how to use a capo - or established artists like Judy Collins who was actively promoting the songs of younger musicians like Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Something new was being cultivated. Joni Mitchell was one of those musicians.
Like some of the others we’ll talk about, Joni was Canadian and she grew up in the Saskatoon, a prairie town in Saskatchewan. Beginning on ukulele because her mother looked down on Country Music, by the late fifties, she was already picking up guitar. She dropped out of her art program at the Alberta College of Art and Design, and began performing folksongs in Calgary coffeehouses before she made it to the Yorkville part of Toronto.
Canada’s answer to Greenwich Village, Yorkville was the incubator for great Canadian talent like Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn. It was here, in Yorkville’s coffee houses, that these young artists developed their skills, experimented, collaborated, and built their early fan bases. For some context, here’s Gordon Lightfoot to tell us about this place in Canadian folk history.
Anyway, this was the place where Joni Mitchell first began making a name for herself. And the song she wrote, but Judi Collins recorded first, Both Sides Now, was a song she played in Yorkville’s folk clubs. Here’s Joni’s own version of the song.
Her other early compositions had a similar feel. Like this one, The Circle Game
https://youtu.be/V9VoLCO-d6U?si=cCDFRsbqEsECXtFU
And this one, Chelsea Morning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhr1O2eiWyA
The music called Joni’s music the new wave in folk music, and they marketed her records that way – to folk audiences. This was years before she’d go deeper into jazz, where she would record albums with jazz greats like Charles Mingus or Jaco Pastorius, for instance. Her lyrics – and the lyrics coming from other young musicians who were also playing in those Yorkville clubs, like Leonard Cohen, were a new approach though.
The songs were more introspective. And that was just fine by the critics, as long as the music retained a less polished (Judy Collins) and more traditional feel, and less pop (like Judas/ Dylan was accused of). The hardcore folk fans hoped that Joni, and others could stir new life into folk’s dwindling audience. Joni’s label, Reprise records, specifically nudged the record distribution companies in key folk markets, like Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Dallas and St. Louis, to actively promote her records. A letter from Reprises’ National Sales Manager said, “
Joni, as you probably know, is an extremely important artist for us not only because of the
potential sales she can generate, but because of her universal acceptance by those
in the underground and folk bag….I specifically need your help in getting this LP
exposed in your important accounts. Results indicate that she sells well in those
areas that take a personal interest.”
It worked. Reprise successfully launched Joni and her lyrical approach and stripped-down, acoustic, or folk, sound became the model others would follow.
You also see the emphasis of that first-person “I-ness” in Dylan, but it’s different.
For him it’s more playful and less direct. There’s something transparent
about Joni doing it…It’s not just lyrics either—it’s the way the way the melodies
carry the lyrics and her incredibly delivery. You get the feeling that what you’re hearing is her subjective “Truth”.
We’re listening to an audience recording of Joni playing at the Troubadour in 1972. Let’s do some time-traveling and listen in.
Joni’s ability to communicate on such a personal level is one of the things that made her debut at LA’s Troubadour such an a remarkable event.
Chris Darrow was an important session player in the ‘60s and ‘70s music scene. He was a pioneer in the Country Rock genre, playing with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, recorded with Leonard Cohen, Linda Rondstadt, and James Taylor, and jammed with Gram Parsons, Gene Vincent, Jim Morrison, and Frank Zappa. About her first show there in 1968, Darrow says, “She had a presence, and people
got quiet for her. She didn’t have to ask for it. It came as a result of the presence that she had.
She was obviously going to do something.”
After her first gig there, Billboard published a glowing review that said,
“Singer Joni Mitchell displayed much strength in making her [West]
Coast debut at the Troubadour, Tuesday. Miss Mitchell achieved rapport with her audience. They sat attentively as she spun stories based on human experiences and personalities which have inspired her writing.”
The Troubadour was one of three important clubs for breaking new acts in LA in the late ‘60s. The other two were Ash Grove and McCabe’s. It was special because artists and music industry execs gathered there on a daily basis originally for the purpose of building up the folk music scene. Location-wise, it was close to the Hollywood recording studios and to Laurel Canyon.
James Taylor Remembers 1970 with Joni Mitchell
With a bar that was off to the side, it provided a place to socialize as well as to listen to the new artists. Other places had a adjoining barista bar, but the Troubadour actually poured drinks!
Elton John’s first US gig has gone down in rock history as his early triumph. When I was in high school and college, the rock critic, Robert Hilburn was still writing every Sunday in the LA Times “Calendar” section. This was how I got a lot of my early education in what was happening in music. Hilburn wrote with authority and flair. If he said it, you could believe it.
In 1970, when Elton played that first US gig, Hilburn was there to hear it, and the next day he wrote a piece that launched Elton in the US. In part, he said, “Rejoice. Rock music, which has
been going through a rather uneventful period lately, has a new star. He’s Elton John, a 23-year old Englishman whose United States debut Tuesday night at the Troubadour was, in almost every way, magnificent.” Calling Elton’s music, “staggeringly original,”.
This was a critical night in Elton’s career, and the life of the band. Here’s Elton’ long-time drummer, Nigel Olsson, to tell us more about just what was at stake.
Hilburn’s column ends with him saying, “By the end of the evening, there was no question about John’s talent and potential. Tuesday night at the Troubadour was just the beginning. He’s going to be one of rock’s biggest and most important stars.”
One of the things about Hilburn is that he was never afraid to reveal his fan-status for artists he thought were really worthwhile. I remember reading long articles about Springsteen’s shows at the Forum back in the days when Bruce was still playing four and five-hour shows that even left his fans exhausted!
Car on a Hill
In ’74, after Joni released Court and Spark, Hilburn wrote,
“Now, we have Joni Mitchell's "Court and Spark", a warmly personal, virtually flawless album that may well contain the most finely honed collection of songs and most fully realized arrangements in the singer-songwriter's distinguished career. Part of Miss Mitchell's strength has always been her ability to explore and then honestly reveal - rather than filter, soften or glamorize - her emotions and experiences, both the pleasure and the pain. Too many artists filter experiences to make themselves appear wiser, stronger, more confident. Miss Mitchell, however, allows the vulnerability to be seen.
Thus, there are moments in "Court and Spark" [that are] so tender and exposed that it almost makes you wince from its degree of honesty. Another important strength in Miss Mitchell's work is its balance. She includes both the ups and downs, a bit of the times in which things did work as well as those times in which they didn't. The pessimism and uncertainty may outweigh the optimism, but there is the lingering sense of eventual discovery of the right person.
Down to You
As always, Miss Mitchell's lyrics speak of delicacies, contradictions, frustrations and joys one encounters in the search for love and satisfaction. But her writing seems even more disciplined, her vocal phrasing more certain and her commentary more personal.”
This point that Hilburn makes about the emotional honesty found in Court and Spark is a hallmark of the entire singer-songwriter genre. And Joni always revealed a captivating balance of the yin and yang of fragility AND strength across the breadth of her work.
Nowhere is this sense of vulnerability recast as strength more apparent than on Mitchell’s 1971 album, Blue.
River
For example, "River" is a haunting exploration of the regret and loneliness she was feeling during the Holidays following her breakup with David Crosby. She bares her soul with lines like, "I'm so hard to handle, I'm selfish and I'm sad / Now I just want to skate away on a river".
On the album’s title song, "Blue", her lyrics painted such a raw image of sadness and vulnerability that fellow artist and friend, Kris Kristofferson warned her, “Jesus, Joni! Save something for yourself!”. Mitchell's lyrics are stark and honest. She captures the feeling of being lost and adrift. A master musician as well as a gifted poet, Joni’s simple melody and sparse instrumentation added to the song’s emotional wallop.
The songs on Blue came during a time when Mitchell was feeling emotionally unstable.
In an interview she did with Acoustic Guitar magazine she did in 1996, she said,
“I was opened up. As a matter of fact, we had to close the doors and lock them while I recorded [Blue], because I was in a state of mind that in this culture would be called a nervous breakdown. In pockets of the Orient it would be considered a shamanic conversion.
It begins with a sense of isolation and of not knowing anything, which is accompanied by a tremendous panic. Then clairvoyant qualities begin to come in, and you and the world become transparent, so if you’re approached by a person, all their secrets are not closeted. Like a Gypsy, you get too much of a read on who a person is. It makes you see a lot of ugliness in people that you’d rather not know about, and you lie to yourself and say something nice about them to cover it up. It gets very confusing. In that state of mind I was defenseless as a result, stripped down to a position of absolutely no capability of the normal pretension that people have to survive.”
She continued, saying, “that descent cracked me wide open, and I remain wide open to this day. I don’t want to develop too many defenses. I’m a kind of experiment, a freak of nature. I’m going through the world in an open way trying to trust in a time when human nature is so mangled and corrupt, probably more so than it ever was, where there is no honor, and greed is fashionable. I know the world is wicked; it doesn’t shock me anymore. As a matter of fact the thing that stuns and shocks me is human kindness; I see so very little.”
Knowing that she’s also a gifted painter, it’s not hard to see how she could describe this period by admitting that during this time she, “dreamed I was a plastic bag…with all my organs exposed, sobbing on an auditorium chair at that time. That’s how I felt. Like my guts were on the outside. I wrote Blue in that condition.”
While she has never avoided exposing her true self, in later albums she did learn to explore themes like loss and heartbreak with more maturity. For instance, her song, Lesson In Survival from For the Roses contains these lines:
Lesson in Survival
I went to see a friend tonight
Was very late when I walked in
My talking as it rambled revealed suspicious reasoning
The visit seemed to darken him
I came in as bright as a neon light
And I burned out right there before him
I told him these things I'm telling you now
Watched them buckle up in his brow
When you dig down deep, you lose good sleep
And it makes you heavy company
I will always love you, hands alike
Magnet and iron, the souls
Joni was one of the first artists to take a major emotional risk with her public, baring her emotions and thoughts in such a transparent way. She says, “I started scraping my own soul more and more and got more humanity in it. It scared the singer-songwriters around me; the men seemed to be nervous about it, almost like Dylan plugging in and going electric…Like, ‘Does this mean we have to do this now?’ But over time, I think it did make an influence. It encouraged people to write more from their own experience.”
A lot of people have kind of done the compare and contrast thing with Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. You can see in her quote that even she makes the link. And though she may have been considered the female counterpart to Dylan, her songs were never about preaching from a pulpit. As we go further down this singer-songwriter path, you might start to think that a number of others were!
But while some were focused on this world’s massive problems – and folks they’re still with us and getting bigger by the day – when Joni stepped up to the mic, it was always the things in her own heart that she was sharing. Maybe the greatest part of what she did was to share her truth in a way that made it seem universal. Because that is what great art does.
As we all must do – because the alternative is something we instinctively push off as long as possible, I guess – Joni has aged. And of course, those of us who have followed her have seen read about her valiant fight to recover from the stroke she suffered in 2015. It’s been miraculous and a testament to what a fighter she is! Initially, it left her unable to speak or walk, and music has played an incredibly important therapeutic role. Over the intervening years, she’s relearned how to walk, talk, and even play guitar. Here she is, with Elton John on his podcast, Rocket Hour, talking about how the meaning of Both Sides Now has changed for her
potential sales she can generate, but because of her universal acceptance by those in the underground and folk bag….I specifically need your help in getting this LP exposed in your important accounts. Results indicate that she sells well in those areas that take a personal interest.”
It worked. Reprise successfully launched Joni and her lyrical approach and stripped-down, acoustic, or folk, sound became the model others would follow.
You also see the emphasis of that first-person “I-ness” in Dylan, but it’s different.
For him it’s more playful and less direct. There’s something transparent about Joni doing it…It’s not just lyrics either—it’s the way the way the melodies carry the lyrics and her incredibly delivery. You get the feeling that what you’re hearing is her subjective “Truth”.
We’re listening to an audience recording of Joni playing at the Troubadour in 1972. Let’s do some time-traveling and listen in.
Joni’s ability to communicate on such a personal level is one of the things that made her debut at LA’s Troubadour such an a remarkable event.
Chris Darrow was an important session player in the ‘60s and ‘70s music scene. He was a pioneer in the Country Rock genre, playing with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, recorded with Leonard Cohen, Linda Rondstadt, and James Taylor, and jammed with Gram Parsons, Gene Vincent, Jim Morrison, and Frank Zappa. About her first show there in 1968, Darrow says, “She had a presence, and people
got quiet for her. She didn’t have to ask for it. It came as a result of the presence that she had. She was obviously going to do something.”
After her first gig there, Billboard published a glowing review that said,
“Singer Joni Mitchell displayed much strength in making her [West] Coast debut at the Troubadour, Tuesday. Miss Mitchell achieved rapport with her audience. They sat attentively as she spun stories based on human experiences and personalities which have inspired her writing.”
The Troubadour was one of three important clubs for breaking new acts in LA in the late ‘60s. The other two were Ash Grove and McCabe’s. It was special because artists and music industry execs gathered there on a daily basis originally for the purpose of building up the folk music scene. Location-wise, it was close to the Hollywood recording studios and to Laurel Canyon.
James Taylor Remembers 1970 with Joni Mitchell
With a bar that was off to the side, it provided a place to socialize as well as to listen to the new artists. Other places had a adjoining barista bar, but the Troubadour actually poured drinks!
Elton John’s first US gig has gone down in rock history as his early triumph. When I was in high school and college, the rock critic, Robert Hilburn was still writing every Sunday in the LA Times “Calendar” section. This was how I got a lot of my early education in what was happening in music. Hilburn wrote with authority and flair. If he said it, you could believe it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idQNutmFKwM Elton John 1970; The Troubadour
In 1970, when Elton played that first US gig, Hilburn was there to hear it, and the next day he wrote a piece that launched Elton in the US. In part, he said, “Rejoice. Rock music, which has been going through a rather uneventful period lately, has a new star. He’s Elton John, a 23-year old Englishman whose United States debut Tuesday night at the Troubadour was, in almost every way, magnificent.” Calling Elton’s music, “staggeringly original,”.
This was a critical night in Elton’s career, and the life of the band. Here’s Elton’ long-time drummer, Nigel Olsson, to tell us more about just what was at stake.
Hilburn’s column ends with him saying, “By the end of the evening, there was no question about John’s talent and potential. Tuesday night at the Troubadour was just the beginning. He’s going to be one of rock’s biggest and most important stars.”
One of the things about Hilburn is that he was never afraid to reveal his fan-status for artists he thought were really worthwhile. I remember reading long articles about Springsteen’s shows at the Forum back in the days when Bruce was still playing four and five-hour shows that even left his fans exhausted!
Car on a Hill
In ’74, after Joni released Court and Spark, Hilburn wrote,
“Now, we have Joni Mitchell's "Court and Spark", a warmly personal, virtually flawless album that may well contain the most finely honed collection of songs and most fully realized arrangements in the singer-songwriter's distinguished career. Part of Miss Mitchell's strength has always been her ability to explore and then honestly reveal - rather than filter, soften or glamorize - her emotions and experiences, both the pleasure and the pain. Too many artists filter experiences to make themselves appear wiser, stronger, more confident. Miss Mitchell, however, allows the vulnerability to be seen.
Thus, there are moments in "Court and Spark" [that are] so tender and exposed that it almost makes you wince from its degree of honesty. Another important strength in Miss Mitchell's work is its balance. She includes both the ups and downs, a bit of the times in which things did work as well as those times in which they didn't. The pessimism and uncertainty may outweigh the optimism, but there is the lingering sense of eventual discovery of the right person.
Down to You
As always, Miss Mitchell's lyrics speak of delicacies, contradictions, frustrations and joys one encounters in the search for love and satisfaction. But her writing seems even more disciplined, her vocal phrasing more certain and her commentary more personal.”
This point that Hilburn makes about the emotional honesty found in Court and Spark is a hallmark of the entire singer-songwriter genre. And Joni always revealed a captivating balance of the yin and yang of fragility AND strength across the breadth of her work.
Nowhere is this sense of vulnerability recast as strength more apparent than on Mitchell’s 1971 album, Blue.
River
For example, "River" is a haunting exploration of the regret and loneliness she was feeling during the Holidays following her breakup with David Crosby. She bares her soul with lines like, "I'm so hard to handle, I'm selfish and I'm sad / Now I just want to skate away on a river".
On the album’s title song, "Blue", her lyrics painted such a raw image of sadness and vulnerability that fellow artist and friend, Kris Kristofferson warned her, “Jesus, Joni! Save something for yourself!”. Mitchell's lyrics are stark and honest. She captures the feeling of being lost and adrift. A master musician as well as a gifted poet, Joni’s simple melody and sparse instrumentation added to the song’s emotional wallop.
The songs on Blue came during a time when Mitchell was feeling emotionally unstable.
In an interview she did with Acoustic Guitar magazine she did in 1996, she said,
“I was opened up. As a matter of fact, we had to close the doors and lock them while I recorded [Blue], because I was in a state of mind that in this culture would be called a nervous breakdown. In pockets of the Orient it would be considered a shamanic conversion.
It begins with a sense of isolation and of not knowing anything, which is accompanied by a tremendous panic. Then clairvoyant qualities begin to come in, and you and the world become transparent, so if you’re approached by a person, all their secrets are not closeted. Like a Gypsy, you get too much of a read on who a person is. It makes you see a lot of ugliness in people that you’d rather not know about, and you lie to yourself and say something nice about them to cover it up. It gets very confusing. In that state of mind I was defenseless as a result, stripped down to a position of absolutely no capability of the normal pretension that people have to survive.”
She continued, saying, “that descent cracked me wide open, and I remain wide open to this day. I don’t want to develop too many defenses. I’m a kind of experiment, a freak of nature. I’m going through the world in an open way trying to trust in a time when human nature is so mangled and corrupt, probably more so than it ever was, where there is no honor, and greed is fashionable. I know the world is wicked; it doesn’t shock me anymore. As a matter of fact the thing that stuns and shocks me is human kindness; I see so very little.”
Knowing that she’s also a gifted painter, it’s not hard to see how she could describe this period by admitting that during this time she, “dreamed I was a plastic bag…with all my organs
exposed, sobbing on an auditorium chair at that time. That’s how I felt. Like my guts were on the outside. I wrote Blue in that condition.”
While she has never avoided exposing her true self, in later albums she did learn to explore themes like loss and heartbreak with more maturity. For instance, her song, Lesson In Survival from For the Roses contains these lines:
Lesson in Survival
I went to see a friend tonight
Was very late when I walked in
My talking as it rambled revealed suspicious reasoning
The visit seemed to darken him
I came in as bright as a neon light
And I burned out right there before him
I told him these things I'm telling you now
Watched them buckle up in his brow
When you dig down deep, you lose good sleep
And it makes you heavy company
I will always love you, hands alike
Magnet and iron, the souls
Joni was one of the first artists to take a major emotional risk with her public, baring her emotions and thoughts in such a transparent way. She says, “I started scraping my own soul more and more and got more humanity in it. It scared the singer-songwriters around me; the men seemed to be nervous about it, almost like Dylan plugging in and going electric…Like, ‘Does this mean we have to do this now?’ But over time, I think it did make an influence. It encouraged people to write more from their own experience.”
A lot of people have kind of done the compare and contrast thing with Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. You can see in her quote that even she makes the link. And though she may have been considered the female counterpart to Dylan, her songs were never about preaching from a pulpit. As we go further down this singer-songwriter path, you might start to think that a number of others were!
But while some were focused on this world’s massive problems – and folks they’re still with us and getting bigger by the day – when Joni stepped up to the mic, it was always the things in her own heart that she was sharing. Maybe the greatest part of what she did was to share her truth in a way that made it seem universal. Because that is what great art does.
As we all must do – because the alternative is something we instinctively push off as long as possible, I guess – Joni has aged. And of course, those of us who have followed her have seen read about her valiant fight to recover from the stroke she suffered in 2015. It’s been miraculous and a testament to what a fighter she is! Initially, it left her unable to speak or walk, and music has played an incredibly important therapeutic role. Over the intervening years, she’s relearned how to walk, talk, and even play guitar. Here she is, with Elton John on his podcast, Rocket Hour, talking about how the meaning of Both Sides Now has changed for her.