Joni Mitchell's Biography

Author David Yaffe is an unabashed Joni Mitchell fan, and his admiration oozes in nearly every paragraph of his 376-page biography, Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell. As a reader who knew little about Mitchell aside from her musical output from 1970 through the early 90s, I found this book to be an enlightening read that offered a glimpse into how Mitchell developed creatively, broke down barriers, explored new terrain, and how the difficulties she experienced in her personal life fed her art. Still, at times Yaffe’s love becomes overbearing, his writing devolving into a fawning fit of approbation.

Yaffe certainly knows his subject, and the book is buoyed by direct quotes from Mitchell herself, as well as many of her ex-lovers, fellow artists and friends, not to mention concert and album reviews from publications as Mitchell’s career unfolded. Fortunately, Yaffe doesn’t gloss over Mitchell’s less admirable qualities, allowing her cantankerous personality to barge through as she blasts the likes of Thomas Dolby, Joan Baez, ex-husband Larry Klein, and even her daughter, with whom she reunited thirty-three years after placing her up for adoption. The most revealing remark in the book may be from Klein, who concludes, “I think that the seed of the angry, narcissistic element of her personality was always there, but I think that it was a gradual process of that part of her growing, and the curious and joyful part gradually receding.”

Too many biographies are too thin on the creative process and too robust on private life (Daniel Lanois’s autobiography being Exhibit A), but Yaffe may be the first author I critique whose summary of an artist’s output becomes too much at times, especially as he describes Mitchell’s career of the late 70s that delved deeper and deeper into jazz influences and esoteric lyrics. When a subject’s lyrics are obscure, more grounded prose would be helpful, but some of Yaffe’s detailed analyses of Mitchell’s lyrics are as hazy as the source. Consider the following description of the final verse of “Paprika Plains” off of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter:

“Changing weather becomes changing rhythms. Now the disco ball is shining on the dancers, illuminated by an artificial globe. It’s a continuum. She’s still as ‘wide-eyed open to it all’ as she was when she was ‘three feet tall.’ Everywhere she looks, she sees patterns and makes poetic images out of them. Like a medicine ball, the mirrored ball is moving, yet it is also a center, like coming back to middle C. That mirrored ball shines on everyone.”

This kind of writing bogs the book down.

But there are other moments when Yaffe hits the nail on the head. When describing the effect that Mitchell’s reimagining of her classic song “Both Sides Now” in 2003 had on the orchestra and conductor Vince Mendoza, Yaffe writes:

“The arranger and the musicians were losing it, but Joni was smiling. She had them exactly where she wanted them. She knew she had achieved spectacular theater just by getting older and going back to a song people thought they knew.”

Simple and straight forward, but effective. 

The coolest tidbit I learned was that the line from Led Zeppelin’s ”Going to California” – “to find a queen without a king/they say she plays guitars and cries and sings” – is a reference to Joni and her first track off her first album, “I Had a King.” I wish I’d known this when I was a 12 year-old putz claiming Zeppelin to be the greatest band of all-time.

It’s funny that certain words stand out when reading a book, and in Reckless Daughter Yaffe’s love for the word ebullient is almost as apparent as his love for Mitchell. If I had a digital copy of the book, I’d do a quick count. And he refers to Mitchell on several occasions as a “goddess,” which – to me – reads over the top, as if he’s projecting his own fantasies with the younger Mitchell. That’s quibbling on my part, but there are meatier grievances, particularly those pages where Yaffe reveals his own prejudices. His blanket statement about 80s music being “the aural equivalent of fluorescent lighting” is, of course, ridiculous. Let’s not forget that in the 80s many of Mitchell’s peers released some of their best work: James Taylor, Paul Simon and Jackson Browne among them. Mitchell didn’t. It was her choice to follow trends, but there was nothing inherently bleak about the 80s music scene. Great music was there for the taking. Mitchell didn’t create much, if any. 

And Yaffe inexplicably critiques artists of that decade: “If Nietzsche was disgusted by Wagner, what would he have made of Hall and Oates, or Phil Collins? The slickness of the decade even plagued music that might have otherwise been good. The standards, in other words, were low, and the people were sheep.”

Ouch. Okay, Yaffe, you got your licks in, but I confess without shame: I would rather listen to 1980s Phil Collins – and hell, even 1980s Hall and Oates – over 1980s Joni Mitchell any day of any week of any year. Don’t blame these guys on Joni’s poor output that decade

Still, Reckless Daughter is a good read and it educated me on several blind spots I had regarding Mitchell’s discography. One habit I employ that I would recommend to anyone reading a book about music: have your streaming app handy. It took me a while to finish Mitchell’s biography because every other page led me to listen to another song on Napster, and there are some gems I hadn’t heard before, or at least hadn’t paid much attention to: most notably, “I Had a King” and my new favorite, “Roses Blue.”

Yep, those are old songs. What can I say? I’m a melody guy, and when it comes to heartfelt lyrics and melody, you can’t do much better than Joni Mitchell’s first decade of recordings.

Guitars, Gibson and Sonar

Last summer the rock music industry was all abuzz after the Washington Post reported on the decline of the guitar, an instrument whose sales are down by a full third in the last decade and whose retailers are drowning in debt (don’t be surprised if Guitar Center and Sam Ash go the way of Blockbuster and Circuit City). Virtually every musician I know read the article, and many agreed with its conclusion: that music today isn’t generating the guitar heroes necessary to sustain sales. Gone are the days of Hendrix, Clapton, Page, Vaughn and Van Halen, and as a result young talent is gravitating toward beats and loops rather than six stringed instruments.

There’s another issue that wasn’t touched on in the Washington Post: why buy a new guitar when the market has been flooded with superior used instruments? Poke around on-line forums and you’ll find a universal conclusion that a new Gibson Les Paul is widely inferior to one built three decades ago, and as the aging baby boomers shed the guitars they used to shred, there are deals to be had.

I’m not really a guitar player, so the above would seem not to have a direct impact on me, except that I am a DAW user (that’s Digital Audio Workstation for you novices out there), and last week I learned that the software I’ve been using for over twenty years is being discontinued by – of all things – a guitar manufacturer: the aforementioned Gibson, who bought out Cakewalk – the company that produces its flagship DAW software, Sonar – in 2013. Guitar sales had been declining, cost-cutting measures had already been adopted, and the thought was that Gibson needed to diversify into consumer electronics and software. Since then, it seems that in addition to screwing up their guitars, the company is now screwing up other sides of their business.

At least that appears to be the consensus on-line. Check out this blog and you may agree that Gibson – in addition to bungling a valued piece of software – handled the discontinuation of Sonar poorly, giving little notice to its users and collecting money for recent upgrades and “lifetime” subscriptions for products that were about to be shelved.  

Depending how you look at it, my having to learn an entirely new DAW at a point in my life when all I want to do is record music without having to think about it can be directly attributed to the dearth of guitar heroes today that resulted in the diversification and mismanagement of the premier guitar manufacturer.

Damn you, guitarists, or lack thereof!

I purchased my first Cakewalk software in 1995 (back when the company was called Twelve Tone Systems), and four short years later I was producing entire albums using Cakewalk on my Compaq computer running Windows 97. It was a time of slow processors and tiny hard drives, when each song I recorded had to be stored on rewritable CDs costing over $20 a piece (remember the CD manufacturer, Smart and Friendly?). We’ve come a long way since then, and early next year I’ll complete my tenth and last album using Cakewalk software. Then it’s off to new horizons as I devote valuable time to learning another DAW – likely Cubase. 

It’s been a good run, but it’s a run that shouldn’t have ended this soon.

Lovett and Hiatt in Waukegan

The mutual admiration and banter between Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt at their duo acoustic show in Waukegan’s Genesee Theatre on Friday night was almost as much fun hearing as the music itself. Both sporting stylish sportscoats and ties, Lovett and Hiatt sat down in their respective chairs and stayed there for the entire evening, trading songs back and forth and occasionally adding an accompanying guitar or backup vocal to each other’s performances, but always adding witty repartee between songs. Of the 160 minute performance, I’d guess that a full third of that time was Lovett and Hiatt chatting with each other in their slow, dry delivery, much like a James Taylor or Randy Newman.

I am more familiar with Lovett’s songs than Hiatt’s, but had always admired the latter’s soulful, swampy voice and his uncanny ability to stay under the radar yet command respect from musicians whom I admire. But if a newbie to Hiatt’s music were to base his opinion solely on Friday’s performance, he would likely be at a loss as to why or how Hiatt managed to attract attention. Opening with “Master of Disaster,” Hiatt immediately pushed his range to its limits, screeching out vocals that barely resembled notes, and while some of the rough edges smoothed out over the course of the evening, it was clear that he was either having a bad night or was no longer able to hit the notes in their original keys. There is no shame in this, but there is an expectation for musicians to adjust the keys or the melodies to adapt to their aging voices. Hiatt played most of his tunes with a capo, so lowering the songs by a half step or two would have been an incredibly easy thing to do. Unfortunately, he grinded it out for the evening, and his performance suffered as a result.

The contrast between Hiatt’s opening performance and Lovett’s “Creeps Like Me” couldn’t have been wider, as Lovett’s smooth tenor sounded strong and unstrained and remained so for the rest of the show, and the contrast wasn’t limited to each other’s vocal abilities. Hiatt talked about having to solo regularly with Ry Cooder’s band back in the early 80s when Lovett first saw his friend perform, and how terrifying that had been. Lovett responded that he always found soloing terrifying. As such, Hiatt took all the leads of the evening, but I found his guitar playing clunky and sloppy. I’ve played with some excellent guitarists in my life, and Hiatt wouldn’t rank among any of them. As is often the case with live acoustic guitar, the sound when strumming was overpowering and mid-rangy, often masking the lyrics of the songs, and Lovett’s picking went over better, allowing his vocals to shine through.

As for the songs, both performers are excellent craftsmen, particularly when it comes to funny, witty tunes, though I would have loved to have heard some of Lovett’s more heartbreaking compositions such as “Road to Ensenada” or a more up-tempo song like “It Ought To Be Easier.” Instead, he stuck largely to blues-based or funny songs, the most effective being “Her First Mistake,” a gem from 1996. Glancing at the set lists from this tour, the songs between performances vary significantly, so it looks like each show is one of a kind, much like these artists.

This was the first time I saw either of these musicians perform, but it was the second time I purchased tickets to see Lovett. Back in July of 2001, my wife and I were to see him perform at Ravinia on a sweltering weeknight. We had lawn seats, and I was kind of dreading the insane traffic, having to find a place to sit and sweating my ass off only to fight the traffic again on the way home. To add a little wrinkle to the evening, my wife was three months pregnant and not feeling all that great. As we were about to walk out the door, she mentioned something about not having to find a good seat because at Ravinia lawn seats aren’t in view of the stage.  I did a double take. “What?” “If you’re in the lawn seats you just hear the music. You can’t actually see the stage.” I contended then, and I contend now, that that is the stupidest setup for a concert venue in the history of mankind.

I pulled the plug. We stayed home. Sixteen years later we sat in the twelfth row of a small theater, and in addition to hearing an honest, uncluttered performance, we actually got to see the human marionette’s smile stretching out wide and strong in response to his buddy’s goofy remarks. It was worth the wait.

Sports Writing as good as the Watching

There’s a current sports columnist whose prose harken back to the glorious baseball writings of Roger Angell, whose work I hadn’t known until my wife purchased a book called Game Time: A Baseball Companion – a fine, fine read if you like baseball history – and in our current environment of immediacy and “just the facts, Ma’am,” it’s easy to overlook quality work that sometimes appears on the web. Two weeks ago the Cubs and Nationals engaged in an epic battle for game 5 of the NLDS, and Yahoo sportswriter Jeff Passan published a piece with as much beauty, poetry and gravitas as the game itself. The Cubs didn’t clinch the series until 1:15 AM Eastern Time, and Passan published his piece less than four hours later. It would have taken me weeks to produce something as good, and even then it would probably fall short. This guy can write well and write fast. 

And I know, this is what great journalists have been doing for decades, but in a world when news is published as it happens, one revelation at a time, full of errors and retractions, typos and grammatical mistakes, it’s refreshing to know that a guy like Passan can pull off a feat that few are willing to pay for these days. Kudos to Yahoo Sports for shelling out some cash for quality. 

I happened upon Passan’s essay by chance after the Cubs victory, but now I seek out his material, and this morning I was yet again rewarded after last night’s incredible Game 2 of the 2017 World Series, an 11-inning victory for the Astros – their first World Series win in franchise history – and among the best baseball games I’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing.

Baseball lends itself to grandiose writing, perhaps more than other sports – something about the pacing of the game, with pauses between each pitch – and it would be easy to overdo it with the writing equivalent of John Facenda’s deep baritone voice narrating an NFL film, and although Passan occasionally dips his toes in the waters of grandiloquent prose (comparing October baseball to a “feral animal best left to carve whatever circuitous path it pleases”), most of the time he just writes really good sentences – nothing flashy, but more than “just the facts, ma’am.” Consider the following:

The fortuity that favored the Dodgers in the third inning, when Bregman’s RBI single bounced off the brim of Taylor’s cap in center and caromed to Pederson instead of scooting by, had evened out by the grace of Diaz being in the right place at the right time.

Nice. Yes, the facts are there, but they’re there in a way that’s pleasant to read.

During the last week I’ve had the pleasure of watching two of the greatest endings to sports games I’ve even seen. One was last night. The other was last Thursday, when the Raiders had two game-winning touchdowns called back in the final seconds, only to score another one – this time official – to win 31–30. Unfortunately, Jeff Passan doesn’t write for football, and nothing I found on-line stood out as anything more than a decent summary of the game.  Perhaps good writers gravitate toward America’s Pastime the way good musicians do Bach, but I have to think that any sport can lead to writing that warrants our attention.

In the meantime, I’m going to tune into the remaining World Series games when I’m able to, and to Jeff Passan's writing either way.

So long, Tom Petty

My earliest memory of Tom Petty is watching the Heartbreakers perform “Change of Heart” on Saturday Night Live in 1983. The anger of this song spoke to me. Even as a 15 year-old, I sensed that the ladies didn’t exactly dig me, and a lyric that said – in essence – “Screw you, I’ll be fine without you” felt might satisfying to a brooding teenager, not to mention that as an aspiring keyboardist I dug the sounds of Benmont Tench, always tasteful, never overplaying.

Two years later, while washing dishes at Seigo’s Japanese Steakhouse in Brookfield, Wisconsin, a strange song with a sitar, synth drums, and the inimitable twang of Tom Petty came on the radio, as the band had switched gears with “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” A few months later my buddy Jim and I attended his show at Alpine Valley (with Til Tuesday opening) and yes, the Southern Accents tour featured a horn section and a huge Confederate Flag that seem incomprehensible and tasteless in hindsight, but for an ignorant 17 year-old the power of the show hit home. “Hey, hey, hey. I was born a rebel.” Fuck, yeah. I left the concert feeling empowered and emboldened…and then I got my first speeding ticket from the Wisconsin’s finest on the way home and learned that I was anything but.

Flash forward two years, and Petty was back at Alpine Valley (I believe with the BoDeans opening, my buddy Kurt in attendance with me), and the satisfying vitriol was back with my favorite Petty song of all time – “Jammin’ Me.” Yeah, man. “Give ‘em all someplace to go.” Few words were more satisfying to my young-adult self. 

I didn’t see Petty perform again until 2003 at the intimate setting of the Vic Theatre in Chicago. Petty had aged and mellowed somewhat and I had aged and mellowed somewhat, now a father of three. Allow me illustrate by sharing my two most vivid memories of that show:

1)      Petty saying something like, “This one’s for those who are no longer with us,” before playing “Handle With Care.” By then, Roy Orbison and George Harrison were gone, and just a few months earlier bassist Howie Epstein had died as well. It was a somber moment.

2)     Me wishing to God that the encore would end because my feet were killing me after standing for about four hours on a concrete floor.

Yep, the vitriol was gone, and now all I wanted was some Advil and a good night’s sleep.

I’d lost track of most of Petty’s releases over the past few decades. I paid modest attention to Wildflowers and never got back on the bus, but there’s no denying the fact that the Heartbreakers fed the soul of my youth.

So long, Tom. Rest in peace.

And to music fans everywhere: brace yourselves. Petty, Bowie, Prince, Emerson, Lake, Michael...these are only the beginning. It’s going to be a rough, rough ride.