Reckless
Daughter: A Portrait Of Joni Mitchell
Author:
David Yaffe
Publisher:
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
420
pages, including: Preface, Notes, Acknowledgments, and Index
This
volume, by David Yaffe, professor of humanities at Syracuse
University, is largely based on a series of interviews with Joni
Mitchell and other musical colleagues, friends and enemies of Joni in
the music industry, and others, over the course of several years up
until 2015. Yaffe, of
course, consults other written sources as well.
Roberta
Joan Anderson was born in Fort Macleod, Alberta, the daughter of
Myrtle McKee a teacher and William Anderson a military man and later
a grocery store executive. She was an only child.
Joni
discovered at an early age that she thought her parents had bad
judgement, were rather conservative, and lacked vision.
In
her early years she lived in Maidstone, North Battleford, and
Saskatoon—all in Saskatchewan.
She
was critical of the academic system—hated learning by rote, and
said teachers taught students what to think rather than how to think.
Her favourite things were dancing and art.
Although
she was not involved in music at an early age; she had friends who
were and she attended music festivals which they participated in; and
she developed the capacity to analyze music by observing judges.
As
a Sunday School student Joni was sceptical about the Bible. Her
Sunday School teacher couldn’t answer her question: “Who was
Cain’s wife?” She thought there were things missing in the
biblical stories—that they were somehow incomplete.
In
school, most likely her favourite teacher was Arthur Kratzmann. He
taught in a rather unorthodox way. However, even though he had
perhaps higher expectations of Joni and was critical of her work; it
was because he thought she had much potential as a writer.
When
she was ten, Joni was diagnosed with polio and spent some time in a
Saskatoon polio colony. The polio strengthened Joni’s endurance and
determination to defeat it. Enduring and overcoming polio may have
led Joni to identify with the biblical story of Job—whom she
eventually wrote a song about on
her Turbulent Indigo
album,
called “The Sire of Sorrow (Job’s Sad Song).”
While
in high school Joni became a bit of a tomboy and started to play a
ukulele, which her friends hated.
After
high school Joni studied for a year at Alberta College of Art and
Design in Calgary. She got pregnant and gave birth to a daughter out
of wedlock. She eventually agreed to sign the papers to let her child
be adopted.
She
moved to Toronto, met and married Chuck Mitchell; and began to write
and sing at various venues. She divorced Chuck Mitchell and continued
to improve as a singer-songwriter and ended up in the United States.
Joni
was influenced by Bob Dylan’s personal narrative style of
songwriting.
Judy
Collins recorded Joni’s songs and introduced Joni and Leonard Cohen
at the Newport Folk Festival. Joni had an affair with Leonard, and
later an affair with David Crosby.
Yaffe,
through
a series of interviews with Joni and several other musicians provides
the historical contexts, influences, experiences, etc., behind Joni’s
songs and albums. He provides detailed accounts of the process of
recording albums.
Many
musicians recognized and praised Joni as a brilliant, gifted
singer-songwriter—indeed, even the word genius has been employed to
describe her music.
The
irony however is that: “Joni thought of herself as a painter first,
a musician second.” (p. 86)
Crosby,
Stills and Nash were formed in Joni’s living room house in Laurel
Canyon. Joni and Graham Nash were in love with each other; Nash
wanted to marry Joni; but she broke away from their relationship
because she feared ending up in a traditional housewife role and her
music career would suffer or even end.
Joni’s
Blue album
has become her best selling one—over 10 million were sold in the
U.S. alone. On it, she bares her soul and is perhaps most
confessional of all her albums.
After
her Blue album,
Joni was still struggling with depression, and she bought a stone
cottage on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast—living a quiet,
reclusive life for a year. Here she wrote songs for her For
the Roses album.
Joni’s
next album, Court
and Spark moves
in a different direction from her previous albums. In Court
and Spark, Joni’s
songs reflect influences of jazz and blues. The album sold over two
million copies in its first year.
Over
the years Joni has produced a brilliant, creative open tuning method
of sound that has influenced and inspired many musicians as well as
attracted many listeners to her music. Although
she was popular as a folk singer-songwriter, Joni also experimented
and developed her
career in the genres of jazz, techno-pop, electronic and rock.
Joni’s
successful career as a singer-songwriter has come at a cost. She has
suffered the pain of broken relationships; in the past she was
addicted to cocaine; she smoked four packages of cigarettes a day and
lost her soprano
voice; in 2015, she was unconscious with an aneurysm and had
emergency brain surgery; among other factors.
Although
I appreciated many of the stories behind some of Joni’s songs and
albums and
the research involved in including them in this volume;
occasionally
I felt Yaffe focussed more on others’ perceptions of Joni than
Joni’s
own point-of-view.
It
also seemed that at times Yaffe went overboard with the name-dropping
game leaving this reader wondering why. One further critique: Yaffe’s
written sources at times seem to be rather sparse and dated. For
example, I was at a loss to find any up-to-date written material
sources cited by Yaffe in the last couple of chapters.
All
things considered,
Reckless Daughter: A Portrait Of Joni Mitchell
is a worthwhile read—profiling one of the most gifted, authentic,
rebellious and creative musicians of our time.
