Photos by Joel Bernstein
Howdy, SoTW readers. Merry Christmas to all my Christian fellowmen out there. How y’all doing? I do hope all’s well by you and yours.
One of the reasons I enjoy writing this blog so much is that (according to the charter I wrote myself) I can write and say whatever I want, without being concerned about pleasing the audience. But I admit that I do peek at my readership stats on occasion, and am pleased the higher they go.
I’ve figured out over the years (I’m slow, this should have been obvious before I started) that people like to read about what they know. I’d do the same. Normal people prefer familiar music. So a post about ‘Twist and Shout’ is going to garner more hits than the one about the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Women’s Choir.
And guess who has been the most popular subject on Song of The Week over the years? Joni, not surprisingly. If you’ve been following closely, I’ve been walking through her albums, picking one song or two to pontificate on:
- 106: ‘Cactus Tree’ from the relatively obscure first album, inexplicably the most popular posting on my site
- 141: ‘I Don’t Know Where I Stand’ from “Clouds”, the second album
- 163: ‘For Free’ from “Ladies of the Canyon”, the third
- 177: ‘Woodstock’, likewise
- 286: ‘The Circle Game’ , also likewise
- 215: Joni Mitchell, ‘Blue’, the title track from her fourth album, her masterpiece portrayal of heartbreak.
- 277: Electricity, from “For the Roses”, the fifth album
In the posting about ‘Blue’ I talked about how daunting it is to take on a masterpiece. It took me a long time to work up the courage to approach “The Band” and “Pet Sounds”. But having broken the ice with ‘Blue’, we’re going to treat ourselves to address at least one more of the ten glorious tracks. So we might as well go for the very best (without diminishing a whit the wonders ensconced in ‘All I Want’, ‘Carey, or any of the others) – ‘River’, a song about ‘skating away’. Careful, Jeff; careful, Joni; the ice is broken, you don’t want to fall in.
A few live performances by Joni and by James Taylor (the aforementioned heartbreaker):
James Taylor at the Joni Mitchell Tribute Concert, 2001
James Taylor (unattributed)
Joni Mitchell – Live, with lovely photos and videos of Joni in the snow
Herbie Hancock (piano), Joni Mitchell (vocal)
And a favorite of mine,by the Danish rhythm choir Vocal Line.
Joni’s ‘River’ is a moving piece of music. I don’t know many people who would disagree. It juxtaposes Los Angeles vs Saskatchewan, green vs white, noise vs silence, public festiveness vs private grief, desire for the other vs preservation of self. It’s a song about heartbreak and homesickness.
What do we have? “Jingle Bells” seasoned in minor, the simplest joys couched in pain, the irony in the very first chords setting the stage for this vignette of defeat and resignation.
“It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees.”
“They’re putting up trees” would have scanned just as well. But Joni’s December is a killing season, a termination of vitality. Nobody’s sad during Christmas season. Except for those with a broken heart. Within that painful contrast resides her sadness.
“They’re putting up reindeer”. Plastic ones, Made in LaLaLand. In Saskatchewan we have, if not reindeer, then deer, elk, moose and caribou. Real ones. “Singing songs of joy and peace.” They are. Not me. I’m singing Jingle Bells in minor.
What are you doing there, Joni? What keeps you in LA? “I’m going to make a lot of money, then I’m going to quit this crazy scene.” But this year it’s going to be California, “stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song.”
“I wish I had a river I could skate away on.“ What an evocative image. A frozen river, its source somewhere in northern Saskatchewan, flowing those 2000 miles down to the city of fallen angels. But there is no such river. The Saskatchewan River itself flows eastwards for a mere 340 miles, emptying into Lake Winnipeg.
Who among us – even the non-skaters – has not longed for that selfsame river? To escape ‘this crazy scene’, to flee back to the innocence of childhood, security, unconditional love. Did Hamlet not long to “shuffle off this mortal coil”, to escape “the whips and scorns of time”? Did Keats’ Nightingale not seek flight?
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades.
But we all know it’s a fiction. There is no river that will take us ‘back to where we once belonged’. If we were fortunate enough, we found a love “so naughty made me weak in the knees”. But Joni has “lost the best baby that I ever had”. Lost him why? “I’m so hard to handle, I’m selfish and I’m sad.” She knows the score. “I made my baby say goodbye.” No recriminations of him or herself – that’s not the point. Nothing but loss and sadness.
Much ink has been spilled discussing the resonance of “Blue”, its “excruciating candor”, the profound effect it had on women in 1971, on songwriters, on everyone. “If you looked at me [during the recording sessions], I would weep; we had to lock the doors to make that album. Nobody was allowed in.”
From a 1979 interview: “The ‘Blue’ album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either.”
Joni often skates on that thin ice, risking the ridiculous to achieve the sublime. Think about this vocal back-flip. She does indeed transcend, take wing, defying gravity.
She has created for herself and for us a river so long that our own feet can fly us away from this troubled world.
Oh, Joni.
It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees,
They’re putting up reindeer, singing songs of joy and peace .
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on
But it don’t snow here, it stays pretty green.
I’m going to make a lot of money, then I’m going to quit this crazy scene.
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long I would teach my feet to fly.
I wish I had a river I could skate away on.
I made my baby cry
He tried hard to help me, you know, he put me at ease.
He loved me so naughty made me weak in the knees.
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on
I’m so hard to handle, I’m selfish and I’m sad.
Now I’ve gone and lost the best baby that I ever had.
I wish I had a river I could skate away on
Oh, I wish I had a river so long I would teach my feet to fly.
I wish I had a river I could skate away on.
I made my baby say goodbye
It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees,
They’re putting up reindeer, singing songs of joy and peace .
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on…
Great choice, eloquent review.
I remember bringing home a new Joni Mitchell album, Shadows and Light, and thinking “Hey, a lyrics sheet. Great, because there’s no Internet yet. I know she writes good lyrics, so I’ll read the lyrics in advance and then I’ll appreciate the songs better.” Reading, I was greatly disappointed; there seemed to be too much ego. Look how cosmopolitan I am, I can write about the Champs Elysees. Then I put the record on, and I heard the Champs Elysees mentioned (in “Free Man in Paris”) with an overemphatic high note that injected irony and I said to myself “Well, that’s okay then.” I mention it because “River” has a similar ironic high note when it mentions the songs of love and peace. The note returns on “quit this crazy scene” as if to emphasize that making a lot of money and quitting the scene may not be likely and may not even solve anything.
I really appreciated the clip with Herbie Hancock since I haven’t really followed, nor desired to, the latest Joni Mitchel thing. Watching and listening to her singing a live set in the “classic” jazz style gave me a whole new level of respect for her musicianship. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing it was a stretch for her to sing one of her songs this way.
(Saturday Night Live – now let’s sing it in the style of Reggae, Rap, Bach, Schonberg? – only kidding.)
I missed the Joni train back then, wasn’t enticed by too many females on the rock scene besides Linda Ronstadt. My loss. I think “Don’t Know Where I Stand” is a perfect piece of musical alchemy, enchanting and heartbreaking. Yes, Joni is all that.
great song, great review
thanks Jeff
I like this song too. I think the first time I heard it was in a Starbucks which for a long time was one of my favourite places in the world. (I lead an exciting life). I don’t know much about her personally but she seems to be a prickly person. She is very forthright in her negative comments about big names and I saw her doing an informal concert on MuchMusic, Canadian MTV, years ago and she was scolding her mother between songs claiming to have indigenous ancestry, if I remember correctly from Sweden not North America. The mother, apparently, denied it.
Thanks, Jeff. Now you made me cry. I can’t even read the words “wish I had a river…” without the song’s depth of emotion causing my eyes to well up.
“Blue” is justly deserving of all the accolades heaped upon it, Jeff. I’m waiting, though, for you to crack open slightly more recent Joni and apply your unique skill sets of musical acumen, rigorous research, and poetic insight. For starters, “Hejira.” “Coyote,” “Amelia,” “Song for Sharon,” the title cut, and a quintessential road trip wonder of a song, “Refuge of the Roads,” are worthy selections in the Joni canon. Jaco Pastorius’s fretless bass doesn’t hurt the proceedings either. I think we’re always going to hear the detractors: the jazz influences are off-putting; the confessional style grows wearisome. But Joni, ever restless and nakedly honest, is Joni. The lyrical brilliance is undimmed. There’s a reason she stirs so many souls.
By far my favorite Joni Mitchell song. So beautifully arranged. Thank you Jeff for a lovely review. Peace.
Thank you for a wonderful review.
The “jingle bells” quote isn’t actually in a minor key. It’s still in C major. She does do a chord substitution where uses an A minor chord under the melody instead of one of the C major chords, but it’s not in a minor key. It’s C major.