It made me swoon

by Peter Doggett
Record Collector
November 2001

Biographer Karen O'Brien on the allure of Joni Mitchell

Q. What was your first encounter with Joni Mitchell's music

A. I heard 'Help Me' (from Court and Spark) on the radio some time after it was released, and thought it was an amazing piece of music. It made me swoon - her voice the texture, that mixture of jazz, rock and pop. I'd never heard anything like it before in my life, and it made me want to explore the rest of her catalogue, starting with the mid-70s albums and working backwards. My second wave of enthusiasm began when I heard Dog Eat Dog in 1985; I'd been a little less convinced by her work at the end of the 70's, but that reminded me what a remarkable artist she was.

Q. What was Mitchell's involvement in your book?

A. I never set out to write an authorised biography, because that would have been too restricting. But obviously I was keen to get access to her, as her own perspective would have been very valuable. It proved to be impossible to get new interviews with her: she has signed a three-book deal with Random House, one of which is a memoir, and she didn't feel she could undermine that by talking to me directly. But to my astonishment and delight, she agreed to allow me access to members of her close circle. In return, I gave her the opportunity to read my manuscript, but she said it would feel too weird to read about herself, so she declined. But she was so gracious throughout; I never felt any pressure from her or her manager.

Q. You interviewed her ex-husband, Larry Klein, and ex-lover, Graham Nash. Are they bitter towards her today, or still affectionate?

A. It's a great tribute to her as a woman, and a creative artist, that they are both still so loving towards her. Graham Nash has known her for more than 30 years, and their friendship has survived remarkably well. Larry Klein also still has enormous affection for her: we spoke for many hours, and there was never any hint of antagonism from him. He recognises that she has faults, and that there were obviously difficulties along the way, but he takes the view that the faults are merely part of the personality that he loves.

Q. Voyeuristic readers might be disappointed that you didn't devote more of the book to examining Mitchell's famous romances.

A. I really wanted to get away from the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll idea. Why would I take that approach when she's a woman I admire for her creative output? It seemed like a waste of my energy, and the readers', to be talking at great length about men she had sex with 30 years ago. I didn't want to waste time on gossip. Maybe there isn't enough sex in the book for some readers - though there is some! - but there are more useful things than that. It's so reductionist to talk about women purely in terms of their boyfriends.

Q. Why do you think there has been so little written about Mitchell, compared with, say, Bob Dylan?

A. Because she's a strong woman, and most music writers are men, and I think that many of them closely identify with male performers, and find their work more resonant. You have to take someone's work seriously to write about it, and often I don't think she has been taken seriously - or even if she has, it's as a token woman in a field dominated by Bob Dylan and Neil Young, rather than as a major artist in her own right.

Q. Biographers often grow exasperated with their subjects. Did you finish the book liking, or respecting, Mitchell less than when you started?

A. I retained my affection for her throughout, but it waxed and waned - particularly when I was writing about her very complex relationship with other female musicians. I kept being reminded along the way of the incredibly feisty nine-year-old girl with polio who was told she would never walk again, but decided that she would. That determination surfaces throughout the story; you get flashes of an occasionally irascible woman with extraordinary talent and willpower.

Q. What do you think is Mitchell's greatest artistic legacy?

A. I think she has been one of the great, formative influences in the history of popular music. Though she hasn't necessarily wanted to be seen as a role model for other women, I think she has been exactly that, nonetheless. And not just women: she established the template for independence in music almost from the start. Her success owes nothing to blonde ambition. She refused to use outside producers, insisted on painting her own artwork, constantly took risks, and was prepared to alienate both her record company and her fans. Throughout all that, she has survived. She proves that if you have that incredibly strong drive, then you can propel yourself forward, no matter what obstacles are thrown in your way.

Joni Mitchell: Shadows and Light
Karen O'Brien
Virgin
ISBN 1-85227-976-1

Bob Dylan is one of the few rock writers that Joni Mitchell is prepared to concede as an equal. Dylan has inspired more than 100 books; before now, Mitchell has been the subject of just two. "Unlike Dylan", Karen O'Brien asserts in her 'definitive biography', Mitchell has never set out to create myth and mystique; she has always been too open, too real, too much herself to need masks and mystery." That statement is maybe too sweeping - O'Brien herself chronicles both Mitchell's delight in her black, male ego, Art Nouveau, and her equally studied late 60s stage persona as a naive, giggling hippie. But that absence of myth (allied with some good old-fashioned male sexism) helps to explain why the first biography of this extraordinarily talented and self-willed woman hasn't been written before now.

Drawing on research into Mitchell's Canadian roots, fresh interviews with such significant participants in her life as 'ex-Mr Mitchell', Larry Klein, ex-boyfriend Graham Nash, and ex- manager Elliott Roberts, and a revealing examination of Joni's obsession with the visual arts, O'Brien has written a compelling unpretentious and highly readable book. Though she offers sometimes playful, sometimes provocative asides to the background of her story, O'Brien allows Mitchell life, and work, to speak for themselves; this is a biography, not a personal critique of her subject's music.

That approach pays dividends both in terms of narrative pace, and also with the book's structure, which ends not with the usual panoramic summary of a career that is gently slowing down, but with a richly detailed study of Mitchell's work as a painter. On first reading, the book seems to end abruptly; it's an affect designed to make you stop and think - first that the subject is far from dead, and second that Mitchell's painting has perhaps taken centre-stage in her life from her music.

Not that O'Brien skimps on the more predicable parts of her story, as she tracks Mitchell from teenage rock'n'roll freak to Woodstock-era superstar, jazz-rock experimentalist, and finally the defiantly non-conformist figure of today. O'Brien's version of Mitchell is inspiring and forbidding, endearing and difficult, flamboyant and secret; it's a portrait that Joni herself might recognise.

Record Collector Magazine