Joni Mitchell, born Roberta Joan Anderson, grew up on the Canadian prairies where her father worked for a grocery chain and her mother taught school.

The family lived in several small towns dotting the oceans of wheat or snow before eventually settling in Saskatoon. There Joni spent most of her school years, displaying an early interest in painting and poetry, being blessed with an English teacher who encouraged her in the latter pursuit.

In her teens Joni learnt to play the ukelele, and convinced a few people of her talent for singing, by playing for free in the local coffee shops. But painting was still her first love and after finishing school she left home for art school in Calgary, at this time hoping to become a professional illustrator. She carried on singing though, this time at the Depression, Calgary's best known coffee house.

Mariposa Festival

The first year at art school over, she went east to the annual Mariposa Folk Festival in Toronto, the biggest event of the folk year and Canada's equivalent of Newport. While there she finally made a decision to devote herself to music, and instead of returning to college she found work as a salesgirl to earn the money for a performer's license.

Yorkville, Toronto's Greenwich Village, was at the this time bubbling over with folk talent. It was the period after Dylan's breakthrough, when folk suddenly seemed to have broken free of its traditional straight jacket and to be talking directly about 'live' issues to its young audiences. It was somehow fitting that Toronto should have been the centre of all this, for as a city it straddles the fence between North America and Europe, more European than New York, more American than Montreal. There the essentially urban music of the mid-60s met the Canadian cultural emphasis on nature and simplicity - the prairies came to Desolation Row.

Also in Yorkville around this time were Neil Young, David Clayton-Thomas, members of Steppenwolf, Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy St Marie, Phil Ochs and Feliciano, among others. Mostly unknown at this time, they were to form much of the Canadian invasion that had such an influence on the American and British markets of the late 60s and early 70s.

Joni played there for a time and met the man who was to be her husband for a while, Chuck Mitchell. After a time they left for New York to play the clubs there and, gaining some recognition, they expanded their horizons and went out on the Eastern States' folk circuit. In the process the marriage broke up, pictured in one of Joni's songs as: 'I had a King…who carried me off to his country too soon'. In the professional sphere though, things were going well for her. She was getting radio and TV engagements and eventually found her songs being recorded by nationally known artists like Judy Collins and Tom Rush. Elliot Roberts and Joel Dean asked to manage her, got her a Reprise recording contract, and sent her out on tour. Around this time she was introduced to David Crosby, then in transit from the The Byrds to Crosby, Stills and Nash, who offered to produce her first album. It appeared in the summer of 1968, and she hasn't looked back since.

Romantic Sadness

During the next 18 months, Joni established herself with three albums: Song to Seagull, Clouds and Ladies of the Canyon. All of them showcased her beautifully expressed singing, her fairly unorthodox but also unobtrusive guitar work, and her talent for writing melodies that repaid repeated listening - even if mood-wise they lacked range, generally centring on romantic sadness.

Two main themes illuminated the songs at this point. The first was the bitterness of love's passing, and her perceptive handling of this theme was one of the main things that set her apart from the common pack. The simple chorus of 'I Had a King', for example:

'I can't go back there any more
You know my keys don't fit the door
You know my thoughts don't fit the man
They never can, they never can…'

…puts a common situation as neatly as can be. Or from 'Both Sides Now':

'I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all'

The fall out from such situations is also much in evidence. There's 'Marcie' waiting for the letter that's never going to come, there's another girl who's 'heart is full and hollow like a cactus tree, while she's so busy being free'.

Also on this side of the coin is the nightmare world depicted in 'Nathan La Franeer':

'I picked my bags up from the curb
and stumbled to the door
Another man reached out his hand
Another hand reached out for more'

This view of the world was, of course, central to the post-Dylan rock culture, but again Joni's handling of it sets her apart. She is a clever writer, but only when the cleverness serves some purpose in terms of meaning. The image, in the same song, of an 'ageing cripple selling superman balloons', is almost too clear, but the depth of implication and absurdity makes the image nevertheless a powerful one.

Peace and Love Dream

The other side of the coin in the first album is a sense of wonder and exploration growing out of the 'peace and love dream'. Many of the songs simply reflect that there's so much to enjoy - from honey to salt rusted carriages, to waking up on a Chelsea morning with the sun streaming in through the window. This vision of people sitting in rocking chairs and making pretty things may now seem rather facile, but only because its better side is now almost taken for granted. It's hard to realise now how much of a breakthrough it represented at the time.

Joni's third album, 'Ladies of the Canyon', marked a turning point in more ways that one. Musically, like most of the folk-rooted singers, Joni was getting more adventurous. Piano now shared the spotlight with guitar as the basic instrument, but more important there was a greater 'feel' to the music, a belief that music should be more than just a background for her singing and her lyrics. In an interview in 1971 she said, "My music is becoming more rhythmic. It's because I'm in LA and my friends are mostly rock and roll people….and being influenced by that rhythm….I've always liked it. When I was in Saskatchewan I loved to dance."

Socially, too, 1970 marked a turning point. Joni's own song 'Woodstock' had by the time of its release had been turned into irony by Altamont and the student shootings at Kent State and Jackson. The war continued in spite of the 'Peace and Love Dream', and even in the rock business itself the contradictions were showing up rather clearly, as Joni herself saw:

'And I play if you have the money
Or if you're some kind of friend to me
But the one man band by the quick lunch stand
He was playing real good for free'

All this required somewhat of a re-think of the 'dream', some inner searching to suggest any way forward that Joni could convey through her music. And yet the pressures on her were making this more and more difficult. As she said, "I was being isolated, starting to feel like a bird in a gilded cage. I wasn't getting a chance to meet people. A certain amount of success cuts you off in a lot of ways."

So Joni announced a temporary retirement, and went off on holiday to Europe and other places, living in a cave in Greece, staying with friends in Spain, sailing from Jamaica to California in Crosby's boat, along with him and Nash. For over a year there was no record as she searched for the kind of material she wanted to write: "I want it to be brighter, to get people up, to grab people. So I'm stifling any feelings of solitude or certain moods I might ordinarily develop into a song."

'Blue', released in Autumn 1971, opens with a sunny guitar strum into 'I am only a lonely road and I am travelling…looking for something what can it be?' The message is clear - 'all I really want our love to do is bring out the best in me and in you…oh but the jealousy, the greed, is unravelling, and it undoes all the joy that could be', It is the inner voyage that is invoked in 'Blue', a search into motivation, into who one really is and who one wants to be'. The voyage is self-punishing in that it tells you things about yourself that it's not easy to live with, but it's rewarding as well for what it promises in terms of change. In its theme, and the depth at which it's explored, 'Blue' stands the test of relevance to the problems of our time as few other albums of the 70s have done.

Soprano to Sexy Growl

Musically, Joni really flowers on 'Blue'; as singer, writer, and arranger of her material. The melodies are difficult at first, but so strong that they lose none of their hard won attraction after many hearings. As a singer she really lets it go, from the purest soprano to the sexiest growl. Listening to her singing 'Blue….I love you' on the title track, or 'will you take me as I am?' on 'California'; the effect is breath taking, far transcending the written word, conjuring up a depth of expression that is rare. Of the instrumentation itself, various luminaries like Stephen Stills, James Taylor, and Sneaky Pete (of the Flying Burrito brothers) help out, creating an acoustic sound that varies from a flowing backdrop to a rhythmic sound, bouncing along beneath Joni's pure voice.

The austere last track, 'The Last Time I Saw Richard', encapsulates the whole mood of the album. The song's 'Richard' is disillusioned, and accuses Joni of useless romanticism for pursuing a dream already lost. But it's actually he who falls into the cosy despair of 'staying up most nights with the TV on and the house-lights turned up bright'. Don't you see, she sings how 'love can be so sweet'. Then, in the end , she is forced by his negation into affirming her own belief that one day she will get 'her gorgeous wings and fly away'. Despite the overall feeling of cynicism, she clearly feels the need - as James Taylor wrote - to 'believe out loud what we wish to be true'. The cynicism of the moment and the continuing search are both accepted, opposed though they may seem at any one time and impossible though the search might seem.

The advance of 'Blue' was further strengthened by her late 1972 release, 'For The Roses'. The latter is thematically an extension of the inner struggle of 'Blue', but even more than on 'Blue' the distinction between 'inner' and 'outer' realities comes to seem, as it did in Dylan's finest work, as no more than a meaningless if useful abstraction. Musically, it seemed seemed a richer album. For whereas 'Blue' left an overall 'blue' impression, 'For The Roses' dipped in and out of a variety of moods without ever losing the central thread of self-realization. Guitar and piano again shared the foreground while the background was filled out with a variety of instrumentation to match or enhance the mood of the particular song. 'Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire' for instance, has a lovely rolling guitar strum backed by an angrily subdued electric lead and a sadly wailing sax. All that to mirror the song's landscape of helpless rage.

Perceptual Insight

Since 'Roses', Joni has released two more albums: 'Court and Spark' and 'Miles of Aisles' - the latter much funkier than previously, with a new Joni Mitchell Band. Joni is a performer who can move you with her singing, with the melodic and rhythmic invention of her music, and with the perceptual insights of her lyrics. She can make you think, feel and dance all at the same time.

There are also few people who have transcended the gap between the 'urban-alienation-and-sexual-tension' syndrome and the 'sensitive-love-and-simple-pleasures' syndrome…Dylan may well be the only one. But the two major practitioners of these two syndromes performing / recording in mid-70s - David Bowie and Joni - have both gone a long way towards such a synthesis. Just as Bowie's love songs were invaded by his 'madness' so Joni Mitchell invaded the surrounding social madness with her love song. In these ways both of them are able to link the individual and society, and thus provide a coherent world-view at all levels. If Bowie's role was the (necessary) negative one, the Joni's writing and performing represented the most positive features of the mid70s rock music.

Roar Like Fire

In exploring herself and the world she lives in, and sustained by her belief in what - for lack of a better name - might be called the 'peace and love dream', Joni has helped to keep alive and well something that ought not to die. As she herself sings on 'Judgement of the Moon and Stars':

'You've got to shake your fists at lightning now
You've got to roar like a forest fire
You've got to spread your light like blazes
All across the sky….'