Some would place Joni Mitchell as a singer/songwriter on the highest pedestal, some would suggest her body of work is the equal of any other of her peers. I wouldn't necessarily. I have dabbled but ultimately not gone all the way with Joni. I don't have any of her 9 albums between 1976 and 2000, even though some of them are very highly thought of (something about the words "further voyages into jazz fusion" put me off).
It's pretty much Blue for me. I have most of her other early albums, and a couple of later ones, when she did some really nice, smoky covers of her own material, but there's nothing which has had even the remotely same impact on me as Blue.
Court and Spark is almost great, The Hissing of Summer Lawns is pretty distinguished, other early ones, Ladies of the Canyon, Clouds etc ...there are good songs, but ...
Anyway, why am I talking about negatives with Joni Mitchell. All of the above is personal taste, and quite likely the reason I haven't loved the rest of her career is just because my first taste was Blue, and everything - everything - after that is going to seem a little bit of a disappointment.
How come it's so good? What's the magic formula? 10 songs, 35 minutes 41 seconds. All songs between 2 minutes 50 and 4 minutes 20. Nothing the album could do without.
I think as I've listened to it down the years, I've broken it into units
1-2 All I Want, My Old Man (both sides now of romantic love, deceptively simple)
3 and 5 - Little Green and Blue (colour songs, woe and loss)
4 and 6 - Carey and California - jaunty, joyful travel songs. Glorious highlights.
7, 8 and 9 - This Flight Tonight, River, A Case of You - relationship breaking, getting away, terrible sadness. A Case of You stands slightly apart from the other two. It's the emotional culmination of the album. It's also one of the very greatest songs ever. Lots of people think that, it's not just me.
10 - The Last Time I Saw Richard - slighly removed, looking further back, cynical, irritated, holding on to sense of self.
This album is a unit and a story and a mood in the way that not all great albums necessarily are (Revolver isn't, or Thriller, or The Queen is Dead) but when they are, it somehow enhances them. To me, nothing holds together quite like Blue, not Astral Weeks, not Blood on the Tracks, nothing.
I first listened to it in the Easter holiday in 1999. My university holidays didn't match up with those of my friends and I remember just spending two weeks back at my mum's house, doing nothing but playing patience, cleaning up the excrement of our remaining elderly cat (Cat Stevens) and listening to new albums. There was no internet, 5 TV channels, no mobile phone. It was possible back then to need saving from considerable lengthy boredom. I was all set up to be consumed by an album, and so I was.
Joni Mitchell has done a recent interview, having been off the radar for several years. She seems a deeply intelligent, artistic, enormously egotistical person. She is disparaging of what might be considered her peers, while considering her own peers the likes of Duke Ellington. She sees herself as a painter first and foremost.
History might come to view her as a wonder of the world, I don't know. I think there are a few others with better catalogues of songs than her, but this, her great work, is, for me, the greatest of all the great works.
It slightly misses the point, but here is a Joni Mitchell compilation album which isn't just Blue from start to finish.
Both Sides, Now
Chinese Cafe
California
Carey
Court and Spark
River
The Jungle Line
Coyote
All I Want
This Flight Tonight
Trouble Child
Free Man in Paris
In France They Kiss On Main Street
The Circle Game
I Don't Know Where I Stand
Amelia
A Case of You
The Last Time I Saw Richard
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