Joni: The Creative Odyssey of Joni Mitchell (32 page)

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Authors: Katherine Monk

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Chapter Four Woodstock: Myth and Mythmaking
  1. Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers,
    The Power of Myth
    (New York: Anchor, 1988), 2.
  2. Pete Fornatale,
    Back to the Garden: The Story of Woodstock and How It Changed a Generation
    (New York: Touchstone, 2009), 4.
  3. Ibid, 8.
  4. Ibid, 17.
  5. Details
    , “Interview.”
  6. Bill Flanagan, “Lady of the Canyon,”
    Vanity Fair
    (June 1997).
  7. Sutcliffe, “Joni Mitchell.”
  8. Interview for the Dick Cavett DVD collection.
  9. Dave Zimmer,
    Crosby, Stills & Nash: The Authorized Biography
    (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2000),
    111.
  10. Abraham Maslow, “The Creative Attitude,”
    Farther Reaches of Human Nature
    (New York: Viking, 1971). See also Jenny Boyd,
    Musicians in Tune
    , 158.
  11. Folksinger Jake Holmes claims he wrote “Dazed and Confused” two years before it appeared on Led Zeppelin's debut album in 1969.
  12. Scene in the documentary
    Woodstock,
    directed by Mike Wadleigh, 1970.
  13. Walter Cronkite, quoted in
    Back to the Garden
    , xviii. “I Can Hear It Now/ The Sixties,” Columbia/Legacy, 1970.
  14. Margaret Mead, quoted in
    Back to the Garden,
    xix.
    “Woodstock in Retrospect,”
    Redbook
    (January 1970).
  15. Robert Hilburn, “The Mojo Interview,”
    Mojo
    (February 2008).
Chapter Five Business and Bullshit
  1. White, “The SpeakEasy Interview.”
  2. Buffy Sainte-Marie to the author in an interview about the documentary
    Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life.
    Parts of this interview were published by Postmedia News (then Canwest), May 8, 2010.
  3. McDonough,
    Shakey
    , 244.
  4. Wild, “Joni Mitchell.”
  5. McDonough,
    Shakey
    , 244.
  6. Tom King,
    The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys
    ,
    and Sells the New Hollywood
    (New York: Random House, 2000), 228.
  7. Ibid, xii.
  8. James Reginato, “The Diva's Last Stand,”
    W
    (December 2002).
  9. Howie Klein, “2002 Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient—Joni Mitchell,”
    Grammy
    (February 24, 2002).
  10. White, “The SpeakEasy Interview.”
  11. Malka Marom, “Self-Portrait of a Superstar,”
    Maclean's
    (June 1974).
  12. Stephen Holden, “The Ambivalent Hall of Famer,”
    New York Times
    , December 1, 1996.
  13. Garbarini, “Joni Mitchell is a Nervy Broad.”
  14. LeBlanc, “Joni Takes a Break.”
  15. Penny Valentine, “Joni Mitchell Interview,”
    Sounds
    (June 3, 1972).
  16. White, “Joni Mitchell Interview.”
  17. Ibid.
  18. Ibid.
  19. Rolling Stone
    , “Joni Mitchell” (February 18, 1999).
  20. Reginato, “The Diva's Last Stand.”
  21. Ethan Brown, “Influences: Joni Mitchell,”
    New York
    (May 9, 2005).
  22. White, “Joni Mitchell Interview.”
  23. Valentine, “Joni Mitchell Interview.”
  24. Christopher Guly, “Music World Courts and Sparks Joni Mitchell,”
    Globe and Mail
    , December 16, 1996.
  25. Joe Jackson, “If You See Her, Say Hello,”
    Hotpress
    (January 23, 1999).
  26. Ibid: “No doubt this sense of betrayal, which has led to Joni Mitchell undertaking less than 20 interviews during the past 31 years, goes back to those days when
    Rolling Stone
    described her as a rock 'n' roll groupie—bed-mate of seemingly ever changing lovers such as Graham Nash. Now Joni's back in New York and no,
    Rolling Stone
    editor Jann Wenner is not on the list of invited guests.”
  27. Rolling Stone
    (February 4, 1971).
  28. McDonald, “Joni Mitchell Emerges from her Retreat.”
  29. Garbarini, “Joni Mitchell is a Nervy Broad.”
  30. Flanagan, “Lady of the Canyon.”
  31. Sybil McGuire, “Both Sides of Mitchell,”
    Progressive Quarterback
    (March 2000).
  32. Introduction to the song “Carey” for a performance at the Troubadour, as cited on the website http://
    crete.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/joni-michell-in-matala-crete
    .
  33. McGuire, “Both Sides of Mitchell.”
  34. Valentine, “Joni Mitchell Interview.”
  35. Bill Flanagan, “Joni Mitchell Has the Last Laugh,”
    Musician
    (December 1985).
  36. Ibid.
  37. Valentine, “Joni Mitchell Interview.”
  38. McDonald, “Joni Mitchell Emerges from her Retreat.”
  39. Joni Mitchell to Pete Fornatale, “Mixed Bag: Music and Interview with Pete Fornatale,” WNEW, January 12, 1986.
  40. White, “Joni Mitchell Interview.”
  41. Levine,
    Tending the Fire
    , 69.
  42. Garbarini, “Joni Mitchell is a Nervy Broad.”
Chapter Six Gods and Monsters
  1. Boyd,
    Musicians in Tune,
    11.
  2. Paolo J. Knill, Helen N. Barba, and Margot N. Fuchs,
    Minstrels of the Soul: Intermodal Expressive Therapy
    (Toronto: Palmerston Press, 1995), 71.
  3. Hoskyns, “Our Lady of the Sorrows.”
  4. David Wild, “A Conversation with Joni Mitchell,”
    Rolling Stone
    (May 30, 1991).
  5. Brown, “Influences: Joni Mitchell.”
  6. Stewart Brand, “The Education of Joni Mitchell,”
    Co-Evolution Quarterly
    (June 1976).
  7. Mercer,
    Will You Take Me As I Am
    , 98.
  8. Weller,
    Girls Like Us
    , 236.
  9. The story of Bob Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 is dramatized in the movie
    I'm Not There,
    by director Todd Haynes, which features a scene of an irate Pete Seeger trying to drive a hatchet blade through the main power cable. This is conjecture, but Seeger has said in recent years that he didn't like the electric amplification because no one could properly hear Dylan's beautiful poetry.
  10. Larry Sloman,
    On the Road with Bob Dylan
    (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1978), 271.
  11. Hilburn, “The Mojo Interview.”
  12. Susan Gordon Lydon, “Joni's Trek from Canada to Laurel Canyon,”
    Globe and Mail,
    April 29, 1969.
  13. Mercer,
    Will You Take Me As I Am
    , 104.
  14. Brand, “The Education of Joni Mitchell.”
  15. Sloman,
    On the Road with Bob Dylan
    , 360–83.
  16. Ibid, 439–40.
  17. Ibid, 383.
  18. Crowe, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”
  19. Mercer,
    Will You Take Me As I Am
    , 33.
  20. Will Elliott, “Painting with Words and Music,”
    Poetry
    (June 2000).
  21. Garbarini, “Joni Mitchell is a Nervy Broad.”
  22. Sloman,
    On the Road with Bob Dylan
    , 439.
  23. Ibid, 375.
  24. Ibid, 379.
  25. Ibid, 437.
  26. Ibid, 436.
  27. Ibid, 438.
  28. Crowe, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”
  29. Mary Aikins, “Heart of a Prairie Girl,”
    Reader's Digest
    (July 2005).
  30. Mercer,
    Will You Take Me As I Am
    , 191–94.
  31. Levon Helm, “Do It, Puke and Get Out,”
    Independent
    , April 10, 1994.
  32. Hoskyns, “Our Lady of the Sorrows.”
  33. Jody Denberg, “Taming Joni Mitchell—Joni's Jazz,”
    Austin Chronicle
    , October 12, 1998.
  34. Edna Gundersen, “The Cat's ‘Meow-meow-meow!'”
    USA Today
    , September 29, 1988.
  35. Rene Ingle, “Interview of Joni Mitchell,” KCSN, December 21, 1999.
  36. Elvis Costello, “Joni's Last Waltz?”
    Vanity Fair
    (November 2004).
  37. Ingle, “Interview of Joni Mitchell.”
  38. Nietzsche, “Retired from Service,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 275.
  39. Nietzsche, “Of the Afterworldsmen,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 60.
  40. Nietzsche wanted to replace the dragon of “Thou Shalt” with the “I Will” of human triumph, and therein lies the other major problem with Nietzsche: the Nazis adopted great swaths of his philosophy to sell an agenda of hate—something that (I believe) Nietzsche would have loathed and done his best to prevent by teaching a doctrine that refuses any notion of an all-powerful leader. In “Of the Higher Man” in
    Zarathustra,
    he talks about the “parasites” who build “a loathsome nest in your grief and dejection” and “the evil falsity of those who will beyond their powers... these fabricators and actors... who are at last untrue to themselves, squint-eyed, white-washed rottenness, cloaked with clever words, with pretended virtues, with glittering, false deeds. Guard yourselves well against that.” Those who want further reading on both sides should check out Walter Kaufmann's
    Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist
    and Bertrand Russell's
    History of Western Philosophy
    .
  41. Denberg, “Taming Joni Mitchell—Joni's Jazz.”
  42. Nietzsche, “Of the Chairs of Virtue,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
    58.
  43. Black,
    Both Sides Now.
  44. Although I can't document the connection, I think this has to be John Landy, one of the first runners to break a four-minute mile and one of two runners memorialized in my hometown of Vancouver, in a bronze statue that shows him and Roger Bannister in the so-called race of the century during the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games.
  45. Nietzsche, “Of Reading and Writing,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 67.
  46. Weller,
    Girls Like Us
    , 296.
  47. Flanagan, “Joni Mitchell has the Last Laugh.”
  48. Ibid.
  49. Nietzsche, “Prologue 2,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 40.
  50. Nietzsche, “Prologue 5,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 47.
  51. Nietzsche, “Prologue 6,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 48.
  52. Ibid.
  53. Nietzsche, “Prologue 9,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 52.
  54. Nietzsche, “Part Two: The Child With the Mirror,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 107.
  55. Ibid.
  56. Costello, “Joni's Last Waltz?”
  57. Nietzsche,
    The Birth of Tragedy
    (New York: Dover Thrift Editions, 1995), 64.
  58. John Mackie, full transcript of Joni Mitchell interview for the
    Vancouver Sun
    , January 15, 2010.
  59. Nietzsche, “The Convalescent,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 234
  60. Nietzsche, “Of War and Warriors,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 75–76.
  61. Denberg, “Taming Joni Mitchell—Joni's Jazz.”
  62. Nietzsche, “Of the Chairs of Virtue,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 57.
  63. In his essay “What Rough Beast? Yeats, Nietzsche and Historical Rhetoric in ‘The Second Coming'” (from highbeam.com), scholar John R. Harrison explores the details of Yeats's relationship and exposure to Nietzschean texts: Yeats's interest in Nietzsche was aroused at least as early as September 1902, when his American lawyer friend, John Quinn, sent him his own copy of
    Thus Spake Zarathustra
    together with copies of
    The Case of Wagner
    and
    A Genealogy of Morals
    . The first mention in Yeats's letters is dated by Wade 26 September 1902. He wrote to Lady Gregory: “You have a rival in Nietzsche, that strong enchanter . . . Nietzsche completes Blake and has the same roots—I have not read anything with so much excitement since I got to love Morris's stories which have the same curious astringent joy” (Letters 379). It was shortly after this, and not I believe coincidentally, that he began to reconstruct his poetic style to give it more “masculinity,” more “salt,” and to make it more idiomatic. Yeats also annotated John Quinn's copy of Thomas Common's
    Nietzsche as Critic, Philosopher, Poet and Prophet,
    which appeared in 1901. Most of his annotations are on passages from
    A Genealogy of Morals
    ,
    Beyond Good and Evil
    and
    Thus Spake Zarathustra
    . According to Professor Donald Torchiana Yeats's library contained at least the following texts (the dates of English translations are given in brackets):
    The Case of Wagner
    (1895),
    A Genealogy of Morals
    (1899),
    The Dawn of Day
    (1903),
    The Birth of Tragedy
    (1909),
    Thoughts out of Season
    (1909), and
    The Will to Power
    (1909–10).
  64. Daniel Levitin, “A Conversation with Joni Mitchell,”
    Grammy
    (March 1997).
  65. Mercer,
    Will You Take Me As I Am
    , 62.
  66. Ibid, 42.
  67. Hilburn, “The Mojo Interview.”
  68. Mercer,
    Will You Take Me As I Am
    , 27–32.
  69. Nietzsche, “Prologue,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 42–43.
  70. Nietzsche, “Of the Priests,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
    114–17.
  71. Nietzsche, “The Sorcerer,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
    264–70.
  72. Hoskyns, “Our Lady of the Sorrows.”
  73. Nietzsche, “Of Poets,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
    151.
  74. Flanagan, “Joni Mitchell Has the Last Laugh.”
  75. Tim Murphy, “Joni Mitchell Gets Angry, Hugs it Out,”
    New York
    (September 26, 2007).
  76. Nietzsche, “Of the Old and New Law Tables,”
    Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    , 218.
Chapter Seven Love: The Big Production
  1. Morrissey, “Melancholy Meets the Infinite Sadness.”
  2. Weller,
    Girls Like Us
    , 415.
  3. Hilburn, “Both Sides Later.”
  4. Breese, “A Conversation with David Crosby.”
  5. Crosby and Gottlieb,
    Long Time Gone
    , 130.
  6. Boyd,
    Musicians in Tune
    , 139.
  7. Weller,
    Girls Like Us
    , 277–78.
  8. Susan Gordon Lydon, “In Her House, Love,”
    New York Times
    , April 20, 1969.
  9. Crowe, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”
  10. Helen Brown, “Jackson Browne: Legendary Californian Singer-Songwriter,”
    Independent,
    December 14, 2005.
  11. Steve Pond, “Wild Things Run Fast,”
    Rolling Stone
    (November 25, 1982).
  12. Malka, “Self-Portrait of a Superstar.”
  13. Dickie, “No Borders Here.”
  14. Weller,
    Girls Like Us
    , 413.
  15. Sloman,
    On the Road with Bob Dylan
    , 384.
  16. Robert Hilburn, “Out of the Canyon,”
    Los Angeles Times
    , February 24, 1991.
  17. Weller,
    Girls Like Us
    , 435.
  18. Wild, “A Conversation with Joni Mitchell.”
  19. Bill Flanagan, “Secret Places,”
    Musician
    (May 1988).
  20. Larry LeBlanc, “Industry Profile: Larry Klein,” celebrityaccess.com, March 2012.
  21. Weller,
    Girls Like Us
    , 438.
  22. Pond, “Wild Things Run Fast.”
  23. Iain Blair, “Joni Mitchell,”
    Chicago Tribune
    , December 1, 1985.
  24. Ibid.
  25. Ibid.
  26. Infusino, “A Chalk Talk with Joni Mitchell.”
  27. Hilburn, “Out of the Canyon.”
  28. Costello, “Joni's Last Waltz?”
  29. Geoffrey Himes, “Music and Lyrics,”
    JazzTimes
    (December 2007).
  30. Ibid.
  31. Hoskyns, “Our Lady of the Sorrows.”
  32. Himes, “Music and Lyrics.”
  33. Ingle, “Interview of Joni Mitchell.”
  34. Ibid.
  35. Diehl, “It's a Joni Mitchell Concert, Sans Joni.”
  36. Garbarini, “Joni Mitchell is a Nervy Broad.”
  37. Robert Hilburn, “No Longer Speaking for the Rest of Us, Joni Mitchell Got Herself Back to the Garden,”
    Los Angeles Times
    , September 20, 2004.

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