Take Me As I Am: Asking All The Wrong Questions About Joni Mitchell’s Comeback

A Q&A with myself

The Joni Jam crew onstage at The Gorge last weekend. Photo: Victor Johnson

It was way past time for me to sit down and give myself a good talking to about Joni Mitchell’s recent comeback. By the end of this Q&A with myself, I’d looked into some deep-seated fears and come to terms with Joni’s triumphant return, so all the self-analysis was worth it.

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Take Me As I Am: Asking All The Wrong Questions About Joni Mitchell’s Comeback

A Q&A with myself

Hey Michelle, why didn’t you go to Joni’s big show at the Gorge last weekend? How could you miss such a landmark event?

I had some family obligations, so I couldn’t swing it.

Come on. You manage to get halfway around the world for music sometimes.

Okay, if I’m being honest with myself, which is part of the aim here, I have some ambivalence about Joni’s comeback.

You have issues with the triumphant comeback that’s inspired millions and found universally rapturous praise from the press?

I wish I didn’t.

Who are you to rain on the Joni comeback parade, anyway?

Nobody. I mean, quite a while back I wrote a book on themes around Joni’s “Blue Period,” as I dubbed it, for which I had some long conversations with Joni, and in which I explored her songwriting and grappled with her artistic identity and genius. It wasn’t the most popular book of 2009. At that time, readers seemed to want Joni the boomer icon with famous boyfriends rather than a consideration of the artist and her art.

I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade. I want to share a perspective I’ve not seen represented in legacy media. And very little on social media. Or anywhere in between.

If you’ve always been out of step with popular taste on Joni, why not give up and shut up now?

It’s because I did speak with her, think and write about her, and get to know her through her jazz peers in pre-aneurysm times, that I feel a moral obligation to speak up. Also, I suspect I’m not the only Joni fan having some of these thoughts. Shine a little light, as Joni sang—here on ambivalence as well unfettered enthusiasm.

“Some of these thoughts” like what?

For an artist who never lied, there’s something off about this comeback. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, always striving for truth and beauty as an artist, sharp and aware to a fault at times. She’s one of our great North American musicians, an artist of genius and vision, with a songwriting career encompassing styles from pop to jazz to ballet.

Now she’s being imaged and presented as a Grande Dame Beatnik onstage in Joni Jams, her comeback’s performance setting. She does have fun in the Joni Jams, which give her a chance to show off some tremendous vocal phrasing. That’s positive. Onstage, though, we often see ecstatic affirmation from other Joni Jammers rather than meaningful musical support. Joni always has been such a cool customer: an observer, a poet, an improviser. It feels wrong to me. It just doesn’t feel like what she would have wanted.

Well, that’s a question, Michelle, the before and after of all this. Does what came before the aneurysm even matter? Is this just nostalgia for the way things were?

It does matter that throughout her pre-aneurysm career, Joni refused to play a set list of her greatest hits, only to basically do so now in the Joni Jam. It’s significant that she disliked sycophants and would have been mortified by the idea of sitting onstage in a throne-chair surrounded by a worshipful fan club, as she does now. It’s a little hard to see an onstage “Circle Game” singalong enshrining Joni as a folk godmother, when such a thing was her worst nightmare before the aneurysm. Joni thrived on artistic growth, experimentation and work with challenging peers.

For some of us who’ve spent time with Joni in the past, these uncharacteristic shifts, as well as the radical transformation from the sharp, imperious pre-aneurysm Joni to this softer, more deferential persona, do raise some questions about just how much of this comeback she’s deciding for herself, and if she’s even making decisions at all.

You can’t think Brandi is taking advantage of Joni? Brandi’s kind and generous with her, obviously.

No, no. There’s no malicious intent. Brandi’s been a faithful friend to Joni these past several years. I do think for all Brandi’s superstardom, sharing a stage with Joni still elevates her into another echelon of artistry. There’s nothing wrong with Brandi benefiting a little from her considerable effort to get Joni performing again. She gives Joni a serious pop platform in return.

Brandi seems like a good egg and is a skilled musician. In terms of aesthetics, it’s interesting that Brandi is Joni’s main link to the performing world. Imagine if Bob Dylan, Joni’s male equivalent of sorts (only of sorts—I don’t see him as Joni’s peer, exactly), came back from an aneurysm and were being presented onstage by younger pop musicians he’d met in recovery, who’d never been in his orbit before. I think more questions would be raised.

Here’s an improvement on the before times: Brandi said Joni didn’t know people loved her so much, and now she can accept the love of her fans. She wasn’t happy before. Now she is.

Joni did know about her fans’ adoration but often said people loved her for the wrong reasons. Back then I always wished she’d relax a little, play a couple of hits every once in a while, and enjoy the love of fans. She does seem to be basking in fan love now, regardless of its nature or origin. It’s nice to see her happy. Good for her soul. On the other hand, her main thing now is singing hits and basking in the glow of appreciation.

Photo: Victor Johnson

Do you think fans like this tamer Joni better than the one who questioned everything, including them?

I don’t know what all of Joni’s fans are thinking. I do know unruly male genius often gets a pass while unruly female genius often is found intolerable or unacceptable. I think it’s easier to celebrate Joni as a genius now that the prickliness, experimentation, arrogance, and other trappings of the lady’s genius are no longer in evidence.

Whoa. It sounds like you’re identifying degrees of fandom for Joni, with your variety of fandom involving more profound understanding and sophistication. Jesus, Michelle. David Crosby once compared Joni’s ego to Mussolini’s. What are you doing, taking over for Joni in the ego department?

Now you’re being a little too hard on yourself. Of course varieties of Joni fandom exist, as they do for all artists. I’m fine with people liking Joni for different reasons.

So what are we really talking about here? You don’t like her comeback’s onstage framing and dominant narratives, which conveniently forget the complexities of the pre-aneurysm genius?

Bingo. Because that same dissecting, skewering gaze, that difficult genius, helped to create the songs we love.

Yeah, but lyrical insights are eternal and will reach people forever.

Good point. Yeah, that’s true. I’m probably worrying too much about her music’s legacy.

Who would you like to see onstage with Joan in this comeback?

I’d like to see Miles’s second great quintet.

Seriously, I’d like to see representatives from her musical life before and after the aneurysm. Joni’s career has been so long and her artistic legacy so rich that she may need more than one "ambassador," as Joni calls Brandi, for full aesthetic representation. How about Ambassador Brandi and Ambassador Herbie Hancock? She may need several ambassadors, in fact.

Joni’s Gershwin Prize concert in March was reassuring for me because the lineup included the Joni Jam crew along with James Taylor, Graham Nash, Herbie Hancock, Larry Klein, Greg Leisz, Brian Blade—musicians who knew and played with her in the decades before the aneurysm. They’re more comfortable with Joni’s jazz-influenced music than the Joni Jam crew. Naturally. No disrespect to the Joni Jam crew.

Well, shifting from music back to lyrics . . .

They’re inseparable in Joni’s songs. Basically married.

Settle down. Riddle me this: In Joni’s “Refuge of the Roads,” the traveling narrator finds good times and radiant happiness when things are light and breezy. “Till I started analyzing/And brought on the old ways/A thunderhead of judgment /Was gathering in my gaze.” We certainly don’t want to conflate Joni the artist with the characters in her songs. Joni did, however, imagine a simpler mode of being, without so much judgment, as a happy and even idyllic one. Can we say she’s found that now?

But in that song the narrator still had both the analytical and carefree parts of herself—with yet another facet, Joni’s observing artist self who could recognize and express this dualism in lyric and song. The great tragedy is that it seems Joni had to lose so much of her herself in the aneurysm to become the accepting, happy person she is now. It makes me sad.

It’s okay to acknowledge elements of sadness in Joni’s comeback. So let’s say the onstage “Joni Jam” and media framing of this comeback do in fact sacrifice part of her artistic legacy and sharp, unruly genius. The thing is, that’s where we are now. There’s nothing to do but accept it and see the greater good. Take me as I am, right?

Thanks for letting me articulate my unvarnished truth, so I can begin to accept it, take Joni as she is, and see the greater good. Clear-eyed love wins.

But honestly, Michelle, some of your assessment feels like fear and loathing of old age from someone who recently turned 50. Everyone gets sick, grows old, and dies. This can be hard to witness. Maybe there’s also a lesson here in accepting the indignities of aging. Which could be coming for your own parents very soon. Aren’t they 70 now?

Yes. [Feels too much to speak; looks out a window toward the mountains.] Maybe I’m projecting a little fear of aging into some of this Joni comeback criticism. Okay, maybe I’m projecting fears of aging into much of this comeback criticism.

Joan was never supposed to speak or walk again, let alone sing onstage. Now she’s out there doing it, with her recovery still progressing, still ongoing—I mean, she sang “If” to her own guitar accompaniment toward the end of the Gorge concert. That was new. Maybe her example of comeback resilience, whatever it oversimplifies and elides, is the most valuable thing she could offer the world.

Yeah. That’s huge. I’m not sure it’s the most valuable thing this extraordinary artist can offer the world, but it’s one of them, for sure. It’s wonderful. The gift of inspiration. Yeah, it’s amazing.

Good. It’s time to let music resolve any outstanding ambivalence. You know what you need to hear. Your favorite version of Both Sides Now, from 2000. Vince Mendoza’s magnificent orchestral arrangement rendering Joni’s poetic ambiguity as floating tension in the verses and her artistic vision as soaring release in the choruses. Wayne Shorter’s saxophone saying hey now, let’s stay true blue in so few notes. Joni’s already beautifully ruined voice encompassing the past, present, and future—and even seeming to anticipate this very moment.

Remember what Joni once said to you: “Anyone who really gets my work sees themselves in it. The beauty as a listener is you have an option: Either you can see yourself and your humanity in it, or you can say, that’s the way she is. The richest way, the way to get the most out of it, is to see yourself in it.”

Joan’s music is still here for us, Michelle, and for everyone, in as many ways as we all need it.

Amen.

Amen.