Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell Hardcover – October 17, 2017

I thought what a great subject and about time for a current biography as Joni Mitchell has long been a favorite. However halfway through I was hating the way it was written. Seemingly every lyric taken as literal as though there was nothing in the artist's imagination at all. That everything had to be based on a relationship or cocaine (yes David, we get it, she did cocaine- thanks for reminding us every other damn page covering the '80s period. Yes I'm exaggerating a bit, but the way facts were repeated ad nauseam as if Yaffe had nothing else to say but had to fill a word quota. Granted some good information on a great subject, but the writing ruined it for me.

“Both Sides Now” sung by Judy Collins was everywhere in 1968/69. I remember sitting on the floor of a dorm room with my suitemates, playing the song over and over on a rinky-dink record player. I doubt any of us realized it was written by Canadian Joni Mitchell.But Joni soon attained stardom on her own, becoming as famous as Collins and Joan Baez. Folk music was eclipsed by rock music, but Joni straddled both worlds. She changed our ideas about what a “girl singer” was all about. As author David Yaffe points out, “men fell in love with her and women felt like she was singing their secrets out loud.”I had a vague memory of the fact that Joni had polio as a child, but I did not know until reading RECKLESS DAUGHTER that her left hand was so affected, she strummed her songs using right-handed open tuning. This technique only added to her unique sound, especially when combined with her accomplished lyrics and vocal leaps.As I read the book, I jammed it full of Post-It notes in preparation for writing this review. I learned more about her than I could ever outline here. I believe she is a genius: moody, complex, and conflicted, all qualities she poured into her music. Here is one priceless accolade Joni treasures from the 1990s: some teenage girls told her “Before Prozac, there was you.”Yaffe shows us the Joni who writes songs for the daughter she gave up for adoption when she was 20, the Joni who despises the music business, the Joni who describes her lyrics on “Blue,” her most acclaimed album, as “private letters that were published.” We see her in relationships with Leonard Cohen, David Crosby, Graham Nash and Jackson Brown. Couplehood was rarely easy for her. Solitude seems to be her preferred state.We see Joni gaining and losing popularity. Many listeners tuned out when she went more towards jazz. Classic rock radio kept her songs alive. The public “put her on a pedestal,” she said at one point, and she “was wobbling.” We see her battling aging and illness. Struck down by a brain aneurysm in 2015, she was progressing towards recovery as the book closed.I wish there had been more coverage of Joni’s life as a painter. I’ve always been in awe of her paintings featured on her record covers. “I sing my sorrow and paint my joy,” Joni famously said. Yaffe includes many details of various recording sessions, sections I have to admit I tended to skim. But as it should be with a biography of a gifted musician, this book sent me right back to Mitchell’s music. May it be so for any other music lovers who reach for this compelling biography!The text of this review also appears on LitLovers.com

Joni Mitchell wrote her most performed song, “Both Sides Now,” when she was only twenty three, yet she had gone through enough at that age to support her claim to so much experience. In her fifties, when she recorded that song with the London Symphony, when she was not at all well--and had lost the upper octave of her amazing voice, thanks to having smoked a shocking number of cigarettes since that earlier time--she left those classical orchestral musicians in tears.Late in her career, in 1998, Herbie Hancock told Joni that she was the best jazz singer alive, based on her phrasing and overall conception of Gershwin's songs--and Hancock's opinion on jazz could not be more authoritative. In discussing Joni's recorded albums one by one, Yaffe shows how her styles changed over the years from folk singer to rock to jazz in the 1960s and 1970s. Her instrumentation changed too. By the eighties she was no longer in the mainstream of popular taste, so her productivity and sales slumped. At one point she went ten years without writing new songs--and just about all her songs were written by her, sometimes in the middle of the night. One reason her songs were as good as they were can be attributed to a grade school teacher who had circled all the cliches in her compositions; he knew she could write better.In Joni's own view, one reason her songs were the way they were was the trauma she had experienced at a young age in giving her daughter up for adoption. She carried around that trauma for life. When, decides later, she established contact with that daughter, the latter did not like her mother much. However, things went much better with Joni's grandchildren.I cannot praise this book highly enough for the way Yaffe brings to life this brilliant yet troubled artist, and links her to so many of her famous musical contemporaries, collaborators and more numerous lovers than I could keep track of. She loved much, and so many of her songs were about love, but, with the exception of her second marriage, her relationships did not last very long. She did , however, maintain friendship and respect for most of them.Be sure to note Yaffe’s subtitle: this is a portrait, as distinct from a biography, though there is a great deal of detail about her life—which is not yet at an end.

Yaffe may not offer any new insights, but at least this book is well written and heartfelt in terms of respect for Mitchell. It also covers ( with much more depth) the age old problem the FEMALE artist faces in the creative industries - especially back then. She was constantly criticised for being outspoken, driven, egotistical in a way that none of her peers (Dylan, Young, Cohen, Simon, Gaye etc) ever were. Not to mention the list of lovers who were always name checked in the opening paragraphs of even the most serious reviews of her greatest work or rare interviews - always aimed as a suggestive slur and is still appearing today, in every review I've read of this book. She may not be likeable or too outspoken or crazy, but genius is genius and Yaffe completely acknowledges this. He sees her important place in the history of 20th century popular music and the impact it had on future generations - not only women with guitars, but innovators like Prince, Bjork, Jimmy Page, Morrissey, Elvis Costello, Kate Bush etc. Interesting that Dylan acknowledged being inspired by Blue during the making of Blood on the Tracks ( many years after Blue when Mitchell had moved on much further to Summer Lawns and Hejira) and yet his album is often rated as the breakthrough in this particular genre. Yaffe also articulates the uphill battles she had and her stubborn determination to keep her creative flame burning against all odds. The best biography so far.

Yet another laboured boring presumptive appreciation on the back of a genius. Malka Marom’s book of her transcribed interviews with Joni Mitchell is far superior and intelligent and what most of this boring book is based upon. Buy Malka Marom book instead. It’s straight from the genius’s mouth and not someone making money from the genius.

I’d read a couple of books about Joni (one of my very favourite artists, - to be gender-bound for a moment, no other female songwriter comes close) before picking this up, and they were good, but right from the off I knew this was far more clued-up and simpatico. He not only knows the music but understands it, and so can satisfyingly describe its nuances and power. The very things that the one star brigade criticise are the strengths of this book, and I suppose it helps to be a true devotee to appreciate fully the detailed and highly literate allusions, not just from JM’s oeuvre but from other icons of the time and broader cultural references that adorn the narrative. I found it very balanced, not a slavish hagiography, although he is obviously at least as big a fan as me, he calls her out when he feels it called for. So, if you’re a fan, spoil yourself. If you’re not, it’s probably going to take more than this excellent book to convince you, sadly.

So far I'm only halfway through this book but the author had me after just the preface. This intimate look at Joni's career tells why her most unforgettable songs came to be written, and delves into the intensely personal feelings behind each one. The author scatters phrases from her songs liberally throughout the text which keeps the music dancing in your mind all the time. The enormous contribution of her finest musical collaborators is covered. A really enjoyable read, but if you have an image of Joni as a wide-eyed innocent that may change dramatically.

I raced through this well researched biography of one of the greatest modern songwriters devouring stories of Joni’s early genius, relationships and the sorrow of giving her daughter up for adoption. It’s definitely a four and half star read, especially for those intrigued by the process of making music, however I guess slightly less satisfying for those who’d like more salacious detail about the subject’s relationships with men like David Crosby, Jackson Browne, James Taylor and Graham Nash etc. Still well worth reading, not least because it takes you back to all that beautiful music.