Edith and the Kingpin

Cover of The Hissing of Summer Lawns

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Joni Mitchell, "Edith and the Kingpin" (download until 2/1/09), from "The Hissing of Summer Lawns."

Joni was one of those players--and we can refer to her as a player, because nobody plays guitar like she does, and people like Wayne Shorter wouldn't play with her if all he liked was her songwriting--who I came to late, not as late as Love, but late nonetheless, in my Junior year of college. I'd gotten into the Band and watched "The Last Waltz." There she was, playing "Coyote," the least Band-like tune of the lot, and very beautiful. I bought "Hejira" soon after and loved it. It's still my favorite Joni record.

It's interesting to me and probably very universal that one's approach to a musician is almost totally conditioned by when one encounters the music. I'm overstating it for sure, but, looking backwards, Elvis is a great example. I can read a text that explains why Elvis was a big deal to people, but it's totally separate from the music, which I really find boring, excepting "Heartbreak Hotel." Even that's merely good to me, not great. You want great Rock 'n' Roll, go for Chuck Berry--on every count he owns everything. To prove that it's not about race...though, I guess it is about race...but to make the point, take Carl Perkins. Completely his own man, not stealing black music in the least, just being true to his broader context, exceptional writer and the only guitarist of the genre to rival Chuck Berry. Etc., etc. You get the point. Elvis means nothing to me, but I wasn't around then. A corollary point is that my students will often listen to both punk and metal bands, and ask me if I know them. Yes, I say, but I never listened to Iron Maiden. They were metal, I did punk. You didn't mix medicines back then, though if you were into punk you listened to AC/DC without telling your friends.

So it was with some shock that, once I got into Joni, I read that this record was almost totally rejected by the hip rock 'n' roll cognoscenti of 1975, Rolling "Good-for-Kindling" Stone above all. "Court and Spark" was cool, I guess, but putting vocals on top of a field recording of Burundi drummers wasn't. "Court and Spark" was cool, is cool, I thought then and obviously now, but not as good as this, for the very simple reason that the tunes are better on "The Hissing of Summer Lawns," though I really have a soft spot for "People's Parties."

So why reject this record when it's so obviously good? I imagine that to the Jann Wenners of the world, it wasn't good because Joni wasn't Joni. Joni was this fragile little thing, like the twig-limbed little sister of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and Young too. "Blue," that was Joni. Good record, for sure, but not the Joni I love.

What I think threw Rolling Stone was that Joni had stopped doing what a girl ought to do. "Blue is, in fact, a great record, but the narratives are entirely subjective--it's a record about subjectivity. Girls are subjective, the boys say, and this is just how they are. "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" is a feminist record, in the truest and best sense, and I'd point out the most analytical and objective. Joni doesn't pine for a lost lover, she describes patriarchy and its effects on people--its effects not only on women but on the men as well. "Harry's House," "Edith and the Kingpin," "The Hissing of Summer Lawns."

The boys could have dealt with a feminist record, if it was shrill. There are shrill feminists just like there are shrill Marxists or shrill conservatives. The shrillness often gets mistaken for content. It's not. But to the boys at Rolling Stone, a Joni who expressed her feelings, that we can take, but analyzing social situations is muscling in on our turf as men. Get back. You can make a feminist record, but you can't speak: you have to shout.

Joni, however, speaks, because it's not up to the boys to set the terms of what is and what is not feminist. The boys get to listen for a change, and the smart boys recognize this as an opportunity. I said above that my favorite Joni Mitchell record remains "Hejira," and it's true, primarily because of the musicianship, though also because of the raw skill with which she writes the tunes on that record. The political content of her work, which has since this record been present on everything she's done since, has never been clearer or more analytically solid than on this, even as she's broadened her view past this single subject, as of course is entirely appropriate.

I saw this blog post, "Sunday Joni Mitchell Blogging," in which the author posited Joni as a "great songwriter." It's almost so obvious a point that I can't imagine it worth making, but sure enough in the comments some people disagree. What do you want, people? Listen to this, ponder its meaning, and try to come to any other conclusion.