FEATURE:
Both Sides, Now
Joni Mitchell’s Clouds at Fifty-Five
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I am pleased that…
IN THIS PHOTO: Joni Mitchell in 1969/PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Joni Mitchell’s albums have returned to Spotify, as it allows me to include it here. The album I am referring to is her second studio album, Clouds. Many people talk about Joni Mitchell’s career starting with 1970’s Ladies of the Canyon. Many overlook her first two albums, 1968’s Song to a Seagull and Clouds. Released on 1st May, 1969, I am looking ahead to its fifty-fifth anniversary. It is a fine album and demonstrates the blossoming and district songwriting gifts of Joni Mitchell. One of her best songs, Both Sides Now, ends Clouds. It is a magnificently confident work. Even if future albums such as Blue (1971) are more highly regarded, one cannot overlook the importance and sheer wonder of Clouds. After Song to a Seagull gained a lot of exposure, Mitchell recorded the amazing Clouds at A&M Studios in Hollywood. Mitchell produced most of the album herself. Clouds reached thirty-one in the United States. In spite of the fact that Clouds is a wonderful Joni Mitchell album, there is not a lot of press about it. Hardly any features that celebrate it. Compare that to what is written about Blue or Ladies of the Canyon, and it is really surprising that there is so little out there. I hope that someone writes about Clouds as it turns fifty-five. Released when Joni Mitchell was only twenty-five, it showed just what an extraordinary lyricist and musical talent she was. So far ahead of her peers! As I cannot find too much in the way of features that explore the making of Clouds, I am getting down to some reviews. I will start with For Folk’s Sake and their review from 2010. Most of the reviews I have found are quite old now. It would be good to see some fresh words about a brilliant album:
“Clouds was Joni Mitchell’s second album and won her a Grammy for best folk performance in 1970. I didn’t know the album’s biography before I came to write this piece because when you come to an artist with a large back catalogue you don’t necessarily hear their songs, or buy their albums, in the order they were released. I was aware this was early Joni but that was all- and in a way I’m grateful because I think I fell for Clouds without prejudice. I didn’t know that several of these songs had been recorded by other artists prior to Joni singing them herself (they are of course all written by Joni Mitchell), or that some people consider her earlier folk albums to be less accessible.
I think I return particularly to Clouds because it has a song for just about every mood or situation you could find yourself in on it. To have this album with you is to always have something that will comfort, console, quell apathy, inspire optimism and even anger. The record can certainly seem like quite a disparate collection of tunes but I like that range and I do think there is a common thread to be found- and to me it is to know yourself. The album is bound at either end with two remarkable songs, Tin Angel and Both Sides now, but all ten tracks are constantly selected on my i-pod, here are some of the reasons why:
Tin Angel: The refrain of Tin Angel is ‘I found someone to love today’; that should be one of the happiest lyrics a person can write but when you first listen to this song it is all melancholy and melody; it is entirely in a minor key and a stark bare opening for an album. When you listen again- and again- you hear the hope in the final repetition of ‘I found someone to love today’. This is a song about looking back and forward at love, by the end I always feel a little more peaceful and a little more hopeful.
Chelsea Morning: Chelsea Morning is Joni in Big Yellow Taxi mode, it’s optimistic, it paints a picture for you of somewhere exciting, a place where you can’t wait to start the day. For quite a long time I thought it was about Chelsea in London- but really of course it’s about how wonderful everywhere is when you are in love.
I don’t know where I stand: The song for when you don’t know what to do about love. It can also be about not knowing what to do with yourself- or what to do next- if you want. It won’t fix the uncertainty, or the mood that means you find yourself walking around for hours; but it will go walking with you and tell you other people have felt like these things too.
That Song about the midway: This song fascinates me because it has a lovely melody and it is slightly lower, which I prefer for Joni’s voice. I still don’t really know what it’s about, is she following a man like a compass, or as the song goes on is it something more sinister. Great storytelling even if the denouement never comes to me.
Roses blue: This song is all unsettling melody and lyrics- and quite stunning. It grabs and takes hold of you, you can’t listen quietly to this, or do anything else while it is on- it is by far the most dramatic song on the album and it sounds like it could have been released yesterday.
The Gallery: ‘I gave you all my pretty years’ I am sure other people contributing to Joni week are going to write about her being a voice that made sense in music for girls and women but never was it truer lyrically to me than in this song. I know Joni doesn’t like to be called a poet so I will just say she is a great lyricist.
I think I Understand: This is quite a quiet song in all senses; it doesn’t shout to be noticed amongst this collection. It’s sweet though, you might like to listen to it on a long train journey when you are somewhere between being awake and asleep.
Songs to ageing children come: Kate Bush owes a great deal to Joni Mitchell’s vocal here. Joni’s voice is doubled and the guitar is extremely simple. The very phrase aging children never fails to move me.
The Fiddle and the Drum: This is a (sadly) timeless lyrical, melodic, acapella tune in the tradition of folk music. It must have been a sad song when Clouds was first released, when the Vietnam and Cold Wars were raging; it’s even sadder now, now that the children or grandchildren of those wars are fighting more pointless battles, further away from home. It is a reasoned, measured argument against violence and war and a standard for the peace movement. It would be moving sung by anyone but sung by Joni Mitchell it never fails to make a lump in my throat, a crack in my voice, tears in my eyes.
Both Sides Now: One of the songs that people who aren’t Joni Mitchell fans like, or know. Those songs are often the ones I don’t enjoy on albums but in this case it’s not so. I honestly didn’t know this had been sung by anyone but Joni Mitchell or that she wasn’t first to record it, I can’t imagine many other people doing it such justice. This version seems very pure compared with the version she re- recorded recently and which featured on the Love Actually soundtrack which I remember so many people commenting on. It is the song equivalent of a bottomless glass of comfort to me. I don’t always have the answers but if Joni doesn’t either then that’s okay with me”.
There are two more reviews I am bringing in before wrapping things up. Alt Rock Chick provided an expansive and hugely detailed review in their review of 2013. It gives some keen insight into songs that still sound relevant and powerful to this day. I think that Clouds is one of Joni Mitchell’s more underrated albums:
“The reflective mood of the album is firmly established in the tone and theme of the opening track, “Tin Angel.” Opening with only the sound of single acoustic guitar notes, the music shifts to unusual chords—ninths and sustained seconds—chords that defy expectations and create a sense of detachment from the humdrum of daily life. The lyrics sing of mementos that are “reflections of love’s memories,” the little souvenirs we keep in boxes to help us recall past feelings and, perhaps, past failures. While such physical reminders of existence are an endangered species in our digital world, “Tin Angel” reminds us that tactile and olfactory experiences can make such past experiences seem more alive (I still have a precious little box where you can find odd things like subway tokens, obsolete currency and a small wooden whistle given to me by a Ukrainian woman I met in Vienna). More important to the purpose of the song is that these trinkets from the past fulfill a need during times of sadness, reminding us that we were once happy, once loved. Hence the chorus, “Guess I’ll throw them all away/I found someone to love today.” What is so wonderful about Joni Mitchell at her best is that she is rarely one-dimensional; in this case, the love she has found is a risky proposition: “Not a golden prince who’s come/Through columbines and wizardry/To talk of castles in the sun.” She further describes him as having a “sorrow in his eyes,” and wonders “What will happen if I try/To place another heart in him.” The song ends ambiguously, never describing the consummation of the relationship. This is what is so beautiful about “Tin Angel”—it leaves you on the knife edge of risk, and too often, despite our inherent loneliness, we feel that love represents the greatest risk of all.
Unfortunately, the mood dissipates with the far too sweet “Chelsea Morning,” a song about which Joni Mitchell said, “I don’t think of it as part of my best work.” It’s not, and the lines “And the sun poured in like butterscotch/And stuck to all my senses” make me cringe as if I’d just eaten a mouthful of Duncan Hines Cherry Chip Cake. Fortunately, it’s a brief departure into youthful exuberance, for she quickly returns to nascent womanhood with “I Don’t Know Where I Stand.” Echoing the theme of love and risk we heard in “Tin Angel,” the song starts as if she’s just left the saccharine experience of her Chelsea room where she was “braiding wildflowers and leaves in my hair,” to find her exuberance collapsing with the realization that love involves risk and the possibility of deep pain. In this situation, she wants to tell someone “I love you” but doesn’t know where she stands with that someone. I’ve always found it interesting that fear of rejection often blocks us from taking action to move a relationship forward because it’s a paradox: the relationship can’t go forward unless we make the move, but our paralysis prevents us from the possibility of having the very thing we want. The rationalizations for inaction are plentiful, and we take advantage of every single one to avoid having to face the possibility that the person of interest may not be interested:
Telephone, even the sound of your voice is still new
All alone in California and talking to you
And feeling too foolish and strange to say the words that I had planned
I guess it’s too early, ’cause I don’t know where I stand
“That Song About the Midway” is more of a character sketch than a relationship song, though the intensity with which the narrator follows the intriguing character suggests that she believes there’s something elusive and attractive about this particular soul. It is said that the song is about Leonard Cohen, and the “midway” is symbolic of the life of the traveling musician, of searching for a lucky break and becoming tired of it all. Perhaps, but I’ve always found that once I hear that a famous person wrote such and such song about another famous person, the experience is similar to glancing at the cover of People while waiting at the checkout stand (haven’t done that in a while!) and finding out who’s cheating on whom. Who gives a shit? The knowledge reduces the potential universal appeal of the song, trivializing it by turning it into a secret code for an exclusive club. If I step back from that bias, I would say “That Song About the Midway” has some interesting imagery but there are other more moving songs on Clouds.
“Roses Blue” is one of those. This sketch is about a woman who has found alt-religion (“She’s gotten to mysterious devotions/She’s gotten to the zodiac and zen/She’s gotten into tarot cards and potions.”) It would be out of character for 60’s child Joni Mitchell to condemn someone who had such hip beliefs, and she doesn’t. The real problem is what every religion does to a true believer—it turns a potentially nice person into a flaming asshole:
She’s laying her religion on her friends
On her friends, on her friends
Friends who come to ask her for their future
Friends who come to find they can’t be friends
Because of signs and seasons that don’t suit her
She’ll prophesy your death, she won’t say when
Won’t say when, won’t say when
When all the black cards come you cannot barter
No, when all your stars are stacked you cannot win
She’ll shake her head and treat you like a martyr
It is her blackest spell she puts you in
Puts you in, puts you in.
This song triggers another one of my biases, and in my role as a music reviewer, I have an obligation to disclose such biases. Here goes: if I met the genie in the lamp and he gave me my three wishes, the first two would have to do with certain sexual fantasies and the third would be to order the genie to abolish all forms of religion on earth and wipe the memories of every person on the planet of any religious influence. Religion has caused more pain, death and separation than any single force in human history, and frankly, the benefit of something as ephemeral as faith hardly compensates for the millions and millions of lives that have been cut short or diminished by the violence and oppression that religion generates. While you may not agree with my views, it does explain the anguished attachment I have to this song: Rose’s crime is not religion, but what she has allowed religion to do to her—cut her off from human friendship by giving her the illusion that arcane knowledge entitles her to elevate herself above the unbelievers. I have experienced people like Rose far too often: the glazed look of distant disdain, the pity in the voice as she tells you how limited you are for not buying her shit . . . the works. “Roses Blue” gives me both the creeps and a sense of sadness that I have to accept that there are people on this earth to whom I will never be close, for there’s no way I can break through the religious plexiglass and relate to them as equals. In that sense, the song is a microcosm of the larger sorrow that religion continues to bring to our world today.
The comment box is down below for those of you who want to condemn me to the everlasting fires of hell.
“The Gallery” features one of the loveliest pure melodies on the entire album, supported by equally beautiful harmonies. It is a tale about a woman who admires a man’s paintings then temporarily becomes the painted object until another takes her place. Sadly, she opts for self-immolation and stays to care for his house, dusting portraits and collecting mail from other female admirers. The power of the song comes from the recognition that the value of women in our society is directly related to our fleeting beauty:
I gave you all my pretty years
Then we began to weather
And I was left to winter here
While you went west for pleasure
I should say, “American society,’ for in France, I’ve seen women twice my age who still have “the look” and continue to turn heads. Age is so overrated as a variable in sexual desire; people who feel that way have allowed themselves to be manipulated by Madison Avenue’s definitions of beauty. Look: I intend to be as hot and horny at sixty-four as I am at thirty-two and baby, I will have some serious fucking lessons to share at that point in my life!
Back to our story—“I Think I Understand” has more of the feel of “Tin Angel,” but deals somewhat inadequately with the ongoing battle against fear. It’s followed by one of my least favorite Joni Mitchell songs, “Songs to Aging Children Come,” where chromatic chords and thirds create harmonies I find rather annoying. I cheer her for her willingness to experiment, recognize that some experiments yield less satisfactory results than others and forgive her for irritating me.
The last two songs on Clouds easily make up for the less effective numbers, and both have deep resonance at this time in my life. The first, “The Fiddle and the Drum,” is Joni’s message to an America that at the time chose to embroil itself in the absurd conflict we know as The Vietnam War. I don’t think Americans fully appreciate how frightening America seems to many of the people in the world—Americans tend to accept violence as one of the inevitable prices one pays for living in a so-called “free society,” and because they view the rest of the world with deep suspicion and distrust, they tend to be closed to any foreign feedback. One of the primary reasons I chose to leave America had to do with its culture of violence—its worship of guns and its veneration of the military. In “The Fiddle and the Drum,” our Canadian friend Joni Mitchell mourns the choice that Americans have made “to trade the handshake for the fist,” something that may be even more relevant today in the era of “The American Empire” than it did the Cold War years of Vietnam when at least the evil Russians were around to take some of the heat. The dynamic is still the same, though: fuck the world, we’ll do whatever the fuck we want because we’re Americans and we’re the best fucking country in the world, so fuck you. Such a tragic perspective! Such a waste of human potential and human life!
And so once again
Oh, America my friend
And so once again
You are fighting us all
And when we ask you why
You raise your sticks and cry and we fall
Oh, my friend
How did you come
To trade the fiddle for the drum
You say we have turned
Like the enemies you’ve earned
But we can remember
All the good things you are
And so we ask you please
Can we help you find the peace and the star
Oh my friend
We have all come
To fear the beating of your drum
Joni sings “The Fiddle and the Drum” a capella, and while her version doesn’t quite match June Tabor’s cover (no one sings anti-war songs as powerfully as June Tabor), her performance is still compelling.
Before the release of Clouds, Judy Collins had a major pop chart hit with “Both Sides Now.” I am very thankful that Joni Mitchell decided to record the song herself and rescue its reputation. Judy Collins’ version is a mechanical, lifeless, overproduced piece of crap that sucks all the emotion and complexity from the song, making it sound like background music for Disneyland. Joni Mitchell’s version, stripped down to guitar and voice, is a masterpiece of vocal and rhythmic dynamics that sounds blessedly more human than machine.
“Both Sides Now” is a song about what Blake called “contraries.” As he so wisely wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.” Thematically, this brings us full circle in Clouds, for “Tin Angel” opens the album with the experience of living on the knife’s edge between polar opposites. The learning experience described in “Both Sides Now” is that because truth is something we perceive differently depending on mood and circumstances, the “real truth” can only be found in that no-man’s land between the two sides. The song is also linked to the other polar dynamic in Clouds—the need for love and the risk of loving:
Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As ev’ry fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way
But now it’s just another show
You leave ’em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away
She reaffirms the importance of this theme in the opening lines to the final verse, “Tears and fears and feeling proud/To say ‘I love you’ right out loud.” Interestingly, she also links our discovery of love with our discovery of self, and with the inevitable rejection we face when we fail to meet the expectations of friends who were comfortable with the expired version:
But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day”.
I will end with a review from AllMusic. There are actually some useful links on Joni Mitchell’s website, where you can access more reviews and information about Clouds. With cover art by Joni Mitchell and recorded at A&M Studios, Hollywood, Clouds is a classic that has never quite received the respect and focus that it deserves:
“Clouds is a stark stunner, a great leap forward for Joni Mitchell. Vocals here are more forthright and assured than on her debut and exhibit a remarkable level of subtle expressiveness. Guitar alone is used in accompaniment, and the variety of playing approaches and sounds gotten here is most impressive. "The Fiddle and the Drum," a protest song that imaginatively compares the Vietnam-era warmongering U.S. government to a bitter friend, dispenses with instrumental accompaniment altogether. The sketches presented of lovers by turns depressive ("Tin Angel"), roguish ("That Song About the Midway"), and faithless ("The Gallery") are vividly memorable. Forthright lyrics about the unsureness of new love ("I Don't Know Where I Stand"), misuse of the occult ("Roses Blue"), and mental illness ("I Think I Understand") are very striking. Mitchell's classic singer/songwriter standards "Chelsea Morning" and "Both Sides Now" respectively receive energetically vibrant and warmly thoughtful performances. Imaginatively unusual and subtle harmonies abound here, never more so in her body of work than on the remarkable "Songs to Aging Children Come," which sets floridly impressionistic lyrics to a lovely tune that is supported by perhaps the most remarkably sophisticated chord sequence in all of pop music. Mitchell's riveting self-portrait on the album's cover is a further asset. This essential release is a must-listen”.
On 1st May, we mark fifty-five years of Joni Mitchell’s Clouds. Her second studio album, it would arguable begin one of the most important and astonishing runs of albums in history. Think of how amazing Ladies of the Canyon, Blue and For the Roses is. Only three years between the release of Clouds and her fifth studio album, For the Roses. Such a prolific artist. I hope that more documentaries and podcasts are made about Clouds and Joni Mitchell’s career in 1969. Such a memorable year for music in general, she released an amazing album that has stood the test of time. Fifty-five years after it came into the world, Clouds is a mesmeric…
WORK of brilliance.