The early 70’s was a strange time for
music. Undoubtedly, this is the time that music was forced to take on a new
face in popular culture. The aftermath of the hippy movement was a tough pill
to swallow for many who had helped shape it. The ecstasy of flower power had
been replaced by an overwhelming glumness and many of the figureheads of the
60’s counterculture were either losing control or taking complete U turns with
their musical direction. The Beatles were over, Bob Dylan was still in
seclusion and releasing what was essentially country music. Legends like Janis
Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones had all fallen victim to drug overdoses.
The 60’s was never coming back and the popular music scene was being remoulded.
One of the perhaps understated artists to
emerge from the late 60’s was Joni Mitchell. A singer-songwriter who would not
come to many peoples attention until the summer of 1971, when she put out
arguably her greatest collection of songs, ‘Blue’. Aptly named, this
masterpiece comprised of 10 songs written by Joni about two relationships.
Firstly, after a tough breakup with Graham Nash, she took to Europe to write
some of the songs for the album. But undoubtedly the main protagonist for the
finished album was James Taylor, whom Joni had become romantically involved
with soon after her breakup with Nash. As she has since remarked, every single
lyric on the album is 100% honest and it really does piece together a perfect
collage of where Mitchell was at this point in her career, both artistically
and personally. It is also an album that, for me, slots in perfectly with the
context of early 70’s popular music. There is no flashy, psychedelic production
prevalent here, rather an acoustic and somewhat traditional style. The lyrics also
occasionally touch on the overwhelming feeling around the music business and
society at the time, “reading the news and it sure looks bad, they won’t give
peace a chance, that was just a dream some of us had.”
What I love about the album is that it
doesn’t attempt to hide behind anything and Joni isn’t afraid to be
self-critical. With her amazing vocal range, Mitchell manages to paint a
beautiful picture of the ebb and flow of a relationship and the thin line between
love and heartbreak. It is an album I think most people can relate to in some
kind of way.
Three years later, Bob Dylan would write
his own masterpiece, by no means his first. At the time ‘Blood On The Tracks’
came along, Dylan was definitely arriving at a bridge in his career. The days
of the freewheeling folk hero and ‘voice of a generation’ were long gone,
although the echoes were perhaps still ringing in his ears. Still, his cooling
off period was drawing to a close as well and Bob was back on the road touring
with the band once more. During the spring of 1974, he started attending art
classes with Norman Raeben, who arguably reignited the flame responsible for
many of the songs on Blood On The Tracks. It was a significant move for Dylan,
but a strangely alienating one too. Raeben seemed to spark something in Dylan
that had been lying dormant for over half a decade, not only through paint, but
by helping him see things more from an ‘nonlinear’ perspective. Dylan has often
cited this spring as being a tipping point in his marriage and the beginning of
a downward spiral, which would end in divorce 3 years later. It is a dark but
incredibly rational record, dealing with heartbreak at its very core. For
perhaps the first time in his already illustrious career, Bob Dylan sounded
stripped back to the flesh and completely exposed emotionally. He has said that
he finds it difficult to relate to people who can “enjoy that kind of pain.” It
is clear he made Blood On The Tracks for himself, maybe to deal with the
turmoil of his failing marriage.
These are most definitely two albums for
the ages and in Mitchell’s case, I consider it her magnum opus. But why am I
talking about them both in the same post? Despite both artists being put under
the ‘folkie’ tag earlier in their respective careers and being loose musical
acquaintances, these two artists and albums are not intrinsically linked. Or
are they? There is evidence to suggest that Blood On The Tracks was partly
inspired by Blue. Especially the epic opener, ‘Tangled Up In Blue’. Bob once
commented that he wrote this song after spending a weekend immersed in Mitchell’s
masterpiece. I get the sense through knowing Bob’s occasional vagueness in
interviews that perhaps the whole of this album was critically influenced by
Blue.
After all, the two albums paint pictures
that overlap in more ways than one. The themes of losing a love are very real in
both cases. On the surface, Blue doesn’t sound inherently sad. There are moments
of hope and moments of blissful nostalgia. But as the songs sink in, you sense
Joni’s crippling loneliness and despair. There is hope for salvation, but a
realisation that is not possible. Dylan tackles these exact same feelings on
BOTT. Tangled Up In Blue feels like you are looking into a romantic nightmare. The
song is littered with sporadic imagery that flies past you almost before you
can process the emotion. Simple Twist Of Fate and You’re A Big Girl Now are a
slower pace, before the infectious Idiot Wind takes you right back to the
rhythm of the first track, with even more vigour and ferocity. The album
continues ebbing and flowing in similar fashion for the entire 10 tracks. Blue
also has this same variety in pace and emotion, which is outstanding for an album
that takes just 35 minutes to listen to. The fact that both Dylan and Mitchell
instill the jubilant highs, terrible lows and eventual crushing heartbreak of a
typical relationship is what makes these 2 records genius for me. There is a lingering
bitterness but also an honest confessional tone present in both cases.
Perhaps a more minor link between Dylan and
Mitchell is that Bob learned the open D/E tuning from Joni. A tuning he would
use prolifically for the first time on a record during the New York sessions
for Blood On The Tracks. This shows that they did have a personal connection at
this very significant time and may have even jammed together regularly. This
new ‘open’ style of tuning was used very powerfully at the recording sessions
in New York. Of course, many of the final cuts would eventually be scrapped and
replaced by versions recorded in Minnesota a few months later. Joni would go on
to play on Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1975 and at The Last Waltz a
year later.
These two albums are significant
cornerstones for both the artists that wrote them and the whole context of
popular music in the 1970’s. There has been speculation that Joni and Bob have
not always seen eye to eye, which is ironic considering how great these
songwriters were in their own right. It is clear to me that however respectful
Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan were to each other at the time, subconsciously
there was influence happening in both directions when they sat down to pen
these classics.
