Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark

Court and Spark

Joni Mitchell

1974

I once had two smart, young feminist friends, who on more than one occasion, in an indirect and good-natured way, called me a chauvinist.  I probably asked for it, because I happened to admit, in a moment of foolish honesty, to preferring the artistic works of male musicians and authors.  I would counter, during our discussions, that it wasn’t so much that I considered female artists to be inferior — it was just that  I had a harder time relating to a female protagonist’s perspective.  And then like the bigot who says “some of my best friends are black,” I would counter that Joni Mitchell was one of my most favorite singers, songwriters and musicians.

Truth be told, the only reason I decided to listen to her in the first place was because I read somewhere that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were huge fans.  But once I heard Blue, For the Roses and Court and Spark for the first time, I could never stay away from her best albums for very long. No, I couldn’t really “relate” to her lyrics, but I was smitten with her honesty.  I was amazed by the intimacy Joni Mitchell could achieve with a listener in just 40 minutes through the music carved into a 12 inch plastic disk.

Although Court and Spark features some of Mitchell’s most accessible songs, you don’t dance or party to Joni Mitchell.  Court and Spark is almost embarrassing to listen to with other people.  It’s so personal that it feels like a private conservation.   In the title track she describes her narrow escape from a bad relationship with another musician with rare candor when she sings:

He seemed like he read my mind
He saw me mistrusting him and still acting kind
He saw how I worried some times
I worry sometimes.

In “Car on A Hill” she waits for a lover who is three hours late and starting to look like a no-show.  Wondering where he is and what he might be doing, she reflects on the impermanence of infatuation, recalling how “It always seems so righteous at the start.  When there’s so much laughter. When there’s so much spark.  When there’s so much sweetness in the dark.”  But Mitchell’s vulnerability never evokes pity.  It makes you wonder why that dude kept her waiting.

But beyond the surface relationship in the song,  those same lines foreshadow’s Mitchell’s disillusionment with success.  Like many artists I have discussed, having finally achieved popular and critical success with Court and Spark, Joni Mitchell immediately began to challenge her fans’ commitment with a series of jazz infused releases.  Taken less literally, “Car on A Hill” seems to comment on Mitchell’s disillusionment with the success she had waited so long to achieve.

But the music is even more interesting than her lyrics.  It’s hard to imagine Mitchell’s creative process for writing the songs on Court and Spark.  Most songwriters begin with a collection of chords and then add a melody that fits, but Joni Mitchell actively avoids any predictable patterns.  It’s as though the melodies were found first and chords had to be invented to support them.  It’s as if Joni just lets the wind catch her voice as she guides it down through the Laurel Canyon hills to the Sunset Strip, across L.A. to the Palm-lined streets of  Beverly Hills and the beaches at Malibu.  The songs defy categorization, blending folk, rock, progressive, country, jazz, pop and classical influences in a single track.  It’s exhausting just to list the elements, but it’s all there.  Tempos, keys and arrangements change randomly and frequently.  It should be a mess, but instead ends up being mesmerizing.

Court and Spark is regarded by many to be Mitchell’s finest recording, achieving both commercial and critical success.  If you haven’t spent much time with Joni Mitchell’s music, this is probably the best place to start, as it skillfully balances and blends the intimate singer-songwriter folk of her early work, and the experimental jazz rock she pursued in the late 70s.  If you wind up getting hooked, Mitchell’s 10 best records, including Court and Spark, were recently released in a beautifully packaged and remastered box set (The Studio Albums 1968-1979) containing ten of her best records for a remarkable price of around $55.

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