Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell is a Canadian singer-songwriter and painter.

Sourced

• That's one thing that's always, like, been a difference between, like, the performing arts, and being a painter, you know. A painter does a painting, and he paints it, and that's it, you know. He has the joy of creating it, it hangs on a wall, and somebody buys it, and maybe somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But he never, you know, nobody ever, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint a Starry Night again, man!' You know? He painted it and that was it.
  • Miles of Aisles (1974)

• I need to explore and discover and so that has given me, really, to some what seems like courage, but really it's just in my stars, there's nothing I can do about it . . . . I guess I'll just take my award and run now.
  • Said on being inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, www.chartattack.com (January 29, 2007)

• I don't like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshipped or spat out.
  • The New York Times (February 4, 2007)

Woman of Heart and Mind: A Life Story (2003)

• Any time I make a record it's followed by a painting period. It's good crop rotation.

• I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty, more and more revelation in my work in order to give it back to the people where it goes into their lives and nourishes them and changes their direction and makes light bulbs go off in their head and makes them feel. And it isn't vague, it strikes against the very nerves of their life and in order to do that you have to strike against the very nerves of your own.
  • On the writing period of Blue

• There's been a tremendous amount of growth. An actress is not expected to continue to play her ingenue roles, you know, I've written myself roles to grow into gracefully, but there is no growing into gracefully in the pop world. Basically the reason I'm so unruly in this business is because I never wanted to be a human jukebox.

Songs

• In our possessive coupling
  So much could not be expressed
  So now I'm returning to myself
  These things that you and I suppressed.
  • "Hejira"

• You go down to the pick up station
  Craving warmth and beauty
  You settle for less than fascination
  A few drinks later you're not so choosy
  When the closing lights strip off the shadows
  On this strange new flesh you've found
  Clutching the night to you like a fig leaf
  You hurry
  To the blackness
  And the blankets
  To lay down an impression
  And your loneliness.
  • "Down to You" from Court and Spark

• Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine,
  You taste so bitter and so sweet
  Oh I could drink a case of you, darling
  And I would still be on my feet
  I would still be on my feet.
  • "A Case of You" from Blue

• Rows and flows of angel hair,
  And ice cream castles in the air,
  And feather canyons ev’rywhere,
  I’ve looked at clouds that way.
  But now they only block the sun,
  They rain and snow on ev’ryone,
  So many things I would have done
  But clouds got in my way.
  • "Both Sides Now"

• I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
  From up and down, and still somehow
  It’s cloud illusions I recall,
  I really don’t know clouds at all.
  • "Both Sides Now"

• Tears and fears and feeling proud,
  To say "I love you" right out loud,
  Dreams and schemes and circus crowds,
  I’ve looked at life that way.
  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 ev’ry day.
  • "Both Sides Now"

• I’ve looked at love from both sides now
  From give and take, and still somehow,
  It’s love’s illusions I recall
  I really don’t know love at all.
  • "Both Sides Now"

• And the seasons they go round and round,
  And the painted ponies go up and down,
  We’re all captive on the carousel of time
  We can’t return we can only look behind
  From where we came
  And go 'round and 'round and 'round
  In the circle game.
  • "Circle Game"

• I came upon a child of god,
  He was walking along the road
  And I asked him, where are you going
  And this he told me:
  "I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
  I’m going to join in a rock ’n’ roll band
  I’m going to camp out on the land,
  I’m going to try an’ get my soul free.
  • "Woodstock"

• I don't know who I am / but you know, life is for learning.
  • "Woodstock"

• We are stardust,
  We are golden,
  And we’ve got to get ourselves
  Back to the garden.
  • "Woodstock"

• By the time we got to Woodstock
  We were half a million strong
  And everywhere there was song and celebration.
  And I dreamed I saw the bombers
  Riding shotgun in the sky
  And they were turning into butterflies
  Above our nation.
  • "Woodstock"

• They paved paradise
  And put up a parking lot
  With a pink hotel, a boutique
  and a swinging hot spot.
  • "Big Yellow Taxi"

• Don't it always seem to go
  That you don't know what you've got
  Till it's gone.
  They paved paradise,
  And put up a parking lot.
  • "Big Yellow Taxi"

• They took all the trees
  And put them in a tree museum
  And they charged all the people
  A dollar and a half just to see 'em.
  • "Big Yellow Taxi"

• Hey farmer, farmer,
  Put away that DDT now
  Give spots on my apples
  But leave me the birds and the bees
  Please!
  • "Big Yellow Taxi"

• I remember the time you told me, you said
  "Love is touching souls,"
  Surely you've touched mine, cause
  Part of you pours out of me
  In these lines from time to time.
  • "A Case of You" from Blue

• I wanna be strong,
  I wanna laugh along,
  I wanna belong to the living.
  Alive, alive, I wanna get up and jive,
  Wanna wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive.
  • "All I Want" from Blue

• Secrets and sharing soda,
  That's how our time began.
  Love is a story told to a friend
  It's second hand.
  • "Conversation"

• Some are friendly
  Some are cutting
  Some are watching it from the wings
  Some are standing in the centre giving to get something.
  • "People's Parties"

• Laughing and crying, you know it's the same release.
  • "People's Parties"

• Friends have told her "Not so proud"
  Neighbors trying to sleep are yelling "Not so loud"
  Lovers in anger, "Block of ice"
  Harder and harder just to be nice.
  • "Shades of Scarlett Conquering" from The Hissing of Summer Lawns

• It's coming on Christmas,
  They're cutting down trees.
  They're putting up reindeer
  And singing songs of joy and peace.
  I wish I had a river
  I could skate away on
  • "River" from Blue

About Joni Mitchell

• She is of course well past the stage of having to prove herself artistically. She is in possession of one of the most extraordinary song catalogs of the past half-century. Her chords break harmonic rules, have no technical names and defy Western musical theory. Her voice is an instrument that has grown sublimely heavier and huskier over the decades. . . .Once you get past the security gates, Ms. Mitchell's house feels like a pocket of middle-class comfort in the midst of zillionaire Beverly Hills. In some ways life is still as it was in 1974, when she bought the house: She has no computer, no voice mail, no cellphone and no e-mail. At one point, when we tried to remember one of her lyrics, we scrolled through my iPod. She said it was the first time she had listened to one.
  • The New York Times (February 4, 2007)

• Joni, you have more class than Richard Nixon, Mick Jagger, and Gomer Pyle combined!
  • Audience member, recorded on Miles of Aisles

• That's the music that I play at home all the time, Joni Mitchell. Court and Spark I love because I'd always hoped that she'd work with a band. But the main thing with Joni is that she's able to look at something that's happened to her, draw back and crystallize the whole situation, then write about it. She brings tears to my eyes, what more can I say? It's bloody eerie. I can relate so much to what she says. "Now old friends are acting strange/They shake their heads/They say I've changed".
  • Jimmy Page in Rolling Stone magazine (March 13, 1975)