Customer Reviews

Joni Mitchell

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It's ironic (and perhaps moronic) that Hinton should choose none other than Joni Mitchell as a subject for a biography. Not only is Mitchell one of the most gifted and literate songwriters of the 20th Century, she is also one of the most iconoclastic, as well...shunning publicity that most 'rock stars' consume with a spoon. And its these circumstances which point out the failings in this dismal read: Hinton can't write and what he has written are quotes of Mitchell herself when she has deigned to submit to personal interviews. It's appalling that the publisher went ahead with such a shoddy and thoroughly uninformative book about one of the great pop icons of our century.

Brian Hinton's Both Sides Now is a complete disaster. What could have been a promising biography of Mitchell is instead a garbled mess. Indeed, Hinton's text is relatively void of biographical information. Rather, Hinton relies on a handfull of interviews published of Mitchell's, and he quotes from them in such large chunks that the reader would be the wiser to check out the interviews from their sources. Following a brief, and flawed, biographical section, Hinton uses the rest of the text as a forum for his interpretations of Mitchell's work. Album by album, song by song, Hinton gives his own personal commentary on Mitchell's music so that the text ends up reading like a diary of Hinton's own personal reflections. Moreover, Hinton's analysis of Mitchell's songs are sometimes so off-base and confusing that the reader is left wondering how he comes to these conclusions. Finally, his constant personal comments in the text make it seen like nothing more than a high school writing assignment.

Being a long-time fan of Joni, I approached this book with interest but quickly realised I should adopt caution. Not only was it constantly repetitive... (yes, you just told us the opening song of the tour gigs two pages ago!)... but it was full of contradictions: so who WAS Carly Simon's "You're so vain" written about? Most embarrassing of all was the author's misunderstanding of the American term "suspenders" (the British equivalent is "braces" - i.e. elastic supports for men's trousers (pants)).. and thus wrongly accused James Taylor of being a cross-dresser! And as for the 1996 report that Joni gave birth at the age of 52 in 1996.... really?

Because Hinton's is the first Joni Mitchell biography I've digested, I was hoping for something that didn't leave a cheap, plastic taste in my mouth. The known parts of her life that are inspiring to me were reduced to banal fodder mentioned in passing, while darker aspects became reasons for the author to step up to her vehement defense--these outbursts were nauseating and usually at the expense of someone else, leaving many questions largely unresolved. Hinton tends to shuffle back and forth between regurgitation of objective fact and jarring personal opinion. Incidentally, I like what one reviewer said about this book reading "like a last-minute book report". The fact that he completely destroys my favorite JM album in his woefully amaturish musical critiques doesn't help either. This book does not do justice to an artist such as Mitchell.

In starting this book I had such high hopes and expectations - especially given its billing as the "first" full length book to examine Joni's art and life. But almost immediately I was disappointed, confused, and even offended by what a disgraceful work this is.
There are many reasons to fault this book but chief among them are its virtually endless stream of gratuitous (and obnoxious) opinions, its numerous irrelevant passages, and its many erroneous or questionable "facts". What was often most difficult to read were the "critiques" of the selections on each of her albums. More often than not it seemed hard to believe that this man had any appreciation of, knowledge of, or feeling for her music; at times one wondered whether he was just making up these "analyses".
His sense of the historical background and cultural milieu was comparably incredulous. Either he hates most of what the epochs (from the sixties onward) represented and/or he managed to live through them basically clueless all the while.
He seems to have a rather jaded attitude toward Joni herself. A biography need not be favorable to be accurate or fair. Yet he seems to have managed to craft a rather jarring triumverate of failings: he's inaccurate, unfair, and unsympathetic!
The photos comprise one of the few positive aspects of the book. Despite all the negative aspects I've enunmerated, I've kept my personal copy. Maybe I'll eventually reread it.....at which time I will hope to find it less obnoxious, offensive, and uninformative.

A real mess. Anyone who has followed Ms. Mitchell's career will easily pick out the numerous and frequently gross errors. Not much more than a compendium of "fanzine" and other magazine and newpaper articles printed about Ms. Mitchell during the past thirty years. If you have a computer, don't bother with this book: just go to the Joni Mitchell Homepage where you'll find accurate and well-written information regarding everything you ever wanted to know about Joni!!

For those of us who feel that Joni Mitchell is the world's greatest living artist, AND the greatest Canadian who's ever lived, this book would seem to be a must-read. Sadly, this biography contains so many errors, both in fact and typography, that any longtime fan of Joni's will become annoyed fairly quickly. All of which is not to say that Ms. Mitchell's legion of fans will not enjoy reading Brian Hinton's effort. Joni makes for a fascinating subject, and her life has been as full of incident as any celebrity's out there. Still, one turns the last page of this book feeling that there should've been more; that we still don't know what makes Joni "tick"; that there are huge gaps that have gone unrecorded. Mr. Hinton, having been limited, schoolboy fashion, by what the libraries and old publications could provide, and not having done ANY original interviews himself, sheds no light on Joni that hasn't been shed before. He merely provides the useful service of compiling dozens of old articles and interviews and putting them together in a nice, readable order. And while it is always interesting to hear another Mitchell fan's views on her work, Hinton's interpretations, while at times dead-on and insightful, are often strained and ludicrous. (Are we really to believe, for example, that in Joni's painting for the front cover of "Clouds," the flower is "a cross between a lily and a poppy...some kind of Canadian hybrid, or a plant invented by Mitchell herself, playing God," and thus her way of offering us a clue to the album's theme: paradox? On the up side, there are some anecdotes that I, a Joni fan of some 25 years, had never heard before, but these nuggets are more than counterbalanced by the remarkable carelessness with which the book has been put together. The errors in this book are legion!!! Space does not permit me to go into the dozens and dozens of goofs, but any longtime fan of Ms. Mitchell's will quickly spot them. So when all is said and done, Hinton's work remains a book that all Joni's fans should read and get annoyed at. Any of these fans will enjoy the book up to a point, as long as they don't go in expecting the work of, say, a Donald Spoto. Ms. Mitchell deserves THAT kind of treatment, but, to paraphrase the words of another great songwriter, Sammy Cahn, this will have to do until the real thing comes along...

The bulk of this book is made up of quotes taken (and endlessly repeated - verbatim) from a great Cameron Crowe interview with Joni from 1979. Save yourself the trouble & just read that.

This is the most badly-written, poorly researched biography I have ever read. Brian Hinton calls himself a "fan" - but he clearly invested little effort in detailing the life of one of the most important song-writers in the history of music. The vast majority of this book are quick summaries of her songs, and detailed accounts of her touring schedule. It is boring beyond comprehension.

There is a DVD called, "Joni Mitchell - Woman of Heart and Mind". It is a Canadian made documentary and it's very good. Hinton obviously saw the film, as he borrows nearly all of his quotes from it verbatim. I cannot believe Joni Mitchell authorized such a shoddy and appallingly-written rag such as this.