Customer Reviews

Will You Take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell's Blue Period

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Michelle Mercer likes to write about herself nearly as much as the subject of her book. Though she claims to be uninterested in gossip..."Celebrity gossip is not very compelling to me...Basically, I'm more interested in how songwriters make thier work personal than in what they get personal about", she indeed dishes throughout the book and speculates on Mitchell's personal matters. Mercer tries very hard to describe the special relationship she claims to have with Mitchell, and brags about an incident during a dinner with Mitchell and others where Mitchell called one of Mercer's comments "ignorant." "Everyone at the table froze over their salads. The Great Goddess's ire had been raised. But I wasn't going to be cowed -..."

The final offense in this book supposedly about Mitchell is when Mercer lashes out in an unnaturally vicious way about Dan Fogleberg. After reading that part of the book two times, I am still unable to determine why she included her rant in the book. Shameless, really, and completely irrelevant.

Do yourself a favor and re-listen to Mitchell's music. No reason to learn more about a pompous, self-serving Mercer through this painful book.

This turns out to be the author's ruminations on 60's and 70's songwriting and its place in the history of confessional and autobiographical expression, using Joni Mitchell's work to support her thesis. Yes, there are some insightful comments on Mitchell's "Blue period" and the quotes from Joni are worthwhile. But the focus on Joni comes and goes, too often going into the kind of analysis you might expect from a decent college paper for an introductory literature class or sometimes losing coherence altogether, e.g. "So landscape in the music of Young and Mitchell is at once more subtle and manifest, because their feelings for the land have a sound less distinguishable from their feeling of the land itself." (p. 56) Huh? At times the book reads like it was written as a series of independent essays, grappling with the same essential topic, making various unsuccessful attempts to define Mitchell's art. A line by line analysis of "Court and Spark" here, a comparison to Allen Ginsberg there. Throw enough comparisons and something will stick. Or not: even Joni Mitchell comes across as confused: "I looked to her [Laura Nyro] and took direction from her. On account of her, I started playing piano again. Laura Nyro you can lump me in with because Laura exerted an influence on me." (p. 84) Well, great! I love Laura Nyro, too! But on page 97, the author says this, "Cohen is also the only songwriter other than Dylan whom Mitchell admits as an influence." I managed to complete the book because the author did have access to Graham Nash, ex-husband Larry Klein, Joni Mitchell, herself, as well as other insiders and their commentary adds some flesh to the artist. But ultimately there are way too many digressions from an obviously intelligent writer just flashing from one idea or artistic comparison (". . .but to borrow from Blake. . ." or St. Augustine or Richard Wagner or Pablo Neruda. . .) to another. This didn't work for me, maybe it will for you.

I had the great fortune to read the uncorrected proof of Michelle Mercer's forthcoming book. _Will You Take Me as I Am: Joni Mitchell's Blue Period_ and I can tell you that you are in for a real treat when it comes out in April.

I read a lot of books about music and this one is really distinguished by the high quality of the writing. Mercer breaks with strict chronology that makes run-of-the-mill music criticism so uninteresting. Her discussion about "confessional" songwriting is fully informed by the literary history of confession from Augustine to Robert Lowell. There is a wonderful Joni monologue on Augustine--one of many fascinating excerpts from Mercer's original interviews.

For me, she really captures the core appeal of the records that she focuses on--_Blue_ through _Hejira_--, blending memoir and biography with criticism in useful ways. The book really took me back to my own personal connections with the music. While I like gossip as much as anyone else, this book has none of the prurient interest of Sheila Weller's book; rather, it captures the intricate essence of the music. It has a meditative quality that reminded me precisely about how I felt when I was coming of age with Joni's music. I didn't care about who her boyfriend was; I wanted to know, "How does she understand so well the way I feel?" This book goes a long way toward exploring that question, summed up in the quotation from Wallace Stevens's "The Man with the Blue Guitar" that serves as the book's epigraph:

And they said to him, "But play you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar,
Of things exactly as they are.

The book so exceeded my expectations that I couldn't put it down till I finished it.

This is a true delight for any Joni fan. Hugely readable and entertaining, but no fluff. I learned so much about Joni's process as an artist, and her rich and often painful life. For anyone who cares about Joni Mitchell as an artist, this is a must-read.

Found this book on library shelf and devoured it in a few sittings. I love knowing the backgrounds of the different albums. A few years back I was on a Ms Mitchell kick and I think the Joni mania has returned, not a bad thing at all!

Joni Mitchell is a musical genius, her album "Blue" a timeless classic to a new generation as well as those who adored it on release. She has created wonderful music that is as much social & cultural history as art.

She appears, however, humourless, self obsessed & rather too easily convinced of her own genius in biographical writings, & this little outing is no exception.

Helping Mitchell shoot herself in the foot again is the author, whose breathlessly adoring prose is not enlivened by her odd decision to share with her readers really boring details of her own life.

The best biographical writing of course tells us as much about the author as the subject, but in a more subtle way. Mercer's self interest matches that of her subject (& most early teens), however she's a whole lot less accomplished than Joni Mitchell & therefore less interesting to the reader.

There was some good information on the conception of Mitchell's songs & her life during the period, spoiled by Mercer's relentlessly worshipful attitude & lack of insight. As pointed out by other reviewers, their are some pretty spectacular errors of fact as well.

Listen to the songs, they really tell us all we need to know. I certainly didn't feel I knew more about music I love after reading this book.

I love all of Joni Mitchell's albums considered in this book ("Blue" through "Hejira"), and I am always interested in Mitchell's description of her (forgive me) creative process. But this book is dreadful. Mercer doesn't have a clear point of view--which, admittedly, would be difficult with an artist as confounding and complex as Joni Mitchell--and she aligns herself with Mitchell in such a mewling fashion that I had to put the book down and take several walks just to calm myself. I've always been put off by Mitchell's ungracious attitude toward other singers (if you're the best, why spend any time belittling those who aspire to be you; those who take the time to understand you know the truth), and I hated reading Mercer engage in the same tiresome, petty rant. Yes, Dan Fogelberg was trite (although Joni Mitchell did consent to sing on one of his albums). Yes, Joni Mitchell is so much more than a folk singer. (And YES, Carly Simon is an exceptional songwriter; Mercer's dismissal of her and of "You're so Vain" is snotty and ill-informed. Has she never listened to that song? Simon's voice alone proclaims that she is not a victim. No one in pop music can convey joy or humor with the economical wit and casual profundity as Simon. You never hear Carly Simon strain. The comparisons between Simon and Mitchell do neither one justice. They are different artists entirely). Finally, take this sentence as a perfect example of Mercer's windy nonsense: "an artist seizes the passing moments that many of us forget, worries them through a whirl of sensitivity and sensibility, and elevates them into lasting artistic statements." Good grief.
Of course, it's also obvious that Mercer's book got under my skin. In that sense, she succeeds, and I give her book two stars, even though I want to give it one.

Only halfway into this book, there are plenty of factual errors. The author attributes the song "Tin Angel" to her eponymous album, also known as Song to a Seagull. I immediately knew before I even had to verify this, that it was in fact from the album Clouds.

The author also refers to "This Flight Tonight" as being from the album Ladies of the Canyon. When your book specifically mentions Blue in the title, you really ought to know what songs are on it! "This Flight Tonight" is in fact track seven on Blue.

Entirely too much time is spent fussing with semantics of the term confessional songwriter and its religious/guilt implications. This is the sort of thing you think about before writing the book, not dedicating page after page to its discussion.

All that being said, this book is still worth reading for people who really love Joni Mitchell's work. The author was actually able to personally interview Mitchell, which is no small achievement. There are also some new bits of information never before known, including the name of the person who was the basis for The Last Time I Saw Richard.

Joni Mitchell has complained bitterly about the myopic focus on the period of her career which Ms. Mercer dubbs her "Blue" period. Mitch is not pleased with those who relegate her to the status of "girl with a guitar", or, Lord help one, a "confessional" singer/songwriter. Ms. Mitchell feels these descriptions reduce her music to "roles created for an ingenue" and a baring of the soul which includes an admission of some sort of guilt, as "confession" would imply. Never one to suffer fools, Mitchell rejects both of these labels, if one will, out of hand.

However..... Ms. Mercer has done a fine job of explaining why the music created during Mitchell's "Blue" period, as she puts it, has endured and enriched. The music created in this era stands the test of analysis, in the "classics" vein. What Mitchell achieved with "Blue" through " Hejira" were pieces of art which spoke to the universal human condition, regardless of the time frame. The emotions of love, grief, jealousy, and loneliness are covered; the virtues of honesty, integrity, insight, these are present; the ability to look inward, then outward, then back in again, are poignantly explored. By speaking to all these areas of humanity, Ms. Mitchell was able to connect with listeners on multiple levels, never mind the musical/poetic genuis of her work. While later works continued a journey into the mind and heart of music, perhaps it is true Mitchell uncovered the human heart most lucidly in the five works included in this "period". This fact does not detract from more recent offerings, it simply reflects the human need to feel seen and understood.

Ms. Mercer does a great service to Mitchell's musical art by comparing her works to literary pieces, regardless if the works are reviled or revered by Ms. Mitchell herself. It is much more appropriate to liken Joni Mitchell's work to literary illuminaries than lumping her in with female singer/songwriters. That sort of comparison is limiting. Ms. Mercer does a fine job of dissecting these songs, with a keen eye for the moral of the story; in Joni's most intimate moments, all she really ever asked of her family, friends and fans, was a willingness to accept her, to "take her as she was/is."

Joni Mitchell's "Blue" was a seminal event in modern music and was a profoundly important album for me personally. As a result, I was looking forward to reading this book. Ms. Mercer is an intelligent writer and made linkages between various literary and philosophical figures that I would not have seen. However, a little too much about this book was about Ms. Mercer. That being said, I'm glad that I read it and would recommend the book to any fan of Joni Mitchell.