Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now and Big Yellow Taxi

I fell in love with Joni Mitchell's music the first time I heard her songs. Maybe it was her lyrics, those words that could be simple expressions, melancholy explorations, playful banter or somewhat cryptic metaphor as her style became more and more evocative and less direct.

Maybe it was her music. Mitchell was a folk musician in her early days, but as she grew musically, one style wasn't quite enough to help her say what she needed to say. A guitarist with a penchant for finding new ways to play, she is said to have become accomplished in more than 50 alternate tunings. And she was a musical explorer who found jazz...or jazz found her...and it was a good fit.

But I don't remember which of her songs was the one I heard first, the one that caught my attention all those years ago, because two always come to mind. It could have been "Both Sides Now," a beautiful, almost ethereal song that uses the imagery of clouds as a metaphor for how aspects of life become visible, then obscured, and how we never really get a clear view of life as long as these "clouds" drift in and out of view. Life seen as a series of transient moments, perhaps. Her most frequently covered song, one of the most enduring versions is performed by Judy Collins.

According to Songfacts:

This was the first hit song written by Joni Mitchell, whose version appeared on her 1969 album Clouds. Mitchell recalled: "I was reading Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King on a plane and early in the book Henderson the Rain King is also up in a plane. He's on his way to Africa and he looks down and sees these clouds. I put down the book, looked out the window and saw clouds too, and I immediately started writing the song. I had no idea that the song would become as popular as it did."

Then again, it could have been "Big Yellow Taxi." The bouncy pop melody provides an almost ironic counterpoint to the wistful, somewhat sardonic lyric that ultimately takes a look at loss from more than one point of view. The phrase "...you don't know what you've got till it's gone" repeats throughout the song, and it begins to sound less like a lament and more like a warning.

According to Songfacts:

Mitchell (from a 1996 interview with the Los Angeles Times): "I wrote 'Big Yellow Taxi' on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart... this blight on paradise. That's when I sat down and wrote the song." 

Joni Mitchell hasn't performed in a very long time. Years of smoking took her voice, a voice that slipped easily into a supple soprano in her youth, a voice that settled into a dusky, expressive alto in her middle years. A few years back, she began to suffer from a painful skin condition called Morgellons disease, which according to the Mayo Clinic is "...an uncommon, unexplained skin disorder characterized by sores, crawling sensations on and under the skin, and fiber-like filaments emerging from the sores. It's not certain what these strings are. Some say they are wisps of cotton thread, probably coming from clothing or bandages. Others say they result from an infectious process in the skin cells. Further study is needed." That disease led her to become a virtual hermit, venturing out from her Los Angeles home only occasionally for visits to her family in Canada.

And then, she suffered a brain aneurysm last spring. Reports suggest that her health has improved since, but information seems spotty at best, and we can only wonder and hope for the best.

But her days of performing are now behind her. It's time now to rest and heal.

In the end, it really doesn't really matter which of those wonderful tunes came first, since they both led me to the same wonderful source. Joni Mitchell's music has been a bit part of my life for many years, and I can't imagine a perfect world without her music being a part of it.