Happy Birthday Joni Mitchell!

Today is the birthday of Joni Mitchell. To be honest, I do not have a lot of her music on my iPod, but of course I have the outstanding album Blue (1971) and know many of her songs. Mitchell was born in Fort MacLeod, Alberta, Canada in 1943. She had polio as a child, resulting in a hand impairment that led her to experiment with non-traditional guitar tunings. She was later named the greatest female guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.

Mitchell’s album Ladies of the Canyon (1970) includes the song “Big Yellow Taxi,” which was a hit in Canada, Australia, and the UK, but was not a hit in the U.S. when originally released. Mitchell released a live version of the song several years later that had more success in the U.S. but the most successful version of the song was a cover by the Counting Crows with Vanessa Carlton released more than three decades after Mitchell’s original.

The song’s most famous line was inspired by an actual event. Mitchell was visiting Hawaii when she opened the curtains in her hotel room in the morning to see beautiful mountains. She later recalled, “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.”

“Big Yellow Taxi” mirrors the growing concern with the environment during the 1970s. For example, the song refers to the pesticide DDT, which was banned in the U.S. three years after the song was released:

Hey farmer farmer,
Put away that DDT now;
Give me spots on my apples,
But leave me the birds and the bees.

The song is brilliant in that it is not just a song about DDT. Mitchell ties together the environmental concerns with a personal story about “a big yellow taxi” that took away her “old man.” Although it is unclear from the song whether she lost her father or a lover, the message is clear. “That you don’t know what you’ve got / Til it’s gone.” The lesson works both for our personal lives and for the world.

Unfortunately, Joni Mitchell, who suffers from Morgellon’s syndrome, does not record or perform anymore. While many of us might not have known what we had until it was gone, at least we can still watch old performances.

Above is a live performance of “Big Yellow Taxi,” which Mitchell used to close her set at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival.

What is your favorite Joni Mitchell song? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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Author: chimesfreedom

Editor-in-chief, New York. View all posts by chimesfreedom