In the continual reordering of the popular-music canon, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: Joni Mitchell’s complex, emotive, cerebral, ever-evolving music is ranking higher than ever.
Her 1971 album BlueIt landed in Top Three Rolling Stone‘s most recent ranking of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and artists from Taylor Swift to Harry Styles to Mitski to Phoebe Bridgers have been dropping her name for years. Mitchell’s return to Newport Folk Festival stage for her first performance since suffering a near fatal 2015 aneurysm broke the internet to an extent that no other 70-year-old singer-songwriter could.
“Joni has a childlike appreciation of what’s going on right now,”Cameron Crowe (writer/director), was the first person to interview Mitchell. Rolling Stonein 1979, and has spent time with her recently. “She’s having the experience that few people have that came that close to dying – she actually can see what it would have been like for people to have lost her, and see them express how much she means to them. And it’s enormously moving to her.”
The new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now looks at Mitchell’s legacy and how it influenced younger generations. (To hear the whole episode, listen on Apple PodcastsOderSpotify,Or press play above. Crowe joins the program to discuss his famous interview with Mitchell as well his current encounters. Larry Carlton, guitarist talks about playing with Mitchell on their beloved Seventies albums. Court and SparkAnd Hejira. Meanwhile, Angie Martoccio discusses the highlights of Mitchell’s discography (many of which will be captured in September’s The Asylum Years 1972-1975Jonathan Bernstein gives a firsthand account from Newport Folk Festival, which includes her emotional take on the event. “Both Sides Now.”
Carlton describes, however, the making of “Amelia” and other songs, and touches on how Mitchell’s increasingly jazzy music in the Seventies confounded some listeners, but delighted him as a player. “Yes, the listener was probably being challenged,”He said, “but I don’t think that was Joni’s motivation. Just like it wouldn’t be my motivation. I think she got in a creative space and decided, ‘This is what I’m feeling. This is what I wanna write right now.’… I was obviously very comfortable with the more sophisticated harmonies. It was thrilling to me to go to a session and have it be more sophisticated than just a TV theme or another pop tune. It was right in my wheelhouse, man.”
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