The monster album, perhaps her most famous and the one that still has people raving to this day. Teenagers and solitary souls of the era ranked this with Leonard Cohen's Songs From A Room - it was so powerful in its lyrics. Many who heard this first rank it as the best Joni Mitchell album, a favourite to listen to year after year,
The songs were written in several locations as Joni travelled after she and Graham Nash had broken up. They are raw with emotion, sad, and will strike a chord with anyone today. Do not however let the sadness and pain behind them put you off - this is a truly amazing set of songs.
In 1979 Mitchell reflected to Rolling Stone, "The Blue album, there's hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either".
Forty years after Blue's release, the track River was performed by Lea Michele in the Glee 2011 Christmas special. Not bad, but not Joni.
There's a good piece on some of the things that led up to Blue on The Flower And The Vine blog.
4. Carey - 3:00
5. Blue - 3:00
8. River - 4:00
10. The Last Time I Saw Richard - 4:13
After receiving Hunky Dory as a Christmas present with my first record player, Blue was the first album I bought with my own savings. All good dreamers pass this way some day.
ReplyDeleteAs fine a grounding in record buying as you could get!
DeleteI bought Ziggy Stardust soon after I got Blue.