Urge For Going: Joni Mitchell by Jason Schneider

Author:Jason Schneider
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781770906723
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2014-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

The last gasp of the folk revival: Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, 1975. Left to right, foreground: Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Dylan. Image © Bettmann / Corbis.

1 Kelly Anderson was adopted by a Toronto couple and renamed Kilauren Gibb. She would not learn her mother’s identity until 1997, after initial inquiries about a “folk singer from Saskatchewan who has moved to the United States” eventually led to a much-publicized reunion.

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REMARKABLE FOOTAGE OF Mitchell (or Joni Anderson as she was then known) on Oscar Brand’s Let’s Sing Out program, shot at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg on October 4, 1965, is easily found online, and shows confident performances of the unreleased “Born to Take the Highway,” the civil rights–themed “Favourite Colour,” John Phillips’ “Me & My Uncle” (later a staple of The Grateful Dead), as well as an uncomfortably stilted duet with Brand on “Blow Away the Morning Dew.” A Let’s Sing Out appearance from the following year, probably shot at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, on October 24, features another unreleased song, “Just Like Me,” as well as a chilling “Urge for Going.” Stellar coffee-house and radio recordings of much of this material, as well as all of her best early songs from 1967, are found on the long-circulated bootleg Second Fret Sets.

By that year, Tom Rush was widely performing Mitchell’s material, giving her a formal introduction to U.S. audiences. He later released the acclaimed The Circle Game (Elektra, 1968), and both its title track and “Urge for Going” are on No Regrets: The Very Best of Tom Rush (Columbia Legacy, 1999). Next came Judy Collins doing “Both Sides, Now” and “Michael From Mountains” on Wildflowers (Elektra, 1967). Collins’ 1969 “Chelsea Morning” single turned up later on Living (Elektra, 1971). Fairport Convention’s versions of that song, as well as “I Don’t Know Where I Stand,” are on their self-titled debut (Polydor, 1968, reissued on Universal, 2003), and their take of the otherwise unreleased “Eastern Rain” is on What We Did on Our Holiday (Island, 1969, reissued on Universal, 2003).

Unlike most of her peers, Mitchell has never seemed concerned about dredging up her past. The arrival of the companion retrospectives Hits and Misses (both Warner Brothers, 1996) therefore caught many by surprise, but together they accurately reflected the image dilemma Mitchell had faced since she began expanding her musical range with Court and Spark (Asylum, 1974). That said, the trio of studio albums that came immediately after — The Hissing of Summer Lawns (Asylum, 1975), Hejira (Asylum, 1976), and Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter (Asylum, 1977) — have all received positive critical reassessment and are worth exploring apart from her first six essential albums.

She seemed to find rejuvenation with Turbulent Indigo (Warner, 1994). By maintaining a consistent, if less active, creative drive from that point on, Mitchell became one of the most lauded musicians in the world by the turn of the century. It also led her to embrace her past in a way similar to the Hits/Misses concept, with the

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