Turning 50: Joni Mitchell’s "For the Roses"
Joni Mitchell’s expansive sound on For the Roses should no longer be underrated; it remains just as special as it was fifty years ago, argues Kiran Kalsi.
Often overlooked by fans and critics alike due to the towering successes of Blue and Court and Spark, Joni Mitchell’s fifth studio album For the Roses still holds a special place in my heart as it celebrates its fiftieth birthday this year.
Joni has always strayed from the likes of her contemporaries. From taking her music off Spotify this year, For the Roses is no exception to her legacy of innovation. Writing as a woman in the still largely male-dominated counterculture of the early seventies was no easy feat, yet Joni managed to surpass the work of her folk contemporaries in this album.
The album starts with ‘Banquet’, an introduction to the lush and complex arrangements that fill this album with textures just as beautiful then as they are today. It’s easy to forget how socially conscious Joni’s lyrics become as her distinctive and leaping mezzo-soprano voice sings of those “Waiting for that big deal American dream” at the metaphorical dinner table of 1970s America. The truth in these lines is significant as the re-election of Nixon in 1972 was associated by many as the end of the hopes of the ‘Hippie Era’. Yet for me, Mitchell was still the underrated star of the California music scene, which was dominated by figures such as Neil Young and James Taylor (both of whom she has written songs about!).
All of this does not stop Joni from making her arrangements even more crazy and complex than ever. Having polio in her childhood weakened Joni’s left hand, which eventually led to her interest in open tuning and unique style of fingerpicking. This sound is expanded on For the Roses with synthesisers, woodwind, pianos, and saxophones; it elevates her lyrical imagery and poetry. This is portrayed best on ‘Barangrill’, a song where the Kerouacian protagonist is searching for something at a roadside diner. I like how Joni now becomes the protagonist of the typical male Beat narrative. The woodwind arrangement makes the song sound otherworldly as Joni sings of the conflicting feelings when “You want to get moving/And you want to stay still.” In a live introduction to the song, Joni says “So I walked into this restaurant one day, and I thought I saw my guru… As a matter of fact there were three of them [the waitresses mentioned in the opening line], and I was so spaced out that I was sure that they were The Trinity, you know?.”
Past instrumentation, Joni’s harmonisation with herself on ‘See You Sometime’, ‘Blonde in the Bleachers’ (two of my favourites on the album) and ‘Electricity’ add another dimension to the songs as the melodies continue restlessly. ‘See You Sometime’ opens the second side of the album and honestly tales the fleeting, but still hopeful, nature of relationships – even by referencing James Taylor’s famous suspenders. The pastoral idyll in which the characters Plus and Minus lived in on ‘Electricity’ is contrasted starkly, and ultimately broken by the busy and impersonal nature of modern life. ‘Blonde in the Bleachers’ is an autobiographical account of life amongst stars, my favourite line being “She tapes her regrets to the microphone stand.”
Joni’s trademark introspective writing is ever more apparent on tracks like the jazzy and haunting ‘Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire’, a personal song written about her ex-lover James Taylor and coming to terms with his heroin addiction. This is what makes Joni timeless – her ability to convey human relationships to every listener. Perhaps most scathingly seen on ‘Women of Heart and Mind’ (arguably the more outspoken sister of ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright’) Joni sings “You come to me like a little boy/And I give you my scorn and my praise.” At a time when double standards in rock were both apparent and not frowned upon, Joni was attacked for famously dating Leonard Cohen, David Crosby, Graham Nash and others. I think there is more to be said for the quality of this list of people than its quantity, but it is unsurprising given the same attitudes have survived to attack other female artists like Taylor Swift.
The album still finds substantial time to be fun throughout its forty minutes of music and heartbreak. The eloquent metaphor extended throughout ‘Electricity’ (the protagonist’s lovers’ singing “Runs all through her circuits like a heartbeat”) is contrasted with the playful ‘You Turn Me On, I’m A Radio’. The Dylan-esque opening harmonica is nothing but a Dylan song as Joni wrote the song to mock her record label for urging her to write a song for the charts (it actually did become her first top-forty hit in the United States!).
The classically inspired ‘Judgment for the Moon and Stars (Ludwig’s Tune)’ further distinguishes Joni from her hippie folkie contemporaries and the final verse is the perfect end to the album. “You’ve got to roar like forest fire” reimagines ‘Lady Lazarus’ as Joni follows her own advice to “Strike every chord that you feel.”
Of the album itself, Joni said in a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone:
“At a certain point, I actually tried to move back to Canada, into the bush. My idea was to follow my advice and get back to nature. I built a house that I thought would function with or without electricity. I was going to grow gardens and everything. Most of For the Roses was written there.”
For the Roses is more than a transitional album. Compared to its predecessor Blue, Joni’s simultaneous ability to be outwards and inwards-looking is what makes this album truly special. It is an album about freedom as much as it is about suffering, which makes it just as listenable in 2022.