Friday, 27 October 2017

David Yaffe - Reckless Daughter: A Portrait Of Joni Mitchell


Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good biography



I wasn't sure what to expect from Reckless Daughter.  There are an awful lot of terrible showbiz biographies around, so as someone who has loved Joni Mitchell's music for nigh on half a century now I approached this with some trepidation – but it turns out to be very good.  Yaffe's style is readable and pretty straightforward and although it's a little over-written in places for my taste I never found that intruding too badly and I found the whole thing an enjoyable and fascinating read.

David Yaffe knows his stuff and covers the whole of Joni Mitchell's life in interesting but not excessive detail.  He has known Joni personally for a long time and has spoken to her extensively for this book.  He has also spoken to a very wide variety of others who know her from childhood friends to musical collaborators and the friends of older age; what seems like a genuine picture emerges of a stunningly talented musician who, partly as a result of formative experience is tough, thoroughly individual, headstrong and self-reliant.  As a woman, this has brought her a good deal of criticism over the years, but thank heavens she is who she is because it has enabled her to create and record a body of work which is among the finest of all musical creations of the last half century, in my view.  Yaffe doesn't skate over her less personable sides; he obviously likes and admires her very much but this is never a hagiography and it seems to me to be a pretty balanced portrait which thinks seriously about how Joni's life experience may shaped her and her music, but– praise be! – doesn’t go in for excessive speculative psychologising.

Part of the genius in Joni Mitchell's lyrics is that they are so often plainly intensely personal, but they speak to me of things in my own experience, often very indirectly but with great poignancy.  Learning more about the experiences which gave rise to many of these songs is fascinating to me, and only intensifies their significance.  Many, many years after I first heard and loved Little Green, I remember her revealing that it was about being forced by circumstance to give up her beloved baby for adoption.  Even after those decades, it gave it an added poignancy which I have felt ever since.  I'm not sure that there are revelations here which had quite the same impact on me, but it has certainly enriched my understanding and enjoyment of a lot of Joni's music.

The word "genius" is very over-used about artists of all kinds, but I think it may be justly applied to Joni Mitchell who is one of the very greatest of all songwriters and performers.  I think this is a biography which is worthy of its subject and I can recommend this to any Joni Mitchell fan - which, let's face it, ought to be everybody.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

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