Blue (Joni Mitchell album)

Blue is the fourth album from Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, released on June 22, 1971, by Reprise Records. Mitchell wrote and produced every track herself, recording the material between late 1970 and early 1971 at A&M Studios in Hollywood. The album came together after her split with Graham Nash and during a turbulent romance with James Taylor, examining the many sides of relationships over stripped-down arrangements built around Mitchell’s acoustic guitar, piano, and Appalachian dulcimer. When it came out, Blue did well with both critics and audiences.

It cracked the top 10 in the UK and Canada, reached the top 15 in the US, and its first single, “Carey,” became Mitchell’s second song to enter the Billboard Hot 100. Reviews were positive, though Mitchell later pushed back against the “confessional” label that many critics attached to the record. Over time, Blue has been hailed as Mitchell’s finest work.

Legacy

Rolling Stone ranked it number three on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and it regularly appears on similar rankings. The album is credited with shaping the singer-songwriter movement, and its songs have been covered by a wide range of artists. In 1986, the Recording Industry Association of America certified Blue Platinum for selling over a million copies in the US. Mitchell’s profile rose steadily through 1970.

Background

Her album Ladies of the Canyon earned critical and commercial success, and she was voted the world’s top female singer in a Melody Maker poll that year. In August, she performed at the Isle of Wight Festival, an experience biographer Brian Hinton called a “public initiation under fire” because of the hostile, drug-fueled crowd and backstage tensions. Despite her growing fame, this was a difficult period personally: Mitchell had ended her relationship with Graham Nash in 1969. After the breakup, she traveled to Greece and across Europe, a trip that inspired some of the songs on Blue.

Late in 1970, Mitchell played a Greenpeace benefit concert, Amchitka, alongside James Taylor, with whom she had become romantically involved. Biographer David Yaffe notes that while they seemed like an ideal match, both struggled with personal issues—Taylor with depression and heroin addiction. Yaffe writes that although the relationship didn’t last, Mitchell “stayed with him, long enough and deep enough that she emerged with a batch of new songs, some of them darker and more disturbing than ever.” The period leading up to Blue was emotionally draining for Mitchell, who described “years of bottled-up melancholy pouring out,” tied to events like giving up her daughter for adoption, her failed marriage to Chuck Mitchell, and the relationships that followed.

Writing and recording

Most of Blue’s songs were written on the Appalachian dulcimer, an instrument Mitchell discovered at the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival and took with her to Greece that year. The dulcimer was custom-made by luthier Joellen Lapidus, who sold it to Mitchell for $200 and nicknamed it the “Wild Columbine” for its carved sound holes. Yaffe points out that Mitchell’s guitar playing had evolved by this time into a percussive, slap-heavy style influenced by Stephen Stills’ aggressive approach, yet remained distinctly her own. Of the songs on the album, “All I Want” and “The Last Time I Saw Richard” were the last two written.

In contrast, “Little Green” dated back to before Mitchell’s first album, originating in 1966 and copyrighted in 1967. A lyrical sketch from spring 1970 appears to have been the starting point for “My Old Man,” according to Peter Kearns, and Mitchell performed an unfinished version of that song in September at the BBC Television Centre. “Carey” came from Mitchell’s 1970 Greece trip, inspired by a “fiery red-headed and red-bearded man wearing a white turban” named Carey Raditz, whom she met in a restaurant. The first draft was harsher—Mitchell said it was a response to the man’s own unkindness—but the final version was rewritten to be lighter.

Stephen Stills played bass and acoustic guitar on the track, which was originally meant to open the album. Like her previous two records, Mitchell recorded Blue at A&M Studios in Hollywood. At the same time, Carole King was working on Tapestry (1971) in Studio B. King later recalled the friendly, communal vibe between the artists, and Mitchell sang backing vocals on both King’s Tapestry and Taylor’s Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon (1971).

Mitchell recorded in Studio C, which had a prized red Steinway piano; both she and King wanted that room for the piano, but Mitchell usually got it. James Taylor played acoustic guitar on “All I Want,” “California,” and “A Case of You.” Taylor noted that engineer Henry Lewy pushed the musicians to “keep it simple,” but he also felt the spare arrangement gave him creative freedom: “Playing along with her spare dulcimer accompaniment, I was free to substitute whatever chords I felt.” Session drummer Russ Kunkel handled percussion. Aside from these few guests, Blue was recorded “in near-seclusion,” partly because of Mitchell’s emotional state. She later said, “we had to lock the doors to make that album.” Recording wrapped up in March 1971.