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Shannon DeRespino lives in Sanford
with her husband and their two black
cats, Cam and Raven. She holds a B.A. in
English from Wake Forest University and
an M.A. in English & Creative Writing from
Southern New Hampshire University. She
has been contributing book reviews to the
Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. since 2012.
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Reckless Daughter: A
Portrait of Joni Mitchell
by David YaffeAdult / Non-Fiction
Review by Shannon Derespino
There are very few artists of any stripe that
mean as much to me as Joni Mitchell does. I first
began listening to her work when I was sixteen
years old, which means she has been with me
for nearly half of my life. Her great genius was
identifiable to me even when I was in high
school, but she has been an
artist who keeps coming back to
me and meaning more each time
the older that I get. Sometimes
you grow out of an artist. Joni
has been the opposite for me.
The older I get, the more deeply
I feel I understand, love and
need her work. She moved me
when I was 17, she saved my life
when I was 22. Now I’m 30, and I
can’t help but feel that she is the
greatest composer of the 20th
century. To say I’m a massive fan
would be an understatement.
Music means everything to me,
and Joni Mitchell is at the very
top echelon of artists for me. A
life artist.
The first Joni-related book
I read was Girls Like Us by
Sheila Weller, which traced the
history of not just Joni but also
Carly Simon and Carole King to
showcase the development of
an entire generation of women
and female musicians. It was a
very interesting book, and it did
capture many of the paradoxical
and challenging aspects of Joni’s
character. Like many great
artists, she is complex. Some find
her unlikeable, due to perceived
arrogance and a plain-speaking
attitude. I’ve always viewed
Joni Mitchell as a genius of the highest order,
alongside masters like Miles Davis and Pablo
Picasso. They can be difficult. They can be bold
and unapologetic and arrogant and flawed. But
there is so much more to them, and we can see
that bear out in the art they share with us.
Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell
by David Yaffe is a new biography that touches
on so many aspects of Joni’s personality, life
and work and paints a compelling portrait of a
woman born to be an artist. It provided deeper
insight into the music I have spent so much time
listening to, which is what I am often looking
to get out of musician biographies. Yaffe is
obviously a huge fan of Joni’s work, and he wisely
keeps her art the focal point—even when he is
delving deeply into her personal relationships
and struggles, he always focuses on how those
people and experiences influenced the music.
Joni had several major experiences in her
pre-fame years that shaped not just her art,
but her very being. She was stricken with polio
before age 10 and spent a year in a hospital
recovering. When she was 22, she became
unexpectedly pregnant and was forced to give
her daughter up for adoption because she did
not have the financial means to support her (a
secret she kept from everyone, including her
parents). By the time she began writing songs,
she had lived more than some live in a lifetime.
Yaffe explores Joni’s gift for visual art as well—
she is a very talented painter who crafted the
album covers for many of her records—and how
her acute visual and emotional mind can be felt
and heard in her songwriting.
David Yaffe writes well, and speaks about
music in compelling and new ways. It can be
difficult to write about music (there are only so
many adjectives that can be used to describe
song, coupled with the fact that music is highly
personal and what we get out of it can be
beyond words) but Yaffe does well. He focuses
most of the narrative on Joni’s highly creative
and astonishing run of albums in the 1970s,
from 1971’s Blue through 1977’s Don Juan’s
Reckless Daughter. However, he does not ignore
the works before and after this period and traces
the entire story of the discography. As someone
who appreciates every Joni Mitchell album, I
was very glad to see this. For the most part, he
keeps his personal opinions out of it which is
also a good thing in my eyes.
Joni’s life intersected with many other
famous people (and she dated a fair number
of famous men) but this book is never gossipy.
Yaffe mentions each relationship only as it is
relevant to Joni’s development as a person and
artist. He also conducted many new interviews
for this book, so many of the quotes contained
within are brand new. When you’re interviewing
people like the dearly departed Leonard Cohen,
this is a treat to read.
In the end, I highly recommend Reckless
Daughter to fans of Joni Mitchell, as well as
the curious. David Yaffe does a wonderful job
of capturing Joni and making a case for the
importance, beauty and mastery of her art. He
doesn’t shy away from her razor-tongue, but
he also captures her warmth, wit, vulnerability,
incredible intelligence and charm. She’s very
complicated, but all true geniuses are. I came
away from the book in even more awe of this
woman than I was when I went into it.
I also loved the focus on the music (so many
musical biographies unfortunately treat the
music as almost an afterthought).
Yaffe spends one memorable section
delving deeply into the closing song
from Joni’s 1972 masterwork For
the Roses. ‘Judgement of the Moon
and Stars’ is a brilliant composition
inspired by the life of Ludwig van
Beethoven, who Joni seemed to see
as something of a kindred spirit. It
is a song about the struggles and
triumphs of the artist and one of
my personal favorites. This was
the section that truly sold me on
the book. Yaffe writes of the song
with sensitivity and insight and I
recognized him as a fellow traveler.
At one point in the book, Joni
reflects that people shouldn’t
necessarily be listening to her work
and thinking of her. They should be
thinking of themselves and how the
emotions and stories she presents
fit into, inform and enrich our own
lives. Her work is deeply personal,
which makes it deeply empathetic.
She is not only a brilliant lyricist (the
*most* brilliant lyricist, to my mind)
but a composer and arranger that
actually belongs in the same breath
as Beethoven or Davis. Reckless
Daughter captures these truths and
should be a treasury to read for any of
those souls out there who, like myself
and like David Yaffe, connect with
Joni Mitchell’s work on a deep level.
On a personal note, I want to thank the
Pinehurst Gazette and any readers who have
checked out my reviews since I began writing
them back in 2012. This will be my final
issue, and I hope that at least one person out
there found and enjoyed a book based on my
recommendation. It has been a true joy to write
these reviews and share my love of reading with
all of you. I move on to new challenges. Thanks
for the memories! ☐
No. 133 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. p.31