Reckless Daughter: Portrait of Jonie Mitchell by David Yaffe

 This entry evinced conflicting emotions. On one hand, as a writer, I committed to reviewing every biography I read. On the other hand, as a person, I pledged to align with the adage ‘If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all’. The former sentiment prevailed.

David Yaffe’s book Reckless Daughter: Portrait of Joni Mitchell is everything wrong with a subject/author collaboration. This version of history should please Mitchell, with its high praise and tender attempts to minimize her controversial past. Otherwise, his account reads like PR in defense of a career rightfully post mortem.

Pandering yet opaque, the only new information I learned about Joni Mitchell made me want to forget her immediately. She comes off as a bitch. Mitchell met everyone of consequence connected to the sixties music scene and hates most of them: Carloe King, whom she refers to as a little brat; Joan Baez, her former manager Peter Asher; producer Thomas Dolby; any women on tour with her musicians. She skipped her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because they wouldn’t pony up enough cash for an entourage. Add to this several prominent but almost universally derided live performances, her proclivity for appearing in blackface, and the habit of chain smoking her way through life indifferent to its impact on others, one may wonder what appeal this person had in the first place.

Yaffe’s modus operandi is to bump Mitchell’s reputation to that of a musical savant, thus situating Blue (1971) on par with era defining albums like the Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper (1967) and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On(1971). Her poetry is lauded, even broken-down line by line. There is regular emphasis on the power of her atypical guitar tuning. At times we are subjected to analysis of her chords down to the sequence of notes – “D Major, back to E major, then to G major, then to the E suspended chord (D major with E in bass, a favorite of hers)”.  He raves about, “her vocal leaps, emotional depths, passionate, sultry, full of memories.” It’s all very teenage fan club president with a touch of band geek dilettante.

Such content exists better in the realm of music criticism or a People magazine profile than respectable biographies. Albert Goodman’s The Lives of John Lennon and Peter Guralnick’s The Last Train to Memphis and accompanying Careless Love are both denser offerings on musicians but which spare readers from such dithering on artistic process and technical analysis. Beyond these verbal flourishes, designed to convince us of her oeuvre’s genius, Yaffe merely spoon-feeds us Mithcell’s perspective on celebrity gossip. The character development on Mitchell herself is flimsy and uncompelling. For example, the daughter she put up for adoption is discussed mainly as an inspiration for sad songs. The reasoning behind their current estrangement, subsequent a brief reunion, is glossed over.

Yaffe ruined me not only on Joni Mitchell, but also on any biography with the word portrait in the title.  From now on, if I want brushstrokes, I’II go to a museum. When it comes to a book, give me substance, please.

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