Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell

Reviews

1. 

   judith – August 11, 2024

   Very well done; Never becomes hagiography despite author’s deep love of her work
   The author gets why Joni is one of a kind and rightly focuses on her best music from 68-79. She clearly seems to have some bitterness coloring her view when looking back on her marriage to Larry Klein (who was in his early 20’s and 13 years her junior when they married) and the role he and other collaborators played in the failure of her work to sell and connect with audiences in the 1980’s. The author gets both sides of the story when she stars assigning blame in a bitter way in her later years when looking back on her albums from the 1980’s and their low sales. She failed to take the good advice she was given and it is clear she only has herself to blame. She does all the cliche things like fire her long time manager and engineer who clearly always had her best interest at heart, and blamed the music industry in general when album sales started to fall off. Despite her missteps in the 1980’s, artists like Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter recognized a fellow genius and stayed friends with her and would help keep her artistry in the public sphere and make sure her genius and influence was not forgotten.The author did his homework and, to put it simply, he ‘gets’ her and why she is so important and still relevant. Although it is the only biography currently out, it is the definitive biography because she participated and its so well written in every respect. There’s room for another book that just goes through her catalog and other contributions with a fine tooth comb, but this covers her catalog pretty well considering it is a more general biography. And there may be room for more in depth coverage of some of the less flattering aspects of her life in a biography in which she has no participation, but the author doesn’t skip over any of her major mistakes or the weaknesses she demonstrated in her life in order to spare her. The book does not descend into hagiography as far as I can tell from the other sources I’ve read. This is the most in-depth and unsparing book I know of despite her cooperation, which I think says a lot about her fundamental honesty. It doesn’t seem like she attached any conditions when she gave interviews to the author. I learned a great deal I never knew and I still think the world of her and her music. Despite her human failings she isn’t afraid to fess up to them, at least the things she proper perspective on. What’s that line from the Janet Jackson song that sampled her when Q-tip is singing: “Joni Mitchell never lied”. Yeah, I’ll go along with that.

2. 

   Addison Dewitt – August 11, 2024

   Never Meet Your Heroes
   For better or worse, Mitchell became my muse long ago, during the 70s when I first discovered her on “Court & Spark”. Her words and music have been my inner guide in all things art and romance to the point of becoming a near-religion. After “Taming the Tiger” came out, however, I lost touch with her musical journey, but had read a few interviews and saw some cracks in her veneer. Her personal views on politics, sexuality, human rights and other subjects alternately bothered, angered or disturbed me. I realized I really don’t know Joni, at all.Yaffe’s deep dive into the life of the chanteuse revealed even more, more than I probably wanted to know. She’s flawed. She’s human. She makes mistakes, she has bad days. It knocked her off my golden pedestal in a wonderfully colorful way.The writing is solid, her life story is long and intriguing. Without becoming gossipy or pointedly mean, Yaffe reveals both the good, bad and ugly of the artist without denigrating her. We don’t know how much longer we’ll get to be graced by the presence of this would-be goddess, so I suppose that eventually this book will be abridged with a few more chapters at some point in the future. I look forward to the update with a bit of trepidation.

3. 

   Alex Brunel – August 11, 2024

   A talented woman against the world
   This very detailed portrait of Joni Mitchell was a very absorbing read. It gave me great pleasure to re-visit her material as I read it, and it also introduced me to much I’d never heard, including the beautiful Paprika Plain, a sophisticated and beautiful composition that I hadn’t fully appreciated before and that I ended giving to people this year as a Christmas present.Mitchell comes across as a deeply gifted and embattled woman, strong and talented enough to survive the nasty juggernaut of fashion and trend that is the music business but ultimately betrayed by it, and by the parts of herself that continued to hunger after stardom and recognition as an artist, and could not allow her to be content with the huge things she had achieved. The author makes a plausible argument that the strength of Mitchell’s ego greatly contributed to her success but ultimately also left her hungry and angry, much like Miles Davis, one of Mitchell’s own icons.The importance of Mitchell as an artist is well demonstrated here, and that is good reason to buy this book. But it must be noted too that Mitchell is also important as a woman artist, who broke new ground in an overwhelmingly male-dominated field. The cruelty of the industry and of many of her male peers in pronouncing judgements on her personal behavior while simultaneously exploiting it is an example of an ugly double standard that should not be forgotten in an era where so many young women think that feminism is yesterday’s news: recent political events demonstrate overwhelmingly that it isn’t. Mitchell’s restless, reckless living has been heart-breakingly brave and productive despite her disappointments and her personal and professional collisions with patriarchy, and a portrait such as this can’t avoid serving as a lesson for any woman striving to be heard.Ultimately Michell has left us an astonishing catalogue of work and that is what she surely will prefer to be remembered by. But she also lived through and was iconic throughout a socially turbulent era when what women could do and who they could be was changing. It hasn’t changed enough, for sure, but this woman who seems in this portrait largely to have abandoned identifying herself as a woman is an important figure in many regards, and Yaffe has done a good job in trying to represent her many colors. Her demand that he remain star-struck by her ultimately defeats him, but, after all, she is and was the queen of the scene, and he is just a journalist… a pretty good one, I think.

4. 

   Meekel – August 11, 2024

   Very well explained about her life and music. Pleasant to read, unique to fill the questions you may have after decades following a real composer-poet-artist.Glad to see that she overcame to any of the incredible accidents of her life, till the end and forever.Her music and poems are for sure the most significant of the century, an example for all those seeking for harmony and strong commitment.

5. 

   Fausta Libardi – August 11, 2024

   Plenty of details that help you uderstand her unique personality and groundbreaking work. Also explains her personal choices as a woman of heart and mind, and of genius, in a men’s world – hard choices indeed. Still have to read to the end. As a biography, it lacks structure and imagination. But I still have to read it to the end.

6. 

   Gerhard Wiegleb – August 11, 2024

   Sehr kenntnisreich geschrieben, der Autor ist offensichtlich ein Fan, schreibt aber nicht kritiklos daher. Insgesamt sehr informativ und unverzichtbar.

7. 

   William J – August 11, 2024

   This is a really well written and informative book about Joni Mitchell, and therefore its exactly what I was hoping it would be. At the same time, learning all about her life was a completely deflating experience, as she’s not the type of person you’d want to know or be.