Joni Mitchell - The Geffen Years

Joni Mitchell’s debut album for Geffen from 1982, Wild Things Run Fast saw her move her way from her jazz-based recent work and develop a more grown up pop sound for this album that surveys the world from a middle aged perspective. A four star album in Rolling Stone and now famous because her cover version of Lieber And Stoller’s You’re So Square features on George Bush’s iPod, this is really an album of change where Mitchell, inspired by new wave music she’d heard in clubs, began to move her music in a new sophisticated direction.

Joni’s second album for Geffen from 1985, Dog Eat Dog, saw her turn her unique songwriting skills to televangelists and the plight of Ethiopia among other issues of the day. With a more electronic sound, partly due to Thomas Dolby’s co-production, she was helped out by a wide selection of friends including James Taylor, Don Henley, Michael McDonald and Wayne Shorter on this sparse sounding album.

Three years after Dog Eat Dog, Joni returned with another thought provoking album that focused on the evils of contemporary culture alongside tales on war and the environment. Told through a series of duets with Willie Nelson, Peter Gabriel, Don Henley, Tom Petty and Billy Idol, Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm is a remarkable album that again relies on some tempered electronic backdrops to maximize the lyrical content and the array of fine singers.

After the electronic journey and the album of collaborations, Joni Mitchell’s Night Ride Home returned to familiar territory. A more detailed and intense examination of age, from childhood naivety to middle age retrospect with asides about injustice and betrayal, this isn’t easy listening, more Mitchell opening her heart for the world to take a long hard look at itself.