Posted on 04/26/2010 6:26:23 PM PDT by Artemis Webb
"What is the big deal about Bob Dylan?" Julia Schrenkler wondered on Gather.com three years ago. Well, according to fellow folkie Joni Mitchell, he's a plagiarizing fraud.
"Bob is not authentic at all," Mitchell tells the Los Angeles Times. "He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I."
True, Dylan's name is a "fake" -- he was born Robert ... um, Zimmerman -- but he'd have to be some kind of crazy to invent a voice like his current subterranean croak. Let's assume she's talking about his Woody Guthrie-isms of the '60s, just to be on the safe side.
But Mitchell (birth name: Roberta Joan Anderson, btw) doesn't restrict her remarks to male performers of her generation, letting us know that "Grace [Slick] and Janis Joplin were [sleeping with] their whole bands and falling down drunk."
Well, yes, but what of the Canadian-born Mitchell's own work? Time for a little self-examination, perhaps?
"My work is set against the stupid, destructive way we live on this planet," she announces. "Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980. Madonna is like Nero; she marks the turning point."
Ladies and gentlemen, Joni Mitchell: Special Ranting 2010 Edition. Approach her at your own risk...
(Excerpt) Read more at knittingcrochet.gather.com ...
“What about Chuck Berry?”
Catchy pop lyrics “coffee colored Cadillac”...but not the stuff of legends...Dylan was there.
A Canadian version of a Dixie Chick wannabe.
lol
Neither Slick nor Joplin slept their way into recording contracts.
Janis sure didn’t...
Meow. Back in the day, Joni made her way through the entire folk-music scene, so she shouldn't throw stones. Why the need to trash poor dead Janis? And somehow for all her alcohol consumption Grace Slick is still attractive at 70. This comes off incredibly catty.
Wide difference of opinions about her work on this thread. Personally, I loved Joni Mitchell's work, and still do. I consider her to be one of the signature artists of the 60's era.
Ever heard the song, "Woodstock" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young? Joni Mitchell wrote that.
Thanks for injecting a little reality into this Joni bashing thread...
Bitter and bitchy is not attractive in young, beautiful women. It is particularly unattractive on this old biddy.
She’s had some hard times and health problems...
I can cut her slack for her bit on “The Last Waltz.”
Bob Dylan soured on the "social justice" scam early, I mean REAL EARLY--like around 1965. That's what the lyrics to "My Back Pages" are all about. But his repudiation was indirect and the flower-children foolishly mistook him to be their prophet.
He explained some of this in his autobiography--which discloses him to be relatively conservative on many issues. I think that's what annoys fading fraying folk artists like Joni Mitchell, who take themselves far too d*mn seriously. He didn't leave them. He was never really with them.
Sheesh. Joni seems all Tangled Up In Blue.
To each his own. I always thought Joni’s music sucked, and if she would have recorded “Woodstock” it would have sucked to.
Crap! I'm running out of heroes here!
Desperately groping for her 15 minutes which ended years ago.
Dylan was Zimmerman at Hibbing and our friend here recalls that "he would serenade us, on the piano, and it was not what you would think."
Dylan gave us a language which has variously been a machine gun or a lute, but never Joni Mitchell's "plagiarism" nor Joan Baez' "vagueness."
I don't call it anything, said Frankie Lee with a smile.
Joni, Joni, Joni--
I all alone beweep my outcast fate
and trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries
and look upon myself and curse my fate
Cue Frank Zappa:
"Do ya love it do ya hate it
There it is the way ya made it"
ROFL!
Even given your “was” and “could”...she’s still really bitter and bitchy now.
I’m going to say something very important about music. Learn it, live it, love it.
All music (notice I said the word “all” here) is derivative.
There are only so many notes and so many chords.
Everybody has been influenced (read: has ripped off) everyone else.
People discover Led Zeppelin used a lyrical hook or a riff that someone else used before them and they think they’ve discovered a rent in the space-time continuum.
Get over it people. It’s only music. Enjoy it. Or not. But get over it.
In her prime Joni Mitchell was quite talented as an instrumentalist and songwriter, and had a serviceable voice as well.
However, when she calls Bob Dylan a fake and Slick and Joplin whores - well, it makes people focus on the fact that she began her career by emulating Dylan and by famously sleeping with every folk rocker in Laurel Canyon.
She invited that kind of analysis with her comments.
It still won't interfere with the pleasure a Mitchell fan can derive from weeping as he listens to Blue for the 1,000th time.
Well, you know the old saw; "If you remember the 60's, you weren't there."
I think a lot of the folks commenting either were genuinely never turned on by Joni's work, or they really did live through the 60's, and have totally forgotten what a force she was in the music of the era.
She was an awesome songwriter, and musical talent. She was also very understated in her political beliefs at the time, preferring to put her thoughts into her lyrics.
She never came across as an angry radical leftist, like some musicians of the day.
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