River of Words: Joni Mitchell at the BBC – Book Review

River of Words: Joni Mitchell at the BBC – A Life on the Airwaves by Tom Hagler

Published by Headline and the BBC | Available now
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Drawing on decades of BBC interviews, performances and archive recordings, Tom Hagler is ideally placed to tell the story of Joni Mitchell in her own words. In River of Words: Joni Mitchell at the BBC, he brings together the people, programmes and performances that capture one of music’s most influential songwriters at work, offering a fascinating glimpse into the mind of an artist whose wit and candour are every bit as compelling as her songs.

Joni Mitchell is a fascinating subject for a music book. Songwriter, painter, musical innovator, uncompromising individualist and, as this wonderful book repeatedly demonstrates, a woman with absolutely no shortage of opinions, she has a story worth hearing in her own words. In River of Words: Joni Mitchell at the BBC, Tom Hagler has taken an appealing approach, drawing on decades of BBC recordings, interviews and recollections to build a portrait of an artist who has always had plenty to say.

One of the great pleasures of River of Words is discovering just how entertaining Mitchell is when she’s not singing. We tend to think of her in terms of the extraordinary songs, the emotional candour of Blue, the adventurousness of The Hissing of Summer Lawns or the jazz explorations that followed. Yet here is an artist whose conversation can be every bit as compelling as her music: sharp, inquisitive, occasionally gloriously blunt and always unmistakably her own person.

As Hagler writes in his introduction, Mitchell is one of those rare artists whose conversation rivals her lyrics. It’s a terrific observation, and the book gives us plenty of evidence to support it.

The story begins in 1967, when a young Canadian singer-songwriter arrives in Britain looking for opportunities. Mitchell’s songs are already finding admirers, but commercial success remains elusive. Her situation is hardly glamorous. Reflecting on this period, she recalls: “I was broke most of the time”. Hagler brings this early period to life through the memories of people who encountered Mitchell before her legend was fully formed. We hear from those who helped arrange her earliest British appearances, including the musicians who witnessed her playing at London’s Marquee Club in August 1967. Their recollections have the warmth and occasional surprise of people looking back on an evening they could never have guessed would become part of music history.

There are wonderful little magpie-picked details collected throughout. Canadian trumpeter Mike Rosen recalled the friendship he and his partner Marcy struck up with Mitchell, including their shared fondness for British chocolate (particularly Cadbury’s Nut bars – great choice). Marcy would eventually become the inspiration behind one of Mitchell’s most beloved songs, although the story is rather more complicated than the title might suggest. These memories give the early chapters a welcome sense of ordinary life: friends dropping in, conversations over coffee, games of Monopoly and musicians trying to work out what comes next.

Mitchell, incidentally, came up with the name Eclection for Rosen’s multinational music group after asking who was in it. Her verdict was that it was an eclectic collection, so Eclection it was.

The BBC itself plays a central role in the story. Its radio and television programmes gave Mitchell opportunities to perform, experiment and speak at length, often at important moments in her development as an artist. Hagler is particularly good at showing how these recordings capture her in the process of becoming, rather than presenting a polished retrospective assembled after the event.

The 1968 Top Gear session is a case in point. Mitchell was backed by the John Cameron Group, a collection of highly accomplished musicians whose jazz sensibilities offered a glimpse of the musical directions she would explore more fully in later years. Producer John Cameron remembers the pleasure of working with her, praising her idiosyncratic writing and describing her as ‘a thorough musician’. The session was completed in remarkably little time, but its significance extends beyond the songs recorded that day. Mitchell was already demonstrating an appetite for collaboration and a willingness to follow her musical instincts wherever they led.

Hagler also has an eye for the wonderfully human imperfections that make archival material so rewarding. John Peel plays the wrong record, a producer drops a coffee cup, and the programme carries on regardless. There’s something really reassuring about discovering that even the BBC’s musical history was occasionally held together by people making it up as they went along. The real centrepiece, though, is the 1970 In Concert performance, which Hagler rightly treats as something close to a holy grail for Mitchell admirers.

This is Joni Mitchell on the cusp of making Blue, an album that would become one of the defining works of her career. The extraordinary thing about the concert is that some of the songs are still taking shape and metamorphosing. Lyrics differ from the finished recordings; verses are missing; occasionally, the music is there before the words have caught up. If you’re a Mitchell fan, I could not recommend sticking this on YouTube more and having a wine.

Mitchell even introduces ‘My Old Man’ by admitting that it needs another verse. It’s a rare opportunity to witness the creative process rather than simply admire its finished product. We know what these songs will become, but she is still working them out in front of us.

Hagler describes the experience as watching the ink on Blue dry. Songs that have become so familiar they can seem almost inevitable are heard here in an earlier, less settled form. The performance lets us listen closely to Mitchell making decisions, testing ideas and finding her way towards the versions that would eventually reach the record.

For anyone who has ever wondered how a great songwriter works, this section alone makes the book essential reading. For those who already know every word of Blue, it offers the pleasure of hearing those songs differently.

There’s another performance that brings a rather different kind of fascination. In October 1970, Mitchell appeared alongside James Taylor in a concert that captures the couple’s musical chemistry just as their relationship was approaching its end. They joke together, exchange songs and perform with an intimacy that makes the whole thing feel almost indecently personal.

Then Taylor introduces ‘You Can Close Your Eyes’, a song written about leaving a lover. The audience might simply hear a beautiful song. With hindsight, we understand the implications. Hagler recognises the strange mixture of tenderness and impending heartbreak at work here. Watching the performance now, it’s hard not to be conscious of everything that the two musicians couldn’t have known about how their relationship would be remembered.

The book’s chronological framework is flexible enough to accommodate Mitchell’s many reinventions. We move through the 1970s and into the 1980s, encountering the increasingly adventurous musician, the painter, the interviewee who refuses to accept the limitations others might place on her, and the woman whose opinions are not always designed to make her popular.

There’s plenty of humour along the way, particularly in the recollections of television and radio appearances. Mitchell is never reduced to a collection of famous songs or an untouchable artistic monument. She’s a living, breathing personality, and Hagler understands that the best way to honour her is to allow her contradictions to remain intact.

One of the book’s most valuable qualities is its attention to her visual art. Mitchell has sometimes been treated as though painting were an interesting sideline to the music, but her paintings and her musical imagination are clearly connected. Her eye for colour, character and detail finds its way into her songwriting, where places and people are rendered with an almost cinematic vividness.

Hagler also makes room for the more difficult chapters of Mitchell’s life. Her willingness to speak candidly about deeply personal experiences is one of the defining features of these interviews, and the material concerning her daughter and adoption is especially revealing. A 1990 radio interview in which Mitchell spoke about the subject prompted an extraordinary reaction from a Canadian Embassy official, who demanded that the recording be destroyed.

It’s a striking reminder of how fiercely Mitchell has guarded her right to tell her own story. She doesn’t necessarily make things easy for those around her, and she certainly doesn’t seem inclined to tailor her thoughts to suit somebody else’s expectations. Hagler handles this material with care, allowing the original interviews and the recollections of those involved to speak for themselves. The result is more affecting than an overworked account that attempts to explain every emotion or settle every question. And then there is the remarkable story of Mitchell’s recovery following her brain aneurysm in 2015.

The later chapters are among the book’s most moving. We follow the long process of rehabilitation, the gradual return to music and the emergence of the gatherings that became known as the Joni Jams. Musicians including Brandi Carlile and others helped create an environment in which Mitchell could reconnect with the music she loved. The image of her picking up a guitar after years away from the instrument is especially powerful. During one gathering, she begins playing “Come in from the Cold”, and the musicians around her recognise the song and join in.

It’s a moment that could easily become sentimental in the wrong hands. Hagler avoids that trap by letting the people who were present describe what happened. The emotional force comes from the simple fact of it: a musician returning to her instrument, finding her way back into a song and discovering that the music is still there.

The subsequent account of her return to the stage at the Newport Folk Festival is genuinely moving. For an artist whose work has always been so closely tied to observation, memory and the passage of time, performing ‘Both Sides Now’ again carries a particular weight. The song has acquired decades of additional meaning, both for its writer and for those listening. It’s difficult not to be affected by this section, even if you’re the sort of person who normally prefers your music books to keep their emotional cards close to their chest.

What makes River of Words so successful is the range of life it captures. Alongside the major performances and career milestones are friendships, artistic disagreements, jokes, cups of tea and unexpected encounters. The book gives these moments room to breathe, and the people recalling them often reveal as much about Mitchell as the formal interviews do.

Some of the most memorable passages are brief. A detail about a friendship or an offhand remark can stay with you because it feels so specific to the person being remembered. The accounts of Mitchell’s generosity, her sharp tongue and her curiosity gradually build a more rounded portrait than a straightforward career history could offer.

Hagler’s conclusion is particularly touching. Having spent so long exploring Mitchell’s words, performances and relationships, he comes away with a strong sense of her generosity towards the people around her. That generosity exists alongside her bluntness and occasional rudeness, not instead of them. As producer Jeff Griffin puts it, “She has time for people”.

River of Words is a generous, intelligent and often funny book about an artist who has never been particularly interested in making herself easy to understand. It offers new perspectives on familiar performances, rescues overlooked moments from the archives and reminds us that even the most celebrated musicians have lives that unfold in the spaces between the songs.

For longtime Mitchell admirers, there’s an enormous amount to enjoy here. For newcomers, it provides an unusually intimate introduction to an artist whose influence extends far beyond the records most people know. And for anyone who has ever watched an old music programme and wondered what happened before the cameras started rolling, it’s a particularly satisfying read.

The BBC archive has given Hagler an extraordinary amount to work with, but the book’s real strength lies in his ability to make those recordings feel immediate again. We hear Mitchell thinking aloud, watch her work through ideas and see how her personality comes through in the way she talks to the people around her. The music remains at the heart of it all, but the conversations add layers of context and feeling that make familiar performances newly compelling.

The world of music books doesn’t need another reverential account of a genius. What it needs is something that brings that genius closer, without diminishing the mystery. River of Words does precisely that. It’s a wonderful book about a remarkable artist, and one that leaves you wanting to put the records on all over again.

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Words by Thomas Sidwell, his author profile ishere