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Staff Pick
Like most children of California baby boomers, Joni Mitchell was the soundtrack of my childhood. I had memorized all the songs on Blue by the time I was seven. Needless to say, I was clamoring for David Jaffe's biography on the enigmatic and incomparable songstress. Reckless Daughter — without a doubt — is the quintessential biography of Mitchell: well researched, fair, and shares with us the Joni we rarely see — raw, unapologetic, and unfiltered — while still leaving us wanting a little more of her. After all, she's never one to expose all her cards. Recommended By Kate L., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
"She was like a storm." — Leonard Cohen
Joni Mitchell may be the most influential female recording artist and composer of the late 20th century. In Reckless Daughter, the music critic David Yaffe tells the remarkable, heart-wrenching story of how the blond girl with the guitar became a superstar of folk music in the 1960s, a key figure in the Laurel Canyon music scene of the 1970s, and the songwriter who spoke resonantly to, and for, audiences across the country.
A Canadian prairie girl, a free-spirited artist, Mitchell never wanted to be a pop star. She was nothing more than “a painter derailed by circumstances,” she would explain. And yet, she went on to become a talented self-taught musician and a brilliant bandleader, releasing album after album, each distinctly experimental, challenging, and revealing. Her lyrics captivated listeners with their perceptive language and naked emotion, born out of Mitchell’s life, loves, complaints, and prophecies. As an artist whose work deftly balances narrative and musical complexity, she has been admired by such legendary lyricists as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and beloved by such groundbreaking jazz musicians as Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock. Her hits—from “Big Yellow Taxi” to “Both Sides, Now” to “A Case of You”—endure as timeless favorites, and her influence on the generations of singer-songwriters who would follow her, from her devoted fan Prince to Björk, is undeniable.
In this intimate biography, drawing on dozens of unprecedented in-person interviews with Mitchell, her childhood friends, and a cast of famous characters, Yaffe reveals the backstory behind the famous songs — from Mitchell’s youth in Canada, her bout with polio at age nine, and her early marriage and the child she gave up for adoption, through the love affairs that inspired masterpieces, and up to the present — and shows us why Mitchell has so enthralled her listeners, her lovers, and her friends. Reckless Daughter is the story of an artist and an era that have left an indelible mark on American music.
Review
"Dazzling....A shimmering portrait of one artist's life, illusions and all." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"Yet whatever her listeners might dream or desire, Joni Mitchell was never in it for them, and she certainly wasn’t like them: She was a genius. As David Yaffe shows in his new biography...to approach her as an open book waiting to be read is to miss the essence of that genius....[Yaffe] pulls off the feat that has eluded so many of his predecessors: He forges an intimacy with Mitchell on her own, uncompromising terms by truly listening to her, as closely and as generously as she’s always deserved." Jack Hamilton, The Atlantic
Review
“The best chronicle to date of Mitchell’s creative process and the specific way her songs were composed.” Rachel Syme, The Nation
About the Author
David Yaffe was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1973. He has written on numerous subjects (music, film, theater, dance, higher education) for The Nation, New York, Slate, The New York Times, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, and other publications. He is currently a professor of English at Syracuse University, and is the author of Fascinating Rhythm: Reading Jazz in American Writing and Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown.