He’s the drummer you always see on TV, with the bald head and the sunglasses, hitting ’em hard and having the time of his life, smiling all the while.

Why did I read his book?

Because he reached out and was so personable. That’s the essence of making it. Making the effort and continuing to make the effort and being nice about it in the process. And the fact that he studied at Tanglewood, that was the story that sealed our bond.

And he was the Jewish drummer in John Mellencamp’s band.

Usually Jews change their name, figuring they’ll pull one over on the heartland. Hell, George Costanza was supposed to be Jewish but they gave him that last name to combat the rest of the Members of the Tribe on the show. You think of Jews as loudmouthed and pushy, but the truth is most are scared of the attention, they don’t want to be singled out, because they’ve experienced anti-Semitism from a very young age and their parents keep telling them they’re lucky to survive, truly.

So to have a guy in a heartland band with the name of “Aronoff”?

Oh, that’s another thing about Jews, we’re proud of every member of our religion who makes it. And if a Member of the Tribe does something heinous, we feel the shame, worried about the stain upon our heritage. And never forget, it’s not about believing, you’re born this way and you can’t deny it, whether you go to shul or not.

So Kenny grows up in Western Mass. and sees the Beatles on TV.

Without the Beatles on Ed Sullivan there’s no American music business, nada, all those bands you loved listening to in the seventies and eighties, never mind the late sixties, they don’t exist. It was kind of like the iPhone. A cool gateway into a new land. That same mania that had people lining up at Apple Stores to buy the product? That was us back in ’64, with the Beatles. Talk about a revolution, it’s like the curtain was pulled back and overnight the generations cleaved, right there, in February, when 72 million Americans saw the power of a band which did not look like everybody else and did not sound like everybody else but got everybody to pay attention.

So he starts banging… Hell, the start of any career is convincing your parents, which Kenny did, you need their support, and taking lessons, that’s something else we did back then, we didn’t figure it out on our own, this was back before teachers got a bad name, and then Kenny decided to go to music school at UMass.

And this is where his history separated from mine. When I was in college classes were just the reason I was there, they were time-wasters I had to experience before I could get down to my real business, listening to records and getting high, truly. And I don’t regret it. Because they didn’t teach anything I was interested in. Academics, schmacademics. But when you’re truly interested in something, you’ll devote umpteen hours. Kenny spent even Friday nights rehearsing at UMass. Believe me, I don’t remember once studying on a Friday night in college.

And then, enamored of a girl going to Aspen for the music school there, he applies, gets in, and falls on his face, makes a mistake… Everybody gives the illusion they emerged fully-formed. But if you don’t blow it, if you don’t wince, if you aren’t the object of derision, you haven’t played. The key is to accept your faults and the abuse and soldier on.

Which Kenny did, with four years at Indiana University, which has a renowned music program, how do I know this, from talking to the players in Steely Dan!

Anyway, he gets an offer upon graduation to play with the symphony, but he has a dream, and if you’re not pursuing your dream your life is gonna be empty.

So he’s playing in a prog rock band, his hero is Billy Cobham, it’s the era of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, but it’s not working, so he auditions to play in John Cougar Mellencamp’s band, shows up with a car full of drums and the midwest rocker winces, but Kenny gets the gig.

And there starts an adventure.

John Mellencamp has got the reputation of being a prick. And if you read this book, you’ll see it’s true. But you’ll also see you’ve got to be a prick to make it. Nice guys do finish last. Unless they’ve got a bastard behind the scenes working on their behalf, but it was only John in charge of his career, he battled managers and label people, his success was gonna be on his back, so he had better get it right!

All the time in rehearsal, in studios, writing, rewriting, trying to get it right. Opening for other bands and trying to close an audience that didn’t care. This was long before one hit album put you on an arena tour. You could have multiple hits and be lucky to sell out theatres at best, you had to prove yourself. And Mellencamp did, but then he burned out, said he was taking three years off, and…

Kenny scarfed up studio gigs. Make no mistake, he pursued them. The drummer is always the businessman, you learn this. And Kenny’s schedule is nuts. On a day off he’ll fly across international borders just for a session, and this ultimately becomes a problem, because he’s got to leave the Polygram convention in Hong Kong, backing up Mellencamp, and end up in Detroit drumming for Seger with only a couple of hours to spare. Polygram won’t let the band go on early, because the suits don’t care. But the customs people recognize him in the Motor City airport and he’s whisked through and makes it in time for soundcheck, but not before paying $3400 to Lloyds of London for insurance in case he didn’t. It’s taken out of his pay. But Kenny ponders the fact…he never saw the bill!

That’s rock and roll for you, a rip-off world.

But it comes to an end with Mellencamp. Who has the band on salary, he said he was gonna take three years off but really it was a matter of weeks, artists get inspired and have to create, but the band members didn’t share in the recording royalties or the songwriting royalties, they did not get rich.

But Kenny did. As Mellencamp says in the book, he’s the only one whoever worked for him who went on his own and survived.

A lot of it is personality, Billy Corgan marvels that D’arcy felt comfortable around Kenny, but not him. You’ve got to get along.

And a lot of it is education. Formally trained, Kenny writes charts for every song for every gig, he can read music, never pooh-pooh the building blocks.

But most of it is drive. The drive to succeed.

And the fear. That’s what made Mellencamp break through, the fear of the factory, like the British musicians before him, the fear of a stiff, you think it’s hard to make it, it’s even harder to stay on top!

So Kenny backs up Melissa Etheridge and John Fogerty, plays with Celine Dion and seemingly every famous act you’ve ever heard of and then…

It all dries up.

That’s the story of our rock and roll music business. How it evaporated into thin air. Was it the internet, with Napster, or hip-hop…but suddenly Kenny is detailing sessions with people you’ve never heard of. And he’s dong victory lap gigs, sure, it’s with the remaining Beatles and the Kennedy Center Honors, but getting paid all that money to make hit records that dominate the chart…those days are THROUGH!

That’s what we all can’t get over. How it was here, and now it’s gone. And sure, you can go see the has-beens, and I enjoy it sometimes, but it’s creepy. Because they were riding the crest of the zeitgeist once and now it’s pure nostalgia.

Not that I wouldn’t pinch myself if I was playing with them, or even talking to them, but things have changed.

But Kenny was there when it was all still working. When there was money and cocaine and women and…

That’s not the heart of the book, it’s not a tell-all about backstage shenanigans, although there are some of those, but this was a guy who was there, and we all wanted to be there, once. But some of us buckle down and get the work done, and some of us do not.

And the highlight of the book for me is when Kenny gets scammed, ripped-off for so much money. He spends nearly an equal amount of cash trying to get it back, ultimately a complete waste. Because, as someone told him at the outset of his legal adventure, it’s not worth it, you’ve got to swallow your losses and move on.

That’s right. You can’t be vindictive. There’s only a limited amount of time. There’s an opportunity cost in trying to fix the past, forget about it.

And you can probably forget about this book, unless…

You know who Kenny Aronoff is and you want to know his story.

Or you want some insider tales of famous musicians.

Or you want to know what it was like to be a working musician, not the star, not someone surviving on royalties, but someone who had to fight for every gig, perform, and then fight for more gigs. Because despite all the emphasis on stardom, it’s all built upon the backs of talented people who do the grunt work, usually faceless, but skilled and experienced nonetheless.

Like Kenny Aronoff. He played the rock and roll sweepstakes and won.

But that game doesn’t exist anymore. Musicianship is not treasured. There are better ways to make big money. And with cellphone cameras and social media your backstage antics, your hotel room trysts, might as well be broadcast on television, privacy has been eroded and so much of what you used to live for, to desire in this game, has evaporated, pfftt!

It was a golden era. Floated upon inspiration and musicianship. Never underestimate Mellencamp’s ability to come up with this stuff, never mind Aronoff and the band’s ability to play it.

And there’s not too much about drumming in this book.

And occasionally you roll your eyes with the repetition of famous names who Kenny has played with.

But he did. And he’s thrilled.

And you can credit him.

But he credits Mellencamp for giving him a chance and Don Was for giving him work. Because if you’ve got nobody to rely on, you’ve got nothing happening.

You can make the record in your living room, but…

Not only do you need a team to promote it…

You need a team to play it live.

And that’s what gets Kenny off most. Playing to the throngs.

After all, he’s a musician.

“Sex, Drums, Rock ‘n’ Roll!: The Hardest Hitting Man in Show Business”

“Robbie Williams tickets put directly on resale sites”

He put choice seats directly on Get Me In and Seatwave.

I say GOOD!

Now there is one caveat, he came out against touts previously, his management signing a petition against it, but the truth is…

The tickets have to be sold at the value they’re worth or the tickets must be sold at a fair price and tied to the purchaser.

And the public prefers the former.

Yes, the truth is the public loves StubHub. Because they don’t have to buy a ticket months in advance, giving the promoter its float. Ticket buying is a science. In a world riddled with fake news no one knows how to buy a ticket anyway. Do they need to get a credit card? Which one? Many? Do they need to become a member of the fan club? Do they have to make friends with those who have senate seats (i.e. season tickets to all shows at a venue) so they can buy their unwanted ducats? If you think about the cost involved figuring out how to buy a ticket at sticker price, oftentimes a bad seat, your time is better spent elsewhere, making the extra money so you can afford to overpay on StubHub.

Believe me people bitch they can’t get a good seat at the listed price. But the truth is, it’s a small minority that is complaining. Interface with the public and you find this out. Professional cranks. The true fans? They overpay in order to sit close and they’re happy to do it.

That’s right, platinum has been institutionalized in America. Used to come with perks, now the perks are a joke, because the acts don’t want to provide them and the fans don’t care about them. They don’t want a faux laminate, they don’t want a catered meal, they don’t want to take home the seat they’re sitting in, just being up close and personal at the show is enough.

The only difference here was Robbie Williams decided to sell platinum tickets on Get Me In and Seatwave instead of a more traditional outlet like Ticketmaster, which now includes the secondary market along with the primary in its listings!

The music business created this monster. I can forgive the punters and the legislators bitching, they don’t understand the shenanigans, but in the U.K. it’s the promoters and managers themselves who are complaining. What is the fair system they’re looking for? One in which everybody pays face value and sits in the front row? That’s impossible!

And it works nowhere else. The person who flies once a year does not get upgraded to the front of the plane. The hot new automobile is not sold at sticker, but far above.

What is the principle we’re trying to save?

The truth is acts just hate that they’re not getting all that uplift, the difference between sticker and sale price on secondary sites. Ergo Robbie Williams’s behavior here. And the truth is acts have been scalping their own tickets from time immemorial, for the extra cash. And promoters have made deals with brokers and resale sites too, because they not only want to make that extra money, they want to hedge their bets, get guaranteed income in their coffers.

But the little guy has to be protected.

Who is this little guy?

We live in a world of income inequality. It’s not only at concerts that the disadvantaged are closed out. If you want to help those with less, raise taxes, at least in America, have acts stand up to corporations, but in the U.S. “tax” is a dirty word and the acts all have corporate deals to profit from. Talk about hypocrisy.

And people know the score. They know if they want to get something very desirable, they need to pay for it.

So the only problem we have in the concert business is ticket prices ARE TOO LOW! Assuming people want to go at all, some shows you can’t give away. But for the stars?? It’s income inequality in music too, the winners are rolling in dough, the rest are eking out a living.

Or, you can settle for the listed gross, the price of the tickets as originally scaled. But you’ve got to sell them closer to the date the show plays, so people know what their schedule is, and you’ve got to give people the option to transfer the tickets at the price they bought them for if they can’t go to the show…

But people don’t like this. Everybody’s playing the market. If they managed to get their hands on good seats they believe it’s their God-given right to sell them at what the traffic will bear. Think about that, the same people bitching they can’t get a good seat at face value are the same ones who want to take the uplift, they too are hypocritical!

But money is the great equalizer. Charge what the tickets are truly worth and there’s no subterfuge.

But there will be blowback, at first.

The acts will be called greedy, these same acts parading their island vacations on Instagram, these same acts evidencing their highfalutin’ lifestyle all over the web.

And you’ll get the same complainers wanking they can’t get in, the same people who believe you should come to their house and play for free.

So, it’s about time we faced reality and like any other business grew up and sold our wares at their full value. Like Robbie Williams.

But everybody in the business thinks he’s a pariah.

But I want you to find one person who buys one of these tickets on Get Me In or Seatwave who complains.

No, they love getting a good seat at the show. It’s a bargain at that price. Hell, think of the ancillary costs, the transportation, the parking, the food, the ticket price is a deal!

Hmm…

My inbox fills up with both the famous and infamous, the known and the irrelevant, bitching about Spotify payments, they think the Swedish company is the devil. They believe Daniel Ek got rich off the backs of musicians and this wrong must be righted, that there will be no harmony until he is dethroned and the service pays them a higher rate.

But Spotify is already paying out 69%+ of its revenues.

What’s the truth?

You’re being screwed by the label. And Spotify can’t say this, because the labels are their partners.

Of course there’s more to the story. Songwriters are getting the shaft, they are getting a lesser percentage than they deserve. And marginal artists are getting a tiny share of the pie. But assuming you’re playing for real, that people are actually listening to your music, that it’s not just posted on Spotify and hanging out in darkness, if you want to get paid cut out the middleman.

It’s kind of like what Amazon did. Getting rid of bricks and mortar (although they do have a couple of bookstores now, but really those are showrooms for Amazon products, flagship stores to display their wares, like the Sony store in New York, or the high-end outlets in Aspen). If you want to survive in the new world you’ve got to look at business differently. So, if you record and release your music independently, paying a one time distribution fee to Tunecore or the like, you’ll get all that revenue, assuming someone is listening.

Oh, Tunecore! What about Jeff Price, its old fired founder, bitching that Spotify is not paying on so many tracks? That’s a registry problem, that’s not Spotify seeking to rip-off rights holders, that’s the result of an archaic system wherein we don’t know who wrote what and who owns what. Does it need to be cleared up? Yes. Is it good Jeff is on the case? Yes, but this is not wholesale exposure of Mafia-like activity, but it’s a better news story than old, cranky musician who used to survive quite well under the old system is starving now, although that story gets a lot of ink too. Kinda like the endless physical book articles in the “New York Times.” You can’t separate the bias from the author, oftentimes writers are out of touch, they believe they can will the result they desire, but one thing we’ve learned in the past twenty years is the customer is ultimately in control, and the customer chose streaming.

But you’ve got an historical deal with a label that pays an incredibly low percentage, you’ve got a very low royalty rate, is this a problem? Absolutely. BUT IT IS NOT SPOTIFY’S FAULT!

Acts have been railing that they’ve gotten screwed by labels since their invention. A bit of progress has been made, but not enough. Having said that, if you’re a new act it’s your prerogative whether to sign with a label or not.

You don’t need the label for physical distribution, that’s a dying business, forget manufacturing and shipping.

You need a label for publicity and radio promotion. You can hire third parties for publicity. As for radio promotion? For all intents and purposes indies are closed out of Top Forty radio. So if you’re playing to win, you need a label, you’ve got to sign a deal. But, the terms vary depending upon the heat you come in with. Used to be heat meant the music, today it means the data. How many fans have you got, what are your social numbers, how much money are you making on the road? The less you need the label the more they need you, and this is reflected in the terms of the deal.

As for the money… The days of big advances are through. If it’s just money you need, you’re better off looking elsewhere. Making it yourself on the road or raising it via friends and family. Then again, the dirty little secret of the new world is that it’s so much cheaper than it was in the days of yore. Everybody can own Pro Tools, you can make the record at home, many famous acts do, and promote it for free online. And don’t be one of those wankers who e-mails me you’ve got to spend a lot of money and work with pros to have a great sound. Generally speaking that is true. But then you’re probably gonna sign a major deal and e-mail me you’re getting screwed by your label. Which way do you want it? Do you want to roll the dice for all the money or hoard it all at a small level? Because believe me, if you sign with a major and you actually hit, there will be plenty of coin. However, the label could end up with the lion’s share, certainly of the recording income.

And I think it’s abhorrent that royalty deals are such that artists pay for their records and labels own them. It’s not this way in the book business.

There are so many problems with label deals. And they need to be changed. But they’ve got nothing to do with Spotify’s payout.

This is akin to Ticketmaster, people bitching about fees, not understanding that the acts themselves are responsible, this is the only way to get income out of the commission stream. And if you saw how little a concert promoter makes after putting up so much dough for a show, risking so much, you’d probably have sympathy for them. But concert promoters woke up and started festivals, where they can make so much more since they own the event. Concert promoters evolved.

And you should too.

But chances are you want to be a star. And right now, in today’s cluttered internet world, the odds of doing that without a label are de minimis.

Then again, today everyone can play, and everyone can bitch. And that includes the never-will-bes and the old artists, akin to the screwed bluesmen, who’ve got deals so heinous they can never make bank.

But, once again, this has nothing to do with Spotify.

P.S. For the umpteenth time, I have no investment in Spotify, I make no money from the company. But Spotify put a huge dent in piracy, the problem everyone talked about last decade, and as a result of streaming services recording revenues are finally going up, our long nightmare is ending. You’ve got to live in the present, with an eye to the future, you can’t keep dreaming about an old love in a world without cameras, the audience loves the present and the audience pays your bills. Think of ways to satiate those who pay.

P.P.S The penny rate. There is no penny rate, it’s a percentage rate Spotify pays. But they came up with an approximate penny rate so oldsters could understand what they were making on streams. As more people subscribe and listen, the payment per stream will actually go down. Meaning you’re gonna have to have more listens to make the same amount of money. But listens are growing exponentially to the point where those artists at the top of the heap are quite well compensated. But if your listens are not in the millions, you’d better think of alternative ways to get paid. Used to be you could sell a few thousand albums and make money. That paradigm, unfortunately, is dying, although you can still sell CDs as souvenirs along with other merch at the show. Then again, is it Spotify’s responsibility to promote new music, especially the new and different, playlist it and bring it to the forefront? That’s a whole ‘nother issue.

Woman Of Heart And Mind – Spotify

1

Sometime, hopefully not soon, Joni Mitchell will die, what will reaction be?

2

I think I first heard of Joni Mitchell when Judy Collins had her monster hit with “Both Sides Now.” The irony was the hook was the instrumentation and the changes, the lyrics were secondary, then again it’s said that women get words first, and men, sometimes not at all. It was years before I heard Joni’s take, which is radically different, slowed down, meaningful, but that was because no one I knew owned the LP. At this point I’m enamored of “Clouds,” maybe because I got deeply into it in the eighties, long after its debut, long after Joni Mitchell peaked, when I found a cut-out copy at a store in Los Angeles, record buying was an adventure, I miss that aspect of it, the hunt, the surprise, but I wouldn’t want to go back to those times, when you were a victim of inventory and you only had a limited number of dollars in your pocket. “Chelsea Morning” was also a Judy Collins staple, but the winners on “Clouds” are the darker tracks, like the opener “Tin Angel” and the number covered in the movie “Alice’s Restaurant,” “Songs To Aging Children Come.” And if you’ve ever questioned your status in a relationship, a late night listening of “I Don’t Know Where I Stand” will blow your mind and if you’re familiar with Bonnie Raitt’s more famous version you’ll enjoy “That Song About The Midway,” it sounds like a waif being blown by the wind on the prairie remembering what once was, it’s so intimate, Joni Mitchell was always so intimate.

But I got on the Joni Mitchell bandwagon with “Ladies Of The Canyon.” I went to see James Taylor at Harvard in the spring of 1970, just after “Sweet Baby James” came out, and he sang “For Free,” they were in a relationship then, it was so rare that someone covered the song of another, artists were too busy selling what they’d recorded, but it resonated, it was not something I forgot. But then my sister, the one I’d visited in Boston, came home from college early, after all it was right after Kent State, revolution was in the air, finals were cancelled, and she bought “Ladies Of The Canyon.”

“Ladies Of The Canyon” contains “The Circle Game,” a well-known song at this point in time, something sung in youth group, as well as the trifle “Big Yellow Taxi” which has become famous for its couplet “They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot,” but the heart of the album is much deeper, and once again, darker. Be sure to listen to “Rainy Night House,” especially on a rainy night, it’s like Joni is speaking just to you, that was part of her magic, she wasn’t playing to everybody, just somebody, and “The Priest” is equally haunting but the killer is “The Arrangement.”

You could have been more
Than a name on the door
On the thirty-third floor in the air
More than a credit card
Swimming pool in the backyard

This was back before everybody was playing it safe, society being so rough, having killed themselves to get into a good school, they didn’t go for the brass ring, but in the sixties and seventies people were in search of themselves, of enlightenment, today everybody’s in search of middle management, otherwise known as the bank. But back then our heroes were not boasting that their lives were better than ours, rather they were looking inside and revealing their personal truth, which you turned over in your brain before you made your own decisions, before corporate rock, before disco, before Reagan legitimized greed and MTV made it about image.

Then came the apotheosis, “Blue,” which was chiaroscuro, alternately dark and light, depressed and exhilarated, and at this point “A Case Of You” is well-known but none of the tracks made the radio, but every time I return to the Golden State “California” plays in my head, I want to kiss a Sunset pig, I’m glad I’m back in the land of the enlightened and free. The same people who elected our new President denigrate my adopted homeland, but at this late date it’s where it still happens, Governor Moonbeam is back in office and most of the gadgets you’re enamored of were invented here, and there’s no better place to be in these days of turmoil, after all Joni sang “They won’t give peace a chance, That was just a dream some of us had,” I don’t know how we got here but I’m gonna do my best to soldier on, life went on after Nixon, it will continue after Trump.

Then came “For The Roses.”

3

It was eighteen months after “Blue,” the end of the year, and for the first time Joni Mitchell had a hit, “You Turn Me On, I’m A Radio,” but its sunniness was not in evidence on the rest of the LP, then again, despite coursing along with a certain relentless drive the lyrics were a bit more complicated, with a turn of the phrase beyond anything you’ll hear on the radio today.

I know you don’t like weak women
You get bored so quick
And you don’t like strong women
‘Cause they’re hip to your tricks

Must be complicated if you’re a woman. Men are all about looks. But if you’re subservient to them they treat you like crap, and too often if you’re yourself they reject you. Meanwhile, the guys you know keep protesting they’re looking for someone real, someone who’s not a Barbie doll. And everybody’s judging each other all the time and even back then we were all worried about image, what will satisfy us…frequently nothing, makes me believe we were better off in the days of arranged marriage, truly.

And the song that follows “You Turn Me On, I’m A Radio” on the LP goes even deeper on this topic, “Blonde In The Bleachers” talks about the perks of fame, the “Lovin’ ’em and leavin’ ’em” that ultimately leaves you empty. But the heart and soul of “For The Roses” comes next, “Woman Of Heart And Mind.”

4

I am a woman of heart and mind
With time on her hands
No child to raise
You come to me like a little boy
And I give you my scorn and my praise

No one can have it all, neither women nor men. Some of us choose not to have children. While you’re sleep-deprived, changing nappies as you ponder where your progeny will go to school, the rest of us are less selfless, we want to make it all about us, and when you encounter a person like this not only have they thought about where they’re coming from, they’re ready to engage, ready to go mano a mano, and it’s everything you’re looking for and yet sometimes too much. (Now at this late date we know that Joni Mitchell had a child, whom she was not raising, but this was before the internet, this was before everybody knew everything about everybody.)

You think I’m like your mother

Nothing turns off a woman more. They say they want to take care of you, but not in this way. They don’t want you to cry on their shoulder, despite protesting that they want you to reveal your feelings, the truth is they don’t want you to reveal weakness, but they will give you a chance, but don’t disappoint them.

Drive your bargains
Push your papers
Win your medals
Fuck your strangers
Don’t it leave you on the empty side

You’re out being a Neanderthal, competing in the business world like you did in sports, claiming your trophies, but the women you desire most are unimpressed, these are not the games they play, especially those not looking for a sperm donor, but a companion. But when they call you on it you run away, you hate to be revealed, but you’re drawn to their truth, ah, the conundrum.

So what works?

5

You know the times you impress me most
Are the times when you don’t try
When you don’t even try

Oh, how times have changed. Used to be boasting was unseemly. Now we’ve got a whole paradigm based on that, known as social media. A President-to-be who employs Twitter to tell us how great he is, no wonder he marries mindless foreigners, who else would put up with this? Why are we putting up with the pretenders of today’s music scene? Who believe dues are for pussies and are willing to sell their souls to the highest bidder all the while purveying their fake stories of how great their lives are. Didn’t used to be that way.

Maybe it’s still not that way.

That’s the story of this year, the disconnect between what we’re sold and reality. And maybe the reality is most of us don’t care about models frolicking on the beach, and have no desire to listen to most of the music on the hit parade. Maybe you should lead with your reputation, your good deeds, your efforts, maybe that’s enough, but society keeps telling us it’s not. You’re supposed to be selling 24/7, not only your product, but yourself. Self-improvement is the name of the game, read books by nincompoops giving advice for those who are not you while you get plastic surgery trying to impress somebody who doesn’t exist. The truth is we’re all flawed, perfect doesn’t exist, but with all these people yelling how great they are we end up feeling inferior, which is just how they want it, it’s a kind of mind control and we used to depend on artists to combat it, to speak the truth, but that paradigm is gone, as soon as anyone gets traction they play by the rules, hell, they’re obeying the rules from the get-go, whereas true artists question authority and convention, but with elected officials putting down arts majors no one wants to be the other, we all want to fit in, whereas the truth is none of us do, all of us are square pegs, you’ve got to stop looking for round holes.

6

The breakthrough came a year later, in January ’74, with the release of “Court and Spark.” The sound was slicker, radio embraced the sunny songs and suddenly Joni Mitchell was the beacon for women all over the world, even though she’d begun a decade before. Not that men didn’t cotton to her too, it’s just that she was the guiding light for women who were looking for someone who could speak to their experience, who they thought got them, who could lead the way.

And then Joni Mitchell took a left turn. She refused to be what she was, what people expected of her. She embraced jazz influences, she released her 1976 masterpiece “Hejira” with no singles but more truth than any mixtape. She continued, playing her own game. To the point where a few decades on she stopped, she decided to paint instead.

And Joni Mitchell recently experienced a health scare, but she’s still here. As is her music. But no one ever talks about it. This is not Leonard Cohen, an outsider who came back late in his career and went on tour because he needed the money, no, Joni Mitchell is taking no victory lap, except for Herbie Hancock’s covers album that won that Grammy that probably worked against her as opposed to for her, after all, the victory was undeserved, there was much better product in the marketplace.

But none of it as good as Joni’s best work.

She had a streak.

They talk about the Beatles, they talk about Stevie Wonder, but Joni Mitchell released five killers in a row, and hit peaks thereafter. But everything she represents seems to be done.

Paying your dues, doing it your way, not sacrificing, not playing anyone’s game… There are people who say they do this today, the only problem is none of them are half the songwriter Joni Mitchell is.

So now what?

Our heroes have been passing with scary regularity. To the point we honor them for a week and then move on, we just can’t handle the pain. But a lot of the records they made are period pieces, whereas Joni’s output sounds as fresh today as it was yesterday, there’s wisdom in these tracks, stuff people need to hear. Because sometimes it’s the human condition that confounds us most, that confuses us and we need guidance with regard to, that’s what Joni Mitchell did, she illuminated her life which made clear our life, she posited all the questions, it was up to us to come up with the answers.

David Geffen is still in the news, giving away his money, but one thing I know is every time I go out a Joni Mitchell song plays in my head.

That’s right, when I go to people’s parties I’m on guard, everybody seems so comfortable and part of me wants to run while I contemplate navigating the scene.

But the truth is the photo beauty, the banker, the elected official, they’re no different from me or you, Joni Mitchell told us this, not to put everybody else in their place but to level the playing field, and the key is to play, if you stay home nothing unexpected happens, and it’s the unforeseen, the unanticipated that makes life worth living.

Maybe laughing and crying are the same release. Maybe that’s why we crack jokes after someone dies. Maybe we need music to help us get through. Maybe we don’t hear about Joni Mitchell on a regular basis because she’s baked into our consciousness.

She’s baked into mine.