From: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org (onlyJMDL Digest) To: onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Subject: onlyJMDL Digest V2013 #256 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk Website:http://www.jonimitchell.com Unsubscribe:mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe onlyJMDL Digest Sunday, June 30 2013 Volume 2013 : Number 256 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: why Furry now [Clint Norwood ] Re: Sample of Sheila Weller's book ["Mark" ] For Free/Bette Midler [Mitch Rustad ] New Library item: Joni Mitchell's Matala Diaries [TheStaff@JoniMitchell.c] Joni speaks the word HEJIRA [est86mlm@ameritech.net] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 12:04:09 -0700 (PDT) From: Clint Norwood Subject: Re: why Furry now I would have to agree. Even though she is singing about Furry and Beale street the fact is it about artists trying to learn from one another despite being from different worlds. It is as old as the cave people. Art, truth, beauty, decay and transcendence. It's all there. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 12:17:28 -0700 From: "Mark" Subject: Re: Sample of Sheila Weller's book Hi Jim. There are a lot things in 'Girls Like Us' about all three of the women that I did not know when I read it. Some of the information is of the sensational, gossipy, People magazine type. The fact that some of Weller's sources wanted to remain anonymous makes me suspicious of some of the incidents described. To give Sheila Weller her due, she was trying to cram a lot of information about three very different women's lives into a single volume. The bibliography and research credits at the end of the book are impressive. Ultimately, I don't think the book was intended so much as a triple biography as it was an attempt to contrast and compare the backgrounds and lives of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Carly Simon within the context of the cultural shifts that were happening during the time they rose to fame. Carole King was brought up in Brooklyn. She became pregnant with Gerry Goffin's child when she was 17 years old. For the young Jewish couple, a quickie wedding ceremony was the only acceptable resolution for this situation. The couple worked day jobs and took an office in the Brill Building where they wrote songs at night, usually taking baby Louise Goffin with them to the office. Their first song that became a hit was the Shirelle's version of 'Will You Love Me Tomorrow', a song that took the daring point of view of a young unmarried woman's anxiety about euphemistically described sexual intercourse with her boyfriend. Joni, as we know, came from a middle class Canadian prairie background. She also became pregnant when unmarried and remained unmarried up to and after the birth of her child. Weller describes Joni as being almost stoic in her refusal to acknowledge the pregnancy and to soldier on through it in spite of a nearly desperate financial struggle to survive. After the ambiguous results of her marriage to Chuck Mitchell, she gives her baby up for adoption. Later she will record her original song 'Cactus Tree' as the closer of her first album, a song about a woman's series of relationships with a several men, a song that would have branded her as a slut if it had been released even a few years before 1968. Carly Simon's story is almost completely different from Carole's and Joni's. Materially, she was a privileged child, the daughter of Richard Simon, one of the founders of the famous publishing company Simon and Schuster. She met and got to know many prominent cultural figures that moved in and out of the Simon's social circle such as Richard Rogers, Oscar Hammerstein and even Albert Einstein. Her parents had a very strange marriage. Before he married Carly's mother, Richard Simon had had an affair with a woman who was 18 years older than he was. Although the sexual aspect of the affair was terminated, Simon remained emotionally attached to this woman who had been a caregiver to his younger siblings after his mother had died. Carly's mother, Andrea, was aware of this relationship and Richard and Andrea Simon became emotionally alienated from one another. Andrea's response was to hire a young man who ostensibly was a tennis coach for Carly's brother Peter. The reality was that this tennis coach was actually Andrea's lover. Although much of what was going on was evident to the young Carly Simon, none of it was openly disclosed and Carly grew up in a household of sexually infused secrets, deceptions and intrigues. The first song of Carly's first album for Elektra records was 'That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be', a highly critical, negative look at marriage. Although Carly's friend and collaborator Jacob Brackman wrote the lyrics to this song, it could easily be a description of Richard and Andrea Simon's marriage. Sheila Weller describes how these women became role models as the feminist movement and changes in sexual attitudes transformed and broadened the roles that women of the 60s and 70s were allowed to assume. Of course, as rock stars, none of these women led typical lives. But their experiences as translated into their music touched the lives of millions of young women coming of age during a time of radical changes. Carole, Joni and Carly, coming from very different backgrounds, each responded to the problems of their early lives in different ways. Carole became pregnant and married her baby's father. Joni had her baby out of wedlock and later gave her up for adoption. Raised in a privileged environment and later enduring criticism of the validity of her musical point of view because of it, Carly went off and lived with a man in the south of France in her young adulthood, one of several affairs she had before marrying a heroin addict. She had two children with James Taylor and struggled but ultimately failed to get him clean and make the marriage work. Carly was the only one of the three women that cooperated with Weller in the writing of the book. Weller says she really didn't want to talk directly to her subjects for fear that it would mar any objectivity in her writing but Carly was anxious to talk. The implication about her marriage to James Taylor is that she never really got over it. One of the more devastating incidents in the book takes place when Carly is in the hospital after having a mastectomy in the late 90s, more than a decade after her divorce from James Taylor. She describes James coming to see her. Before he leaves she asks if he would call her every once in a while if he should happen to think about her. She told him he wouldn't have to say anything, that they could just be silent on the phone together. I can't remember the exact words, but, according to Carly, James told her that if he called her whenever he thought about her, he would be on the phone all the time. The book is a good read and I think it succeeds in drawing the contrasts and connections that justify the combination of the three women's stories into one book. I think the main difficulty, for me anyway, is sifting through documented fact and what I can only label as hearsay. People have all kinds of motivations for talking about other people who have crossed their paths in life and those motivations often lead to distortions of the truth. As Adele says Just 'cause I said it, don't mean that I meant it, People say crazy things, Just 'cause I said it, don't mean that I meant it, Just 'cause you heard it, Mark in Seattle - -----Original Message----- From: jlhommedieu@insight.rr.com Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2013 7:51 PM To: JMDL Subject: Sample of Sheila Weller's book "The album, which went platinum, gave Carly a Top 10 hit with the bouncy, torch, loving You Belong To Me, which she cowrote with Michael McDonald, and which, like so many of her songs - including another on the album, In A Small Moment(and In Times When My Head, in the previous one) - was about cheating, jealousy, and temptation: the adult preoccupations she had witnessed in her childhood and which were dancing around the corners of her current life." Pat Boland posted a very long excerpt, of which this is a part, on Facebook. That is all one sentence! It has ten commas, two hyphens, and a parenthetical phrase for good measure. Oh, plus a colon. It "scans" like it was dictated, transcribed, and published in a day. I have not read Sheila's book. Among those who have read it, what do you think? Jim L'Hommedieu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 23:15:38 -0400 From: Mitch Rustad Subject: For Free/Bette Midler Stumbled upon this gem, had no idea Bette Midler covered Joni's 'For Free' in her legendary shows at the Continental baths in the early 70s in nyc  wow! scroll down for video... http://tinyurl.com/qa7w6fg On Jun 29, 2013, at 10:09 AM, Michael quebec wrote: > And this, B&W archival footage from 1976, San Fransisco, with Neil Young on > harmonica. > > Heartening and inspiring to see the evolution of this song, and her > performances of it through time... > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrkLt_umrBY > > Michael in Quebec Mitch Rustad www.mitchrustad.com 646-319-4282 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 21:22:45 -0600 (MDT) From: TheStaff@JoniMitchell.com Subject: New Library item: Joni Mitchell's Matala Diaries Title: Joni Mitchell's Matala Diaries Publication: Haziltt Date: 2013.6.18 http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=2619 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 11:06:03 -0500 From: est86mlm@ameritech.net Subject: Joni speaks the word HEJIRA Sue, Check this out Scroll to: 03:42 to hear Joni use the word Hejira http://jonimitchell.com/library/video.cfm?id=347 Laura ------------------------------ End of onlyJMDL Digest V2013 #256 ********************************* ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here:mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe