Joni Mitchell: I'm better than Dylan but they snub me...

...because I'm a woman.
Joni italian interview. Here's the link (in italian)
http://www.repubblica.it/spettacoli...a_da_donna_mi_snobbano-106107686/?ref=HRERO-1

Some quotes (my translation)
'When I started writing music I did move like Schubert, I had his 'lieder' in mind, not Woody Guthrie.'

'Music industry's unfortunate choices forced me to leave music and killed my interest. Same thing happened to Miles Davis'

'It' ain't funny to be labeled as 'female Dylan'... with Jazz people it's different...Wayne Shorter once said 'Joni is one of us'. Mingus used to push me to play jazz guitar'.

'When I met Miles Davis he said (with his croaky voice) 'I love your paintings'. When he died I met his relatives and his son told me that during his last days he kept on listening to my albums. He had my entire discography.'

'Who claims that Coltrane is superior to Ellington or Davis is mad'

(About the long list of artists that she must have inspired): 'Nothing ever moved me like what I've done with Mingus. What a pair! We shared the same sensibility. Maria Calls touches my heart. Patsy Cline and young Judy Garland. Anything else.'




(david crosby once said that joni is as humble as mussolini...)

 

A true artist!

 

she's rad.

 

David has also said Joni is his favourite songwriter/the best songwriter of last 50 years/a better songwriter than Dylan, etc., usually when introducing For Free

 

Well...I'm better than anybody but I don't go around complaining, especially after 46 years of recording career.

 

I can't really disagree with her or anything she says. But she might want to cheer up a bit. Notice in her comments in the last decade or more she sounds to me to be bitter. Blue is considered about equal to Blood on the Tracks IMO as a folk rock masterpiece. Blue has more in common with Guthrie than it does Schubert. But anyway Joni wants us to believe that Blue is better than BOTT. And that her catalog of a dozen or so respected albums is more significant than Bob's 50 or whatever it is. She has attacked Dylan previously too.

I love Joni and large chunk of her albums, but she sounds insecure and bitter lately.

But I get her points. She is her own genre and earned her stature. I like how some of Court and Spark could almost be considered comparable to Duke Ellington for the strong arrangements.

Bob's comment on her was "I like her driving" and feel safe with her at the wheel or something to that effect. He might have been taking the high road.

 

There's something wrong when an artist as big as Mitchell needs to trot out Dylan or anybody else for unpleasant comparisons. Dylan is a totally different artist, is like reading 'Paul Simon: I'm better than Bruce Springsteen, but they snub me because I'm short' She's one of the most critically adored human beings on earth (in her field). Where's the problem?

...and she only likes dead people. Soooo reassuring...

 

Joni has nothing to prove, sad that she feels she does.

Tim

 

Joni has made lot s of great music and belong to a small group of true innovators on her generation. However- she seems very bitter and victimise herself in a very sad way.
But her great albums will always be there for us

 

Regardless of whether Joni is better than Dylan, Dylan worked hard through a number of lean years when his commercial and critical success faltered whereas Joni has been at best ambivalent about her music career and has not toured to support it. Like so many other things, a music career is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

 

Can't argue with all stated already, but maybe Joni is a touch jealous of Bob?
He, IMO continues to produce good product, not sure Joni has for a while?

 

Joni has taken her money and invested early and well. And her deals signed in music were probably very good, she was managed by David Geffen who gets his artists their part fairly (after he gets his cut). This woman is very rich. If she'd ended up broke I'd have more sympathy.

 

She's right about Bob, but she tends to dismiss other artist quite a bit as well these days. Love her albums, but less hostility would reflect better on her.

 

Accomplished artists are often vain, OK. But these obnoxious, childish, and misguided comments, not OK.

 

Love Joni but sour grapes make bitter whine.

 

I dont' get it... as an artist you would think Joni would understand art is not a competition...."i'm better than dylan" sounds like something an 8 year old would say....

I used to think Joni was one of my favorite American songwriters.....no longer

 

Oh come on. All geniuses are anteaters in one way or another. If you listen only to nice people go listen to Neil Flanders solo albums! As for Dylan vs Joni, well, she's hotter for sure!

 

She's Canadian Serge.But your points are still valid

 

So she's cranky. So what. Why is it everyone celebrates Dylan for being cranky in his old age but somehow Joni Mitchell is supposed to put on a happy face. She states her opinions and she's "bitter"? Why shouldn't she be honest and say what she thinks. I don't see why it's her duty to wrap her views in a nice package for popular consumption.

She gets a tenth of the attention that Dylan gets. Critics (most of them men) fall all over themselves to fawn over Dylan and Joni Mitchell gets an occasional mention. Why shouldn't she find that annoying? I do. And at least she's never borrowed other people's words and not bothered to credit them. I'm more sympathetic to Joni because I think Dylan gets ridiculously praised for everything he does while she is, by comparison, ignored.

 

Awful lot of hubris and self-aggrandizement from someone with one or two stone classic lps to her name. And nothing more than sheer mediocrity for about 40 years now. IMO.

Pretty off-putting.

 

I can understand why Joni thinks she's better than Dylan. I think she is too, a whole lot better.
Some things you should keep to yourself though. Joni has gotten so much more recognition than most mortals and yet she's bitter that she hasn't gotten more. This is sort of pathetic IMO.

 

Wow, the more she says the more I don't like her. Who says things like that?

 

Exactly. So she feels she is somehow 'better'. In what way, exactly?

I love the comparison to Miles - 'music industry's unfortunate choices' forced him to leave music? If so, he still managed to forge a career a hell of a lot more like Dylan's than poor Joni's in terms of the volume of great music produced, both critically and commercially acclaimed.

Tough to take seriously someone who is living very nicely and has had success doing things her own way moaning about public perception. She chose a path that guaranteed she would always be more of a fringe or cult artist, yet demands public acclaim equal to possibly the greatest living songwriter and one of the icons of popular music and 20th century American culture. Sheesh.

 

No one is better than Dylan at songwriting, but Joni comes pretty damn close in my opinion, i think among women artists no one can touch her.

 

At least she spoke honestly to the media. I credit her for that. Something I don't think Dylan ever did or cares to do.