Joni Mitchell: "Wild Things Run Fast" Song By Song Thread

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Mingus thread. We continue with Joni's first album of the 1980s and her first album for Geffen records: Wild Things Run Fast from 1982. It was released after the longest gap between studio albums of Joni's career to this point.

Previous threads in this series
Joni Mitchell: "Mingus" Song By Song Thread
Joni Mitchell: "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" Song By Song Thread
Joni Mitchell: "Hejira" Song by Song Thread
Joni Mitchell: "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" Song By Song Thread
Joni Mitchell: "Court and Spark" Song By Song Thread
Joni Mitchell: "For the Roses" Song By Song Thread
Joni Mitchell: "Blue" Song By Song Thread
Joni Mitchell: "Ladies of the Canyon" Song By Song Thread
Joni Mitchell: "Clouds" Song By Song Thread
Joni Mitchell: "Song to a Seagull" Song By Song Thread

Wild Things Run Fast


Album Notes
Released October 1982
(Individual song credits will be listed with each song.)

Produced by Joni Mitchell
Recorded at A&M Studios by Henry Lewy and Skip Cottrell Assisted by Clyde Kapian
With the exception of "Be Cool" recorded at Devonshire Studios engineered by Jerry Hudgins
Mixed at Paramount Studios by Larry Hirsch, Larry Klein and Joni Mitchell assisted by Chase Williams
Originally Mastered by John Golden at K-Disc
Rhythm arrangements on "Wild Things Run Fast" and "You're So Square" by Larry Klein and Vinnie Colaiuta and by Don Alias on "Be Cool"

All songs written by Joni Mitchell except "(You're so Square) Baby, I don't care," written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller; and "Unchained Melody," lyrics by Hy Zaret, music by Alex North.

All songs © 1982 Crazy Crow Music BMI except "(You're so Square) Baby, I don't care," © 1957 by Gladys Music ASCAP. All rights controlled by Cappell & Co. Inc. (Intersong Music Publishers); and "Unchained Melody," © 1955 Frank Music Corp. ASCAP International copyright secured. All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

Steve Lukather, James Taylor and Wayne Shorter appear courtesy of CBS Records
Lionel Richie appears courtesy of Motown Record Corp.
Russell Ferrante, Larry Carlton and Mike Landau appear courtesy of Warner Bros. Records
Larry Williams appears courtesy of A&M Records, Inc.

Special thanks to Larry Klein for caring about and fussing over this record along with me.

Personal Direction: Elliot Roberts

Paintings by Joni Mitchell
Art Direction: Glen Christensen


(Joni and Larry Klein, her second husband)

Wild Things Run Fast is Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell's 11th studio album and her first of four for Geffen Records. Released in 1982, it represents her departure from jazz to a more 1980s pop sound. This was her first album to work with bassist Larry Klein, whom she married in 1982. Klein would play bass on and co-produce her next four albums.

The resulting world tour took Mitchell through the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. A video of the tour was released in 1983, entitled Refuge of the Roads. The recorded performances were not performed in front of a live audience, but rather recorded live in a studio once the tour had been completed, with applause dubbed-in in post-production. There was also some Super 8 footage taken by Mitchell on the road. It has since been released on DVD.

Mitchell claimed that her inspiration for the album came from hearing the music of popular bands such as Steely Dan, Talking Headsand The Police at a discothèque during a trip to the Caribbean in 1981. She said that hearing The Police, especially, affected her sound, saying, "their rhythmic hybrids, and the positioning of the drums, and the sound of the drums, was one of the main calls out to me to make a more rhythmic album".[4]

Contemporary Reviews
"Wild Things Run Fast" (Geffen GHS 2019), Joni Mitchell's first studio album in three years, is an artistically fruitful return to the jazz inflected rock of her biggest hit record, "Court and Spark," from 1974.

It is also the most exhilaratingly high spirited album Miss Mitchell has ever made. For in addition to the edgy, syncopated folk-jazz singing that became her vocal trademark in the mid-70's, the album features several vibrant rock-and-roll performances that communicate a rare joy in being alive."
New York Times, November 1982

"Any Joni Mitchell album that includes a Rolling Stones lyric ("When I'm so hot for you and you're so cold") on one song, a vocal duet with Lionel Richie on another ("You Dream Flat Tires") and a stuttering electric guitar on the title track deserves a listen for novelty value along.

This is a pop album. Which wouldn't be surprising, except that Mitchell left behind conventional song structures ages ago (see article Page 69) on "Court and Spark." She tries to recapture her old magic here, and the resulting sound is too tentative to win any new converts. But the album will be an encouraging sign for the legion of Mitchell fans who lost touch with her increasingly obscure ventures into jazz. Just don't expect another "Blue." Mitchell succeeds best when she's most ambitious. "Chinese Cafe," an exquisite meditation on age and impermanence, and "You Dream Flat Tires," a bittersweet ode to doomed love. More often, she lowers her sighs and hits a mushy middle ground that suggests Rickie Lee Jones without her emotional immediacy."
Los Angeles Times, November 1982

"How many years has it been since Joni Mitchell gave us a song with words we can dance to and a melody that rhymes? Five? Six? Seven? Make that eight and it's a deal.

How many albums has she delivered in that time? Court & Spark. Miles of Aisles. The Hissing Of Summer Lawns. Hejira. Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. Mingus. Shadows And Light. And now her latest, Wild Things Run Fast.

EIGHT ALBUMS in eight years. That's quite a body of work. With very little to show for it. Those eight albums have not exactly set the world on fire in terms of commercial appeal. Not one sold a billion copies or had a No. 1 song. Yet, even without the mass market's seal of approval, Joni Mitchell remains a force to be reckoned with.

For eight years now, the coming of a new Joni Mitchell has brought with it plenty of hope...hope that this time this album will be the one where she stops playing the esoteric Princess Bebop and goes back to singing songs simple people can grasp. The climate surrounding Wild Things Run Fast held the promise that this would be the one where she came in from the cold and went back on the charts with something a bit more accessible to the ears and tastes of Top 40 America. Wild Things Run Fast was recorded during a time of experimentation. Bruce Springsteen was doing it on Nebraska. Billy Joel was doing it on The Nylon Curtain. Because Joni Mitchell never goes with the flow, it would stand to reason that while everybody else is playing musical test tubes, she would turn in her lab coat and go conventional.

Well, that might figure. But it didn't happen. Wild Things Run Fast is just as quirky as its seven predecessors. Although Mitchell is singing about subjects closer to home than she has recently - "Chinese Cafe" deals with the end of youth and the onset of middle age, "Man to Man' admits to a life of too much loving and too little love - she is singing in the same jazz voice she has been using since 1974."
Cincinnati Inquirer, November 1982

"Joni Mitchell's music has taken dramatic turns over the past fourteen years, and she has produced a classic in each of three styles: folk (BLUE), pop-rock (COURT AND SPARK) and pop-jazz (HEJIRA). Lyrically, love has been Mitchell's main concern - the word gets fifty-seven mentions on this LP - and her shifts have been more subtle: from the arched but intimate innocent to the Hollywood high-lifer and, finally, to the romantic on the run from experience.

WILD THINGS RUN FAST might have been called COURT AND HEJIRA. It is almost a great record, on a par with FOR THE ROSES and CLOUDS. It alternates rhythmically scratchy rock with cocktail jazz keynoted by Larry Klein's elastic bass and Wayne Shorter's soprano sax. Similarly, it splits lyrical concerns between what happens at people's parties and what goes on in Mitchell's solitary salon."
Rolling Stone, November 1982

 

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Today, as always, let's discuss the first track and the album as a whole:

Track 1: "Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody"


Chinese Café
Drums – John Guerin
Bass – Larry Klein
Electric guitar – Steve Lukather
Prophet synth – Larry Williams
Acoustic piano & Vocals – Joni Mitchell

Lyrical Excerpt:
Caught in the middle
Carol we're middle class
We're middle aged
We were wild in the old days
Birth of rock 'n' roll days
Now your kids are coming up straight
And my child's a stranger
I bore her
But I could not raise her
Nothing lasts for long
Nothing lasts for long
Nothing lasts for long

Complete Lyrics at Joni Mitchell's Official Site

 

Wild Things Run Fast
Like so many before me, I spent a long period of my life ignoring Joni's post 1970s records. I knew and liked Night Ride Home (because my mom had a copy of it) but I spent my high school and college years obsessing over everything Joni did through Don Juan and then I just...stopped. Part of that was the press, folks saying these records weren't as good as the early works. Part of it was my feeling when I was younger that most of the greats who started their careers in the 1960s put out mostly bad works in the 1980s (I no longer believe this). When I finally did get around to checking out the post-1980 albums, I was in my late 20s. I'm actually a little bit glad that I waited until I was older because I have grown to absolutely love most of these records and I'm not sure I would have responded the same way at age 16-17-18. These works were written and recorded by a woman entering (and ultimately passing) her middle age. They are more mature works with more adult themes than the early records. I don't mean better. I mean simply what mature means--written from an older perspective.

Wild Things Run Fast came at time when Joni was nearly 40. After several relationships with men in her own band (John Guerin, Don Alias) she married for the second time--to her bassist, Larry Klein. In some ways, this is her "newlywed" album. It not only returns her to a more accessible pop sound, it has a sense of jubilation and heart-palpitating love to it. She may be nearly 40, but she's not dead yet. After the density of all the late '70s records, Wild Things feels...fun. Shorter songs, catchier melodies, faster tempos. It has a production style that feels a bit more glossy and '80s, but not in an over-the-top way. All the musicians are still live. I think there is a certain warmth to the Geffen recordings that I find very appealing. Joni is urgent, playful, reflective, and emotional on this record. Perhaps it doesn't have the depth of her masterworks, but I think it's a great little record with a contemporary-to-1982 feel. She stopped being esoteric and pulled out her dancing shoes and her journals once again. There is still some jazz on this record, but it's just one of several flavors she offers. It's a really human record, I find, and one I always enjoy listening to. It just feels good to me.

Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody
The album opens with one of its strongest songs. "Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody" is, for me, one of the best songs of her career. It's an absolutely beautiful and wistful reflection on middle-age and the way she wove in the melody of "Unchained Melody" as a callback to the music and feelings of her own youth is absolutely gorgeous. The first verse also features a completely literal reference to Joni's daughter ("My child's a stranger / I bore her but I could not raise her") that somehow no one picked up on at the time. This song is absolutely incredible to my ears. Intelligent, emotional, melodic. I think it features everything that makes Joni Mitchell such an all-time great songwriter. I love the arrangement and feeling of the track as well. It has an almost dreamlike enchantment to it. This is pure magic.

Here's a wonderful live rendition from the time:

 

Grand, emotional, meditative & calming!
Great live version PW many thanks.
I always enjoy the studio cut and feels it goes by pretty quick despite it's actual time.
The first time i heard the line about the child i immediately thought of Little Green.
God bless Joni, can she still play and sing?

 

I don't think so, not after her stroke. But while she is not very mobile (she's always in a wheelchair when she makes a rare public appearance now), she looked so happy at her 75th birthday celebration.



I just want her to enjoy her retirement. She certainly deserves it!

 

Truer words could hardly by spoken!

 

Last night, I saw a little interview blurb on YouTube where James Taylor said at Joni's 75th that she's playing instruments now. I assume just as a sort of therapy, which is still pretty amazing considering her condition a couple years ago.

Anyway, Wild Things Run Fast. Until recently, this was my favorite Joni album outside the Blue through Hejira period, though now I'd give DJRD the edge.

Probably 10-12 years ago now, I wrote a novel (haha) here about Wild Things. I'm sure if I went back and found it, I could copy and paste enough relevant text to get me through this entire thread without having to come up with even one new brilliant thought.

"Chinese Cafe" is in my Joni Top 20. I'm not even that much a fan of "Unchained Melody", but she works in it nicely here.

 

For me, Wild Things Run Fast marked the end of what I consider to be Joni's best period--her Asylum years.

I wanted a continuation of Hejira and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. WTRF seemed like a retreat.

I agree that "Chinese Café/Unchained Melody" ranks up there with some of her best work, and I like "Ladies' Man" and "Man to Man," but that's about it.

I don't know why Joni decided to go into a different direction once she was signed to Geffen. Perhaps the Mingus backlash affected her, perhaps executives at Geffen were pushing for something more commercial, perhaps she simply felt she wanted a change, in any case, for me, Joni never came near her 70s height.

 

I am not totally familiar with this album, but I like the stuff I know.
So far as the change in direction. Joni is a sojourner, and had obviously fulfilled her jazzish desires. Perhaps Mingus had an effect, but I think it would be extreme to expected someone as interested in movement and development to stay put in that zone.
She was exploring more new ground and taking it as it came.

 

I have not heard a single song from this record, but I spotted the vinyl last week in a store; I will pick it up this weekend, but until then will Spotify it to & from work.

I do like the cover quite a bit. Did she paint it herself like usual?

 

Hmmm... Joni was always changing and growing. I'm not sure how she could have continued the trajectory of Hejira and DJRD any further than she had already gone. DJRD goes to some of the most experimental places I've heard in "pop music." Mingus was a continuation in many ways (following her interest in jazz completely down the rabbit hole) and I think it was her worst record to that point. I think that was a dead end road for her and she needed to change lanes a bit.

As I quoted in the opening post, Joni was influenced by the rhythmic music of the Talking Heads and the Police for the songs on Wild Things. I think those new influences combined with her marriage and her age all had an impact on the difference in sound on Wild Things Run Fast. She wanted to try something new. The Geffen period actually ended up being one of her least commercial periods--especially Dog Eat Dog, which may have had contemporary production but leaned heavily into topical songwriting in a way Joni Mitchell never had before and which alienated many fans who loved her for her personal, confessional writing.

Yes, another Joni Mitchell original painting. Let us know what you think of the album as a first time listener!

 

I was very fortunate to have seen Joni Mitchell perform live, just once, and it was on her concert tour for this album. I recall being very happy and satisfied with the show...

Here’s a review I found:

Mitchell Shows Her Best Sides Now
by Kristine McKenna
Los Angeles Times
June 16, 1983

“Joni Mitchell is often taken to task for the whipped-cream romanticism of her music, but it's hard to argue with the quality of her voice and her elegant sense of melody.
Her voice, like Mel Torme's, is a smooth, smoky wonder that swoops and soars with effortless grace..
Monday night at the universal Amphi-theatre, Mitchell sailed through a two-hour set that included material from throughout her career.

Focusing in recent years on her painting, Mitchell has kept such a low profile in the music world that it's easy to forget what formidable body of work she's produced.
Hits just kept on coming Monday night, and there were entire albums she didn't even dip into.

No longer the innocent flower child we met in the 60's, Mitchell is a sophisticated woman, and her voice has taken on depth and character that reflect that change. She's singing in a slightly lower register now, but her voice is as fluid and clear as ever.

Backed by a jazz-rock quartet, Mitchell said barely a word to her audience and seemed distant and aloof, enveloped as she was in the big, shiny sounds of the band.. This quartet framed her as a cool jazz vocalist and a sassy rock singer, giving much of her material new, more aggressive arrangements.

It was when she performed solo, accompanying herself on dulcimer, guitar or piano that she really seemed to connect with the audience.

Songs from her 1976 LP "Hejira" consistently shone the brightest Monday. These exquisitely sad essays on restlessness and longing linger in the memory like a strange and haunting dream. These songs - most of her songs, in fact - have been burnished to a rich luster with time, and Mitchell still sings them beautifully.”

 

Nice review. So cool that you got the chance to see Ms. Mitchell live! This opening line of the article made me wonder...even in 1982, people still associated Joni with 'Both Sides Now' and 'The Circle Game'?? Even after everything she produced in the 1970s? What's crazier is that some folks still do that today. Joni is eternally that long-haired hippie folkie in the minds of so many...

 

For some reason, I never heard Wild Things Run Fast until fairly recently, even though I've listened to most of Joni's records both before and after it for decades. All I knew was Joni somehow went from Mingus to Dog Eat Dog with only one album in between, and since I didn't really care for either of those records I just never checked Wild Things out. And while there is some good material on it... I don't really kick myself over missing out on it. It's not as dated as Dog Eat Dog (what is?) but still... it must have been a shock to people after 15 years of albums that, no matter how out there they got musically, were always highly tasteful, to hear this record full of trendy (and sometimes pretty cheesy) sounds, with Lionel Richie on it. I wince hearing something on a Joni record as tacky and ordinary as Steve Lukather's guitar on the title track.

This is also the earliest stage of Joni's vocal decline... you can't quite hear the cigarettes yet but there is a certain constriction that wasn't there before, and only a few years later her voice had completely changed.

That said.... "Chinese Cafe" is a great song that they didn't harm very much with bad production. Larry Klein was not a good thing for Joni's music in some ways but he does sub for Jaco pretty well on this track.

When Joni was reunited with her daughter, I remember it being talked about as if her having a child and giving it away was a big secret... and yet in this song she explicitly writes "My child's a stranger, I bore her but I could not raise her." I know she also wrote about it in "Little Green" but that lyric is not as direct... you could miss what the song is about, and even if you do get it the song is written as if it's about someone else. I suppose people may have thought she was not writing about herself in "Chinese Cafe" either, or that the daughter was distanced from her and only a metaphorical stranger.

The other thing that surprised me about Wild Things Run Fast is that I always heard it described as Joni's return to "pop" after her years working with jazz musicians.... but even though the album is produced like a pop record there is still a fairly marked jazz influence, and I found many of the songs to be somewhat difficult to absorb on a first listen -- "Moon at the Window" could have been written for Mingus.

 

I don't think Steve Lukather is capable of ordinary playing, though I'm not a big Toto fan. I still like me that Lukather/Eddie Van Halen-type guitar--it's just not my primary food group like it was back then.

And now for something my 1982 self would've had NO use for:

 

Back then, when I mentioned to college classmates that my dorm roommate and I were going to see Joni Mitchell live, they seemed familiar with her songs “Help Me”, and Free Man In Paris”, also, since those were played on the radio often.

Yes, I think the recognisable image of straight long haired hippy-ish Joni, with a fresh-faced wide smile, is embellished in the mind’s eye of many.

At the time, we were aware that she had just released a new album, a new start on Geffen Records; just like label mate Neil Young.
Coincidentally, we had just seen Neil touring his unorthodox “Trans” album, also at The Universal Amphitheatre.

{ Interesting footnote -
When Joni recorded “Miles of Aisles” there, The Universal Amphitheatre was open air.
When we saw her in 1983, it was an enclosed structure, having had a roof installed the year prior. }

 

Human nature is strange -
As impressed some may be that I was able to see this show, I mentally kick myself for missing other tours/shows of hers that I never made any effort to attend.

(Example: Why, oh why didn’t I try to get tickets to see a Joni/Dylan show in 1998...?!!!???)

While researching what the setlist for the show was (because I’ve completely forgotten what it was... ), here’s a list from one of the two shows, at The Universal Amphitheatre:

1. Coyote
   
2. Free Man in Paris
   
3. Cotton Avenue
   
4. Edith and the Kingpin
   
5. You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio
   
6. Flat Tires
   
7. Song for Sharon
   
8. God Must Be a Boogie Man
   
9. For Free
   
10. Big Yellow Taxi
    
11. A Case of You
    
12. Wild Things Run Fast
    
13. Sweet Bird
    
14. Banquet
    
15. Raised on Robbery
    
16. Refuge of the Roads
    
17. (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care
    (Elvis Presley cover)
    
18. Solid Love
    
19. Chinese Café / Unchained Melody
    
20. Help Me
    
21. Love
    
22. I Heard It Through the Grapevine
    (Gladys Knight & The Pips cover)
    
23. Woodstock

 

Very nice set list! She pulled from every album except Seagull, Clouds and Don Juan, while also promoting her newest release and doing quite a bit from Wild Things.

 

Never, ever underestimate Joni Mitchell.

I was ready to say goodbye after Mingus.

But then she came back with this. Holy smoke.
IMO Wild Things ranks as one of her finest albums. It’s confident, classy, and she sings with authority and passion. After all of Jaco’s bass-acrobatics (which can get tiring), Klein - no slouch himself - provides a nice, solid, less frantic backbone to her music. Her songwriting on this album is top notch.

I agree with you PW, “Chinese Cafe/UM” is a glorious song - one of her best. Heartfelt, wistful... just excellent Joniness.

 

“Cotton Avenue” is from Don Juan.

 

Yep, you're right. I missed that one.

 

You truly do a quite amazing job with these threads, thank you for them.

 

Thank you so much! I love doing them and reading what everyone else thinks and feels about this amazing woman's work.

 

WTRF was my second Joni album, obtained sometime in the first half of '83 via the old 12 albums for a penny routine. I'd by then thoroughly bonded with Hissing and apparently decided my next move might as well be the new album.

Now that I know the catalog, I can easily imagine the joy with which many long-time fans greeted the news that "Princess Bebop" had at long last released a "conventional" album.

Which, as the Ohio reviewer ascertained, it for the most part was not. But close enough for rock n' roll. It even has an Elvis cover, fer cryin' out loud.

But that LA Times write-up! "Suggests Rickie Lee Jones without her emotional immediacy."? Ooooookay.

It's one of those "old glove" albums for me - I put it on and it's immediately comfortable. I know all the contours intimately.

Which makes it harder to step outside of it and view it critically.

"Song For Carol", er, "Chinese Cafe" continues her long tradition of excellent openers. In a catalog playthrough I've noticed it serves nicely as a transition out of the "jazz period", opening with the title track would've been quite abrupt.

 

I love the painting on the cover. She looks so sultry.

This is the point in my journey where I departed ways with Joni's. I didn't form a bond with a lot of her jazz progressions (no reflection of her quality), and assumed this album was continuing in that artistic direction.
Reading the description of the album, I may have miss-judged it. I look forward to sampling it via this thread.