Joni Mitchell: "Hejira" Song by Song Thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Parachute Woman, Oct 10, 2018.

  1. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    If you do meet her, I suggest you change your name to Harry before inviting her home.
     
    Bruno Republic and HenryFly like this.
  2. lschwart

    lschwart Senior Member

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    @Parachute Woman has articulated the meaning of Mitchell's address to Amelia Earhart very well. It is complex, and it's also a kind of confessional, a kind of intimate "Dear Diary" gesture. Earhart is a symbol for the stakes involved in choosing an unconventional and autonomous path. She symbolizes what there is to be gained, and the risks as well. And of course it matters to Mitchell that she's was a woman who made the choices that she made in the early 20th Century. That's because Mitchell herself understands that she is making her own choices and taking her own risks as a woman some decades later in a world where gender relations and conceptions had changed, but not quite enough to make those choices and risks the same for men as they are for women. I agree that Marie Curie would work in a way as well, but Earhart's life offered Mitchell images much closer to the terms of her own personal mythology, which he had been carefully creating song-by-song for some 10 years by this point.

    For what it's worth, while I did introduce the idea of a pregnancy into this discussion, my point wasn't to argue that the "false alarm" refers to that in some certain way. It's just one of several things in the song's field of reference, and it happens to fit in ways I find moving and interesting. Certainly the most immediately available referent is the relationship itself. In fact, that reading gives the refrain a wonderfully suggestive ambivalence. She is unhappy to have to stay away from the man, unhappy that having crashed into his arms she can't stay there, but she's also in some powerful ways relieved not to have to remain tied to him.

    L.
     
  3. HenryFly

    HenryFly Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    In the Britain I grew up in, you know warm beer, village green cricket and matronly postmistresses, we'd have said it was 'much ado about nothing'. I stole that from Shakey Will
     
  4. lschwart

    lschwart Senior Member

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    I think that's the core of the way she uses it in the song. Whatever it is that happened, it was something alarming in prospect that turned out not to actually need attention, bringing both relief and regret. Both an unexpected pregnancy and the end of a relationship can bring on that sort of ambivalent emotional response (especially if they happen at the same time)!

    She thought she would have to make choices: accept love and its burdens or leave them behind again, bring a child to term and raise it or have an abortion or give it up for adoption (again). Now she doesn't have to. On the one hand the choices were made for her (he asked her to kindly stay away. There's no pregnancy. The singer is both relieved and grieved, freed and empty.

    L.
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2018
  5. Socalguy

    Socalguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA
    The song was inspired by a visual image of airplane trails streaking across the sky. Maybe Curie could have been the muse if Mitchell had visualized some laboratory instruments floating around up there. Tough to imagine though.
     
  6. HenryFly

    HenryFly Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    You wish a similar outcome to my relationship with Amelia as portrayed in Harry's house?? Nice. Thanks a bunch.;)
    I wish you a name change to Tom Waits' Poor Edward, if that song means anything to you!
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2018
  7. VU Master

    VU Master Senior Member

    Thanks for all the comments. It's getting late here so I want to mull them over and reply tomorrow.

    But meanwhile I glanced at the Wikipedia Hejira article to remind myself what the next song would be, and saw what it says about Amelia:

    ..."Amelia", was inspired by Mitchell's breakup with Guerin, and described by her as almost an exact account of her experience in the desert.[10] The song interweaves a story of a desert journey (the "hejira within the hejira"[19]) with the famous aviator Amelia Earhart who mysteriously vanished during a flight over the Pacific Ocean. Mitchell has commented on the origins of the song: "I was thinking of Amelia Earhart and addressing it from one solo pilot to another... sort of reflecting on the cost of being a woman and having something you must do." [17]
     
    Parachute Woman likes this.
  8. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    That did come out sounding a bit uncharitable, didn't it? All I meant to say was, if she's a Joni fan like you are, she'll jump at the chance to go to the house of a man called Harry. Afterwards you can work at keeping the relationship functional; cut down on the number of business trips away from home, make sure she's happy with the sofa, that sort of thing.
    I imagine this denotes something bad, but there is no way I am going to force myself to listen to Tom Waits in order to find out. I can take only so much pain.
     
    VU Master and HenryFly like this.
  9. HenryFly

    HenryFly Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    Oddly that's what Edward said just before killing himself and his evil twin sister who he shared their single head with; I kid you not.
    I was being as charitable as I could under the circumstances.:angel:
     
  10. Cokelike-

    Cokelike- Forum Resident

    Location:
    Columbus, Oh
    I always imagined the false alarm being a malfuctioning piece of equipment in Amelia's plane. But I know that probably wasn't what Joni was singing about.
     
  11. Socalguy

    Socalguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA
    Funny, so did I. Who knows, maybe Joni did too. It has so many possible meanings. Seems much more tragic for a dream to end because of a false warning, doesn’t it?
     
    Parachute Woman and Cokelike- like this.
  12. gregorya

    gregorya I approve of this message

    I think part of beauty and power of these lyrics is the range of potential meaning and interpretation... the ambiguity is intentional, I imagine.
     
    Cokelike- likes this.
  13. groundharp

    groundharp Maybe your friends think I'm just a stranger

    Location:
    California Day
    Hi Parachute Woman! I was wondering about your source for this:
    I know that that later became a standard way of recording, but I never would have guessed Hejira was recorded that way.
     
  14. groundharp

    groundharp Maybe your friends think I'm just a stranger

    Location:
    California Day
    Something I just realized after hearing both Joni's original and the version from The Last Waltz hundreds of times over the years (although I have to say I enjoy The Band version just a bit more than the Hejira one) is that Joni actually puts "Coyote" himself into the song, singing one line in "his" voice.

    When Joni is questioning why Coyote is with her when he has a woman at home and another girl down the hall, Coyote turns it back on her, answering, "Why'd you have to get so drunk, and lead me on that way?"

    This is clearer in the version with the Band, where Joni is more apparently doing an impression.

    Just another subtlety... Coyote is a song that can still reveal something new to the listener even after countless plays.
     
    VU Master, Cokelike-, Smiler and 2 others like this.
  15. mkolesa

    mkolesa Forum Resident

    I've been busy with work the past couple days so I'm afraid I'm quite late to the party but I did want to say this album holds a very special place for me... Although I'd heard the popular JM albums growing up and having a girlfriend who was a huge fan, I'd never really succumbed. Then my junior year in university my dorm neighbour got Hejira as it came out and I slowly became transfixed by it. Refuge of the Roads got me at first, with it's episodic construction, and that lead me to finally buy it as my first JM album. Of course all the songs developed a lot of resonance for different reasons, and that lead me to slowly fill out my JM collection until I'd worked backwards through her catalog. A couple notable moments from Hejira are after graduating university in 1980 my best friend and I spent 2 months driving across the U.S. and then back home to NY state. I still remember hitting I90 west and putting on my Hejira cassette so we could hear Joni sing about being a prisoner of the fine white lines on the highway, in Coyote, as we settled into our first all day drive. And then in 2013 I was at the Joni tribute in Toronto's famous Massey Hall where Joni performed publicly (for maybe the last time), doing Fury Sings the Blues. And while I love other of her albums almost as much, Blue & C&S especially, the special almost seamless quality of Hejira always affects me just that little bit more.
     
    Lars1966, Rich C, chrisblower and 2 others like this.
  16. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Hello! I got that info from David Yaffe's book, Reckless Daughter. I don't have my copy here with me so I can't quote specifically but perhaps I can tomorrow. It does occur to me that what Yaffe wrote was slightly ambiguous. He was very clear that the supporting players did not play with each other or even see each other (i.e. Larry Carlton recorded at different times from the bass players) but it is possible one of them played with Joni while she recorded and the other was overdubbed at a later time. For example, Joni could have played with Jaco or Max Bennett and then overdubbed Carlton later.

    However, the full band did not record together at any point.
     
    Planbee likes this.
  17. DmitriKaramazov

    DmitriKaramazov Senior Member

    I should have mentioned this earlier, but this is Lake Mendota, Madison Wisc. I was there the winter Joni took this picture, but alas I didn't bump into her! :laugh:
     
    HenryFly likes this.
  18. Dr. Pepper

    Dr. Pepper What, me worry?

    Probably in my top 5 or 10 albums of all time by anybody! A truly singular work of excellence that is for the most part unparalleled by others. I can't think of another piece by anybody that is this cohesive, maybe Peter Gabriel or Talking Heads, but even that is stretching it. The beauty is that it has as much in common with those works as it does with Miles Davis Kind of Blue or Bitches Brew or maybe some of Herbie Hancock's albums. There are not enough accolades for this album.
     
    keyXVII, HenryFly, VU Master and 3 others like this.
  19. DmitriKaramazov

    DmitriKaramazov Senior Member

    Thanks BT -- that is so gosh darn beautiful!!!
     
  20. misteranderson

    misteranderson Forum Resident

    Location:
    englewood, nj
    There's only so much any writer can do resolve everything in six minutes. And they're songs, not short stories or novels. The lyrics aren't a puzzle to be solved, they're there to carry the melody, and in this particular case, they do that extremely well.

    In any event, "Amelia" is sublime, one of the best things she ever committed to tape, and as someone else noted upthread, Crosby did an excellent cover of it on Sky Trails.

    But then, this album is practically flawless, if you ask me. It can be your gateway drug into Joni's earlier or later material. It's all there.
     
    Planbee and klockwerk like this.
  21. Dr. Pepper

    Dr. Pepper What, me worry?

    David Crosby's cover of the song on his recent Sky Trails album is very nice as well.
     
    DmitriKaramazov likes this.
  22. Socalguy

    Socalguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA
    Sorry, maybe it’s just me, but I think Crosby’s version reeks. It has none of the subtlety or feel of the original. That talk-singing of his is painful. Ugh. Must .. erase .. from ... memory ... hope I haven’t hurt anyone’s feelings.
     
    groundharp and Fender Relic like this.
  23. Fender Relic

    Fender Relic Forum Resident

    Location:
    PennsylBama
    Not mine,I don't like it either.
     
    Socalguy likes this.
  24. chrisblower

    chrisblower Norfolk n'good

    Massive Crosby fan, but really think it was a mistake for him to record it. Adds nothing to this great song.
     
    groundharp likes this.
  25. Dr. Pepper

    Dr. Pepper What, me worry?

    I respect all three of your opinions, wrong though they are.:D. I like his version of this track, though it is a distant faded echo of Joni's original. If it causes one single person who has never heard the original to give a listen to Joni's version, then it is definitely worth the existence of Croz' version.
     

Share This Page

molar-endocrine