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Tuesday 19th March 2019

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David “Nodealisbetterthana” Baddiel tweeted this extraordinary video of Joni Mitchell performing at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. And it’s well worth 75 minutes of your time. It’s an amazing social document with stoned middle-class hippies resenting that they have to pay for something that they feel should be free and whilst they seem ridiculous in many ways, you have some sympathy due to the flamboyant displays of wealth on behalf of the privileged pop stars. Tiny, beautiful, alien-human genius Joni Mitchell is thrown on to stage much earlier than she was billed and is faced with a crowd who are visibly swirling with malcontent, armed only with a guitar and a piano and some weird stringed instrument and her quiet songs and sweet, strange warbling voice. It feels like a situation that is going to be, at best, a disastrous performance and at worst end up in violence and death. There’s even an attempt by a mad hippy to hijack the mic, which would have been much scarier had it happened after the murder of John Lennon. The man is a fan of Mitchell, but also out of his mind on drugs and whilst eloquent (though mainly batshit) back stage, seems to be comparing himself to a Jesus who is a friend of Joni’s and understands her music in ways we can’t. He was just sitting on the stage up to that point it seems. 
Joni abandons songs part way through and makes some attempts to change the mood, but it isn’t until after that intervention that she suddenly finds an amazing inner strength. She not only tries to talk to the interloper a little, but quietly but precisely criticises this swarm of angry humans in front of her that they are acting like uncool tourists and the mood changes and she performs a fierce and emotional version of “Willie”, a song with a title and chorus that is open to all kinds of childish misinterpretation, but it’s genuinely one of the most moving things I have witnessed from a performer. It’s astonishing. I’ve always liked her music and her kookiness and her sense of fun and maybe it partly got to me because her music reminds me of my twenties. Also the film has a poignancy about lost youth. Almost half a century has passed and those beautiful young people are now old or not here any more, yet full of passion, even if much of it is misdirected. The end shots of people just enjoying the day, couples who maybe weren’t together six months later captured on film together, a really old couple incongruously amongst them… it’s fascinating.
But there’s a truth about performance at the heart of it. Mitchell admits that she prefers to work in the studio and is aware that live performance and success can warp a performer’s mind and make them lose what made them great. But the strength she found in this seemingly impossible gig is an inspiration. She’s honest, she’s slightly crazy (but in being so actually highlights how much crazier everyone else is) and she’s properly a genius.  For a moment her strange consciousness reached out and envelops the crowd like a force field. 
Her musical choices are very much her own and she is beguiling as a result. I was once a bit confused by way she hits and holds on “paved” in Big Yellow Taxi. No one else would do that. It’s great though.
The piece could only be improved by an update on what all the people who are in the film became. I’d love to know whether the protestors ever settled down with proper jobs and possessions and accepted that they had to pay for everything. Sadly, I guess, their generation continued to believe that the world owed them everything and carried on kicking down walls and fucking stuff up regardless of what the impact would be.
If only Joni Mitchell had been there on the night of the Brexit vote to calm everyone the fuck down.
So glad I’ve seen this, even though it makes me realise that everything I’ve ever done on stage is phoney and worthless. 


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