Sean Nelson - Court and spark

Court and Spark

Praise for the series:

It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch. The series, which now comprises 29 titles with more in the works, is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebrationThe New York Times Book Review

Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just arent enoughRolling Stone

One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planetBookslut

These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerdsVice

A brilliant serieseach one a work of real loveNME (UK)

Passionate, obsessive, and smartNylon

Religious tracts for the rock n roll faithfulBoldtype

[A] consistently excellent seriesUncut (UK)

Wearent naive enough to think that were your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way..watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, youd do well to check out Continuums 33 1/3 series of books.Pitchfork

For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our website at www.continuumbooks.com and 33third.blogspot.com

Sean Nelson

2011

Continuum International Publishing Group
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

www.continuumbooks.com

2007 by Sean Nelson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers or their agents.

eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-2966-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nelson, Sean.
Court and spark / Sean Nelson.
p. cm.--(33 1/3)
1. Mitchell, Joni Court and spark. I. Title. II. Series.

ML 420.M542N45 2006

782.42164092 dc22

2006029498

Printed and bound in the United States of America

I am grateful to: David Barker for the opportunity (and the patience), Mike McGonigal for the hook up, Josh Feit for the lively discourse, Joni Mitchell for the amazing records, the keepers of www.jonimitchell.com for the assiduousness, Ariella Robison for the support, and my mother, for singing in the car..

At the risk of waxing briefly autobiographical

During her first marriage, my mother drove a navy blue, late 60s model VW Beetle with black and yellow California plates. I dont remember much about it, aside from my view of the smog-smeared mid-70s Los Angeles cityscape from its passenger seat. I usually rode standing up, without a seat-belt, using insect carcasses on the windshield as laser gun sights. I was eventually forced to ride sitting not because I grew too big for standing (the dome-ceilinged car was sold long before I managed that), but because I had worn away the upholstery until the brown stuffing and black coils underneath poked through the vinyl. With my mom at the wheel, I observed countless thousands of miles between the Valley we lived in and the rest of that sprawling, mysterious, romantic, horrible, beautiful city. In the faded film print of my mind, the sky is always yellow, verging on sepia; the flowers are bloody, pomegranate red; the streets are choked with cars and people trying to sell fruit or flowers or maps; and the hot brown sun is always aimed directly into your eyes.

I dont know what year this one specific event occurred, but it couldve been any time between 1974 and 1979. My mother was driving a familiar route through the serpentine fistulas of Laurel Canyon on some errand or other. I often became carsick on these winding drives, and she always tried her best to distract me from nausea as best she could, which usually meant promising to buy me a soda when we got down to the Laurel Canyon Country Market (this meant we were past the worst of the curves), and listening to the car radio. One hot late afternoon, with the windows down, and the brown sunlight pushing through the sagging pine and eucalyptus branches, whichever song was on whatever station cross-faded into a pattern of gentle, insistent guitar strumming that made my mom gasp with delight, turn the volume up high, and start singing along with the high, dusty female voice that followed (after a quick, six-hit drum fill).

Help me, I think Im fallin, she sang, then paused briefly with the singer, then continued, in love again

Though commonplace enough on its own, the memory has stayed with me through at least a couple of decades, because it was the first time Id ever heard someone (and not just any someone) sing along with a song she knew on the radio. It just happened, as though the radio knew exactly what she wanted to hear and forked it over. And she rose to the occasion, singing unabashedly, with full-throated participation in one of the most genuinely life-affirming rituals invented by the twentieth century. I remember my surprise when it started, and I remember my attempt to sing along with her, though I didnt know the words or the tune or anything. I wanted in. And when the song was over, I remember being disappointed that she didnt sing along with whatever song came next. Or maybe it was a commercial. My memory is vague on this point. But Ive been a devout singer-along ever since, much to the consternation of many driving companionsgiven that the world is obviously divided into two groups, and the ones who dont cant stand the ones who do.

Another first: noticing the way the songs words led you to believe one thing was happening, only to turn left and surprise you, all within the space of a single line. Help me, I think Im falling not from a cliff, not off a building ledge, not even into a lava pit (all fates that had featured in my young nightmares), but in love, which, one assumes, is meant to be a good feeling. And that again. So much worldly information in so little space, and presented so naturally. The Beatles, whose records were the only things my parents ever let me touch and who therefore were the only band I really knew and loved, often played verbal tricks, but I hadnt dug deep enough to appreciate their finer points. I mean, I understood that I once had a girl / or should I say, she once had me was a twist that probably meant something, but I had no idea what; I was still stuck on the movement you need is on your shoulder. (And anyway, Beatles lyrics arent so much good as they are perfect, but lets not get anywhere near that discussion) I had no idea then, but this chance encounter with Joni Mitchell had just provided me with the beginnings of what would become a lifelong thrall-dom to the expressive possibilities of pop songwriting.

And lets not forget that this whole scenario was made possible by the radiopossibly AM, probably top-forty, definitely commercial. I knew that people sang along with records; I was just beginning to familiarize myself with the practice. But records required intention. You buy it, you learn it, you play it, you sing itand if it has a lyric sheet, so much the better. The idea that the music could come to you was brand new, and thrilling. The next step was realizing that other peoplefriends, strangers, mothers, sonswere out there hearing it at the same time you were, and also singing along. The fact that it was a Joni Mitchell song and not one by, say, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Jackson Browne, the Bay City Rollers, or the Eagles, was incidental, but only at first. As years have gone by, Ive conferred a great deal of meaning on the Help Me episode, not only for its small but significant expansion of my young pop consciousness, but because it opened a door into the work of one of my all-time favorite recording artists.