The Isle of Wight Festival, created in 1968, reached its peak in 1970, when nearly 600,000 spectators gathered on this piece of land in the south of the United Kingdom. Fifty years later, Europe 1 looks back on the various concerts given for what was, one year after Woodstock, one of the last great hippie meetings. This Monday, Joni Mitchell, his legendary concert, and his career in the form of a puzzle.
A tumultuous concert in a tense atmosphere ...
She is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Joni Mitchell is a tall Canadian blonde with soft, piercing blue eyes, a life full of drama and pitfalls, who has succeeded in sublimating them into one of the most fascinating works of all. When she arrived on the Isle of Wight in August 1970, almost everyone was in love with her: she had been filling the biggest rooms for months… Her voice was uniquely clear and powerful. , his guitar and piano playing as fluid as it is complex, his brilliant compositions have already been taken up by the greatest.
But all this does not immunize him against the excesses of the time, and his concert will be disturbed by troublemakers. While she gives her best "singing tour" on stage, we can hear screams in the distance, the noises of brawl between those who do not want to pay to enter the site and the order service. In short, the atmosphere is tense. A weirdo named Yogie Joe, clearly under the influence of psychotropic drugs, even invites himself on stage and tries to take the microphone. He is quickly turned back, but the huge crowd begins to whistle.
... and a turnaround
Faced with such a situation, many artists would have let the situation degenerate, or even abandon the stage. But not Joni Mitchell. On the verge of tears, she explains that she is there to share her music, her emotions, and firmly asks the audience to calm down, before continuing her show. And if she obtains silence, it will then give way to a standing ovation at the end of the concert.
Alone on stage with her famous yellow dress in front of thousands of festival-goers, the interpreter of Big Yellow Taxi, fierce critic of capitalism, therefore manages to turn the situation to her advantage. A feat that is not really one for this woman who already, at the time, lived several lives, and not the most comfortable.
Several lives in a lifetime
It all began in Canada in the early 1940s. Roberta Joan Anderson was born in Alberta, in the center of this gigantic country. The only daughter of middle-class parents (her mother is a teacher, her father a military instructor), Scottish, Irish and Norwegian blood runs through her veins. From the age of 9, her life was in danger: victim of a polio epidemic, she had to stay alone for many months, often locked up. She dreams of being an artist, painter, dancer… And, once she has become a magnificent teenager, she slowly takes the tangent. The school, the system, the compromises, all bother him deeply. So she opts for a bohemian life, its moments of elation and its traps, too.
Armed with her guitar and her favorite songs, including those of Edith Piaf, Joan Anderson began to make a name for herself on the local folk scene. She becomes pregnant at the age of 21, but her partner quickly flees and leaves Joan penniless and almost homeless. This event pushes the singer to change course once again. She meets a singer, also folk, Chuck Mitchell, with whom she will form a duet, then a couple who settle on the other side of the border, in Detroit.
Find all the other episodes of our series "The Isle of Wight Festival, 50 years later":
> Episode 1: the last notes of Morrison's Doors
> Episode 2: Mighty Baby, talent without glory
> Episode 3: the unexpected concert of Brazilian exiles
> Episode 4: the Rory Gallagher revelation
> Episode 5: Tony Joe White's springboard
From Joan Anderson to Joni Mitchell
This is where Joan Anderson becomes Joni Mitchell. But hardly the marriage consummated, Chuck categorically refuses to take care of the baby. To avoid a public scandal, the little girl named Kelly Dale will be entrusted to the adoption services. Joni Mitchell will keep the secret for 30 years before a former comrade sells the story to a tabloid. Mother and daughter did not meet again until the 1990s.
Joni's solo career began in 1966. But it was in 1967 that David Crosby, of the group The Byrds, a kind of American Beatles, came across a concert by the singer in Florida. Texts, voice, interpretation, charisma, beauty ... Love at first sight is immediate, he produces his first album and promotes his talent as soon as the opportunity arises.
Both Sides Now , first triumph
On Joni Mitchell's second album, Clouds , her first big album, there is a song that will be covered by all the aristocracy of the time, from Judy Collins to Frank Sinatra and hundreds of others. It became a classic, but it was Joni Mitchell who composed Both Sides Now. And with this first triumph, the artist will very quickly impose his personality.
Installed on the heights of Los Angeles, in Laurel Canyon, a district that will become legendary largely thanks to her, Joni Mitchell shines. She writes, composes, loves too, freely. His affair with English star Graham Nash has entered the pop history books. She invents a genre that we will call "confessional folk", with texts inspired by her life, without filter but with exceptional poetic verve. All carried by melodies that are both elaborate and delicate.
New musical experiences
Everything Joni Mitchell touches turns to gold. His masterpiece of the genre, Blue , was released in 1971, and appears regularly in the charts of the best albums in history. But as a great artist, she doesn't hide her need to evolve and go where you don't expect her. In the 1970s, Joni Mitchell remembers that her first record, the only one she claims to know by heart, was a jazz record. And she will gradually move towards more experimental territories with a group of prestigious musicians, whom she baptizes "LA Express". Her audience, surprised, will not necessarily follow her, but the inspiration is still there.
There is a form of magic to this music, most notably in the opening track Hejira , her wonderful 1976 album written on the road as she traveled through the United States. His name is Coyote, and tells the epilogue of a toxic relationship turned into pure poetry.
Shortly before this album, Joni Mitchell had taken part in a traveling tour organized by Bob Dylan, one of his great influences. A tour that has become legendary, The Rolling Thunder Revue, which will not leave him only good memories but will end up establishing him as one of the most outstanding and influential figures of his time. Many albums will follow, as well as forays into writing and especially painting, her first love, not to mention strong positions on feminism and sexual abuse, the struggle between art and commerce, ecology. ...
A life in the shape of a puzzle
Even today, even if she claims to have finished with the music, "the muse has deserted", she confides, Joni Mitchell is a globally respected artist, an icon for many apprentice composers despite her healthy life. puzzle. But maybe she also wanted it a bit like that. In 2015, victim of a ruptured aneurysm, she once again almost died. Since then, she has been rare in public, but the tributes to her career and her talent have never been so numerous, 50 years after this unforgettable appearance on the Isle of Wight.