Tango
07-09-2008, 08:16 PM
I picked up a copy of Sheila Weller's "Girls Like Us," the other day (copywrite 2008), a book about Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon. It's definitely a great read, and I admire all the singer/songwriters covered. (I was, however, shocked to read both Carole King and Joni Mitchell had been slapped around by their paramours.)
Back on point, on page 436, in a section focusing on Joni Mitchell there is a brief Stevie mention:
"Joni was two years away from forth. After a string of conflict-filled romances, a hospitalization for a serious infection, and a loss of her fans, maybe it was time to choose the easy and nurturing way for a change. A whole new generation of women of varying degrees of merit on the shock-value-to-talent continum--Rickie Lee Jones, Deborah Harry, Madonna, Pat Benatar, Chryssie Hynde, and Joan Jett (all of whom had essentially supplanted an interim generation that included Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks and the higly regarded Patti Smith)--were now the queens of the airwaves (and of that cheesy-seeming brand-new phenomenon that robbed records of their imaginative value: music videos), riding on the "ploughed dirt" (to use Jonie's term for what O'Keefe had provided her) that Joni, Carole, Carly, Laura Nyro, Grace Slick, and Janis Joplin had provided through a more concerted battle against the limits of being a young American female. The idea of lving the hard and soulful life--the life that Joni and D'Arcy Case had sought, that she and Joy Schreiber had found they had in common, that she and Ronee Blakley followed, through Nietzsche and Van Gogh: maybe you could live it for just so long.
Back on point, on page 436, in a section focusing on Joni Mitchell there is a brief Stevie mention:
"Joni was two years away from forth. After a string of conflict-filled romances, a hospitalization for a serious infection, and a loss of her fans, maybe it was time to choose the easy and nurturing way for a change. A whole new generation of women of varying degrees of merit on the shock-value-to-talent continum--Rickie Lee Jones, Deborah Harry, Madonna, Pat Benatar, Chryssie Hynde, and Joan Jett (all of whom had essentially supplanted an interim generation that included Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks and the higly regarded Patti Smith)--were now the queens of the airwaves (and of that cheesy-seeming brand-new phenomenon that robbed records of their imaginative value: music videos), riding on the "ploughed dirt" (to use Jonie's term for what O'Keefe had provided her) that Joni, Carole, Carly, Laura Nyro, Grace Slick, and Janis Joplin had provided through a more concerted battle against the limits of being a young American female. The idea of lving the hard and soulful life--the life that Joni and D'Arcy Case had sought, that she and Joy Schreiber had found they had in common, that she and Ronee Blakley followed, through Nietzsche and Van Gogh: maybe you could live it for just so long.