Joni Mitchell is one of those famous characters that some already had their obituaries prepared for.
In March 2015, she was hospitalized in Los Angeles after being found unconscious at her home.
He had suffered a brain aneurysm.
For weeks his health was so weak that it was reported that he would not pass that year.
Eventually he recovered and left the hospital, although his return home was very difficult.
Five years after the obituaries of one of the most important composers of all time in American music were ready,
Archives Vol. 1: The Early Years is published
, an impressive box about her first steps as an artist.
There are five albums with six hours of unreleased audio, including her first known recordings, home demos and performances that show her formative years as a performer, as the young and perfectionist Mitchell abandons her cover-ridden classical folk education for new territories. that will lead her to become an astonishing talent, exemplified in the first song she composed herself:
Day After Day
.
Precisely, the box includes a booklet with images of the singer from a girl to her rise to star and with a long interview - the first since the aneurysm - by filmmaker Cameron Crowe, in which he confesses that
Day After Day
kept the challenging touch that I was looking for since I was a child.
As he explains in his conversation with Crowe, Mitchell, who is now 76, learned his biggest piano lesson at 7, after his teacher gave him a ruler in his hand because he "did not play with his ear" nor did he follow the
Robin Walk
melody
,
the song that had to be learned.
He snapped: "The great masters played with their ears and learned things by heart."
The singer knew then that she was not interested in the great masters, but in following her instinct and the power of her hands.
Like other illustrious names of his generation, such as Bob Dylan and Neil Young, Mitchell has given the go-ahead to an adventure of archaeological recovery of his music
.
Archives Vol. 1: The Early Years
is the first large volume in a monumental series that in future installments seeks to show the sonic legacy of an artist who broke the mold by mixing folk with jazz elements.
A very particular style, full of bucolic evocations and an extraordinary intimacy, which would mark generations of composers.
Today, he neither sings, nor plays the guitar, nor composes.
He simply "fights" after also suffering from polio.
“Once again, I couldn't walk.
Neither speak.
I had to learn to do it again, ”he says.
“I don't give up.
I have Irish blood!
So I'm here again: fighting another battle, ”he adds.
It will be almost impossible to meet Joni Mitchell again on stage or on a new album.
But, at least, the new project to recover your files allows you to get in touch in detail with one of the most restless and daring trajectories in popular music.