Joni Mitchell: The Last Time I Saw Richard

One day you wake up and find you own¹ albums by Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. You don't remember buying them, but they are there. Congratulations, you are a grown up.²

The Last Time I Saw Richard is the final track on Joni Mitchell's Blue, and is the best song about disillusionment I know.

Notes

1. Of course, young people don't own any music, as one day they may discover to their cost.
2. What does this tell us about Canada?

Joni Mitchell: The Last Time I Saw Richard

This is the best song about disillusionment that I know:

And he told me all romantics meet the same fate some day
Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe

And some trivia: Carole King was recording Tapestry at the same time as Joni Mitchell was recording Blue, from which this track comes. Both preferred the piano in one of the studios to the other, so it appears on both LPs.

Judy Collins: Farewell to Tarwathie

Farewell to Tarwathie was written by the Scottish poet George Scroggie (1826-1907) and published in his 1857 collection The Peasant's Lyre. Scroggie lived on Tarwathie Farm, which is in Aberdeenshire.

It takes the form of a paean to his homeland by the protagonist, who is about to leave for Greenland on a whaling trip.

This Judy Collins recording of it can be found on her 1970 album Whales and Nightingales. She was by then an internationally known artist, having had a hit with Joni Mitchell's song Both Sides Now. I love the clarity of her voice here.

The whales on Farewell to Tarwathie, incidentally, also sang on the Kate Bush track Moving. They later took part in a world music tour with Trio Bulgarka and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, but have since retired.

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"The UK and EU cannot help but matter to each other. Regardless of the formal terms of the relationship, developments on one side of the Channel do affect what happens on the other." Brexit boredom is one thing, but there’s a real problem when Britain’s leaders won’t even talk about Europe any more, says Simon Usherwood.

Anusha Singh profiles Hina Bokhari, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats in the London Assembly. Hina is the first ethnic minority woman to lead a group at City Hall since its establishment in 2000, and also the first ethnic minority woman to lead a group in any of the UK’s devolved institutions.

"The idea that Labour’s electoral success depends on its ability to win back imagined hordes of socially conservative voters in the distant north and Midlands remains central to the party’s self-image." Alex Niven on the myth of the 'red wall'.

Hannah White argues that whether a government’s majority is enormous or merely substantial the more significant factor for democracy is the attitude a government takes to the role of parliament and the value of scrutiny.

Ben Highmore discusses the postwar adventure playground movement: "What if you gave children and young people their own space? A third space that wasn’t school and wasn’t home. Somewhere not orchestrated by obedience ... . A place where young people might have a great deal of autonomy in how they occupied the space and what they did with their time."

"Bringing psychoanalysis into the conversation explains so much, not only about Mitchell’s 1970s preoccupations, but about the looping, overflowing structure of her songs as the decade progressed. I wasn’t surprised to discover that Mitchell's own experiences with therapy were at best mixed." Ann Powers finds that the preoccupations of Joni Mitchell's work mirror those of American society throughout her career.

Hear Joni Mitchell play a lost Leicester Market Place pub in 1967

What a find! And what a performance! Here's an hour-long bootleg recording of Joni Mitchell singing at the White Swan in Leicester on 16 September 1967.

The White Swan (sometimes called Ye Old White Swan) was in the Market Place, tucked away behind the Corn Exchange. You can see some photos of this pub on its page at Pub History Project.

Paul Simon also played The White Swan, which was demolished in 1973.

There's a great Twitter thread about unlikely Leicester concert venues by The Chisit, and you may also enjoy my post about The Latin Quarter, a short-lived venue in the city where the young David Bowie and Elton John both played.

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Peter Geoghegan reminds us that, easy though it is to laugh at Liz Truss's PopCons, small groups backed by shady money have already reshaped our world.

Medical Xpress reports research that suggests the effects of being in the care system as a child last more than one generation: "This pioneering research paints a complicated picture of the vulnerability, disadvantage and resilience of care leavers. It highlights the persistence and inter-generational nature of the adversity they experience and demonstrates how disadvantage can be moderated through the provision of long-term care and support."

"The most worrying question is whether some apps could actually perpetuate harm and exacerbate the symptoms of the patients they’re meant to be helping." As experts worry over privacy issues, ineffectiveness and even harm, says David Cox, the UK is looking at whether the plethora of digital mental health tools need regulating

"Not only was my reaction not unique, it was almost universal. Fans and even fellow Grammy artists cried; that’s how much Joni Mitchell means to the droves of us who grew up with her supreme artistry as the virtual and sometimes literal soundtrack to our lives." Amy Rogers on a lifetime with Joni Mitchell's music.

"Giamatti makes this one of the best films of the last ten years. With the tiniest screwing-up of his odd eyes - or his nerdy running style, with the knees raised too high – he makes you laugh without saying a word. And, when he does say something, he can inject humour or sadness with the tiniest inflection." Harry Mount enjoyed The Holdovers.

Chris Dyson visits some favourite York pubs.

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"As a liberal I believe that we should all have equal access to decent facilities which we can use if we choose to. You should be able to walk to the pub or the school of the mosque within easy reach providing roughly the same standards of service whether for need or pleasure. The whole point of neighbourhoods is about enabling and not enforcing." Richard Kemp says we must destroy the '15-minute city' myths.

Josh Self decodes the Nigel Farage playbook: "He rails against 'the elite', ever-evoked but rarely defined by the privately-educated former stockbroker who spent 25 years working as an MEP. And he displays real skill in galvanising and directing sections of the British public at his unfortunate foes."

Anna Funder discovers that George Orwell's first wife Eileen has been written out of his life, not least by Orwell himself.

"Birmingham’s Trocadero was once the meeting place of the city’s Surrealists: Conroy Maddox, Emmy Bridgwater, brothers John and Robert Melville, Oscar Mellor and Desmond Morris. Between 1935 and the 1950s, these artists brought the strangest of all modern art movements to the Second City." Ruth Millington traces Birmingham's sites of Surrealism.

Joni Mitchell's surprise appearance at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival, 53 years after she first played there, marks another twist in her chameleonic career, says Annie Zaleski.

Jane Chelliah has been to see Barbie.

When a young David Bowie played a venue opposite the derelict Leicester Belgrave Road station

One of my favourite Twitter threads is one from The Chisit on gigs at unlikely venues in and around Leicester.

It reveals, for instance, that Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon both played Ye Old White Swan, a vanished pub that used to occupy a corner of the Market Place.

But it is the thought of David Bowie playing an obscure venue in Leicester as early as 1966 that really intrigues me, though not just for musical reasons.

The venue was The Latin Quarter in Belgrave Road and The Bowie Bible says Dave Bowie and the Buzz played there on Friday 12 August 1966. 

A few weeks ago I went to photograph it, and you can see my photo above.

Bowie played with The Buzz in 1966 and 1967. His first band, The Lower Third, had split with him because of a dispute with the management over pay. During their time together, The Buzz played on Bowie's fourth single You're Holding Me Down, which is a record that has not found its way on to YouTube.

The opening of The Latin Quarter was announced in a feature that took up the best part of a page of the Leicester Daily Mercury on Friday 27 May 1966, which announced:

New Teenage Night Spot

Opening Tomorrow

The Latest in Coffee Clubs and Restaurants 

A special all night live music session opens the Latin Quarter on Saturday night with local groups playing from 8 pm through till 6 am Entrance is in Belgrave Road by the lights junction with Abbey Park Road The tunnel of wicker hurdles through which grow ferns and down the stairs under the baleful watch of Pagan masks 

Not only is this to be a restaurant by day but will provide the ultimate in the city as a dusk-’til-dawn coffee club complete with most up-to-date Rock-ola Grand Prix Juke Box with stereophonic sound Meals will be served on occasional tables and diners on Design Centre chairs of a brilliant 'flame' colour.

The feature also promised:

Continuous Music by Local Groups

Every evening at eight ... that is the motto of the Latin Quarter for your entertainment entertainment that we know you will like all the best in the local groups provided by PS Promotions.

And to be fair to PS Promotions, among the bands announced for the venue's first week are The Farinas, who were soon to become Family, Leicester best band of the era.

The Latin Quarter was clearly meant to be a big deal - the feature has notices from its suppliers wishing well. I was intrigued to see that all the internal design work was by Derrick Knightley Associates of Leicester, because Derrick Knightley was an Independent member of Harborough District Council when I was a councillor.

All of which makes it rather sad that I can find no reference to The Latin Quarter after 1966. Among the non-Leicester bands who did play it that year were Bluesology, whose young keyboard player was Reg Dwight. He was to make a stage name from those of two other musicians who were members of the band: Elton Dean and Long John Baldry.

What interested me as much as The Latin Quarter is what was on the other side of Belgrave Road.

It doesn't look much today, but in 1966 this store and car park were the site of Leicester Belgrave Road station, the Great Northern Railway's old terminus in the city.

It had closed to passengers - by then it was mainly used for holiday trains to the Lincolnshire coast - in 1962, but the last railway buildings on the site were not demolished until 1985. The photo before shows the station many decades before that

So I like to think that David Bowie popped out for a fag and discovered the old station as a haunt of pigeons with its masonry stained green by leaking gutters and plants forcing their way from every crack and cranny they could find.

If I had a time machine, I might well set it for the evening of 12 August 1966.

Joni Mitchell: River

A Christmas song for people who are lonely at Christmas! We need a song like that. – Joni Mitchell

American Songwriter explains:

River reveals one of Mitchell’s most vulnerable moments in songwriting, opening up about a breakup and the deep bond that’s difficult to shake. The lyrics of River are thought to have been inspired by the end of Mitchell’s relationship with musician Graham Nash; the two dated from 1968 through 1970.

River comes from Joni Mitchell's classic album Blue and has been recorded more times by other artists than any song of hers except Both Sides Now.

Carole King: It's Too Late

Choosing No Secrets one Sunday, I blogged:

I suppose if there were an event for albums by females singer-songwriters released in 1971, Carly Simon would win bronze while Joni Mitchell and Carole King disputed gold and silver for Blue and Tapestry respectively.

What is remarkable is that Blue and Tapestry were recorded at the same time in neighbouring studios - the same piano appears on both records.

It's Too Late is the best known track from Tapestry and gave Carole King her only US number one as a performer. Fifty years on, it still sounds great.

Carly Simon: We Have No Secrets

On Twitter yesterday I listed the five albums I have played more than any other. Not my choice of the best or my current favourites, but the five I have played the most.

No Secrets by Carly Simon made the list.

I suppose if there were an event for albums by females singer-songwriters released in 1971, Carly Simon would win bronze while Joni Mitchell and Carole King disputed gold and silver for Blue and Tapestry respectively.

These days I play Blue more than No Secrets, but I doubt it has made up the gap yet. No Secrets reminds me of the summer that I bought a house and won a council seat, when I played it endlessly.

You're So Vain was played to death decades ago, and the album has a couple of up-tempo numbers, influenced by James Taylor, that do not show Carly Simon to best advantage.

But it also includes some gems, and the title track is one of them.