Review of Show at the Royal Festival Hall, London

Michael Watts, Melody Maker, 13 May 1972

There was Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and this third, malignant presence on stage at the Festival Hall on Friday. With no sense of regard for the crowded audience, this unwanted addition manifested itself by a series of whistles, screeches and hoots in the PA system, whose volume level was skittish to the point of perversity.

Poor old Jackson Browne. As soon as he got stuck into a song the sound would die on him and he’d be left mouthing into the mike like some caricature from a silent movie. The mood of the audience passed from annoyance to bewilderment to slight amusement and then through to pity as the kid wrestled with the problem of getting himself across.

What I actually heard of him was great. The numbers were mainly off his album. His roots seem to be very firmly in the folk field, not rock’n’roll, and his songs are almost without exception quiet, introspective and extremely personal. It would be interesting, however, to hear him with a band backing up, as I understand he works in the States.

For Joni Mitchell, the house PA replaced the one used on his set, but even so she sounded muffled in the higher registers. However … it’s difficult to see how anybody can actively dislike Joni Mitchell. Her writing touches peaks of sensitivity, particularly on Ladies of the Canyon, that no other songwriter can currently compare with. Her playing is direct and evocative and her voice is magnificent, especially when she soars on those high notes.

To those who attend her concerts, however, she’s much more than a singer and a songwriter. She’s some kind of high priestess, virginal and vulnerable, not to be vilified. The effect was heightened on Friday by her appearance in long flowing culottes that dazzled white in the spotlights. It seems almost like heresy to criticise her, but one fault to my mind is that the mood of her performances tends to be excessively devotional. When she sits down at the piano she knows the song is going to be melancholic and when she takes up the guitar only slightly less downbeat. She becomes not just a performer but a kind of icon.

On Friday she sang more new songs than old, although there was the obligatory ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ and ‘Clouds’, and a beautiful version of ‘For Free’, which she explained was written about a New York street clarinettist. There were not the obvious songs about the men in her life. There was ‘Blue’ but not ‘Willy’. Among the new songs was a comparatively light number inspired by a meal at Trader Joe’s, and one called ‘Song for Ludwig’ (dedicated to Beethoven), which had lovely rolling piano lines.

The highlight of her act was a song whose title I didn’t get but whose inspiration she went into at length.

That’s exactly it. One wonders what so many of her compositions are like in their raw state. It would be interesting to hear them.