This entry was posted on January 7, 2023 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Video. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Interesting find and new to me I think. Also a funny coincidence, this afternoon I took a random CD to check an old CD player, it was Hejira and the first song was Coyote. No time to listen to more Hejira songs, it’s one of my favorite Joni records.
Hejira is my favorite JM album, not “one of.” (it IS hard to choose, isn’t it? A Sophie’s Choice.) I was curious about this clip and did a little research. From Rolling Stone:
There’s so much to be said about this video, which appears in Martin Scorsese’s documentary The Rolling Thunder Revue. Mitchell sits in her beret and gold earrings while Dylan accompanies her in a fur hat. They strum their acoustic guitars as Roger McGuinn squeezes in between them. “Joni wrote this song about this tour and on this tour and for this tour,” McGuinn announces proudly, sitting back to assist on guitar. Lightfoot looms in the background in a tank top, observing next to his questionable floral wallpaper. Every line Mitchell drops is like a bomb packaged with a bow: “He picks up my scent on his fingers/While he’s watching the waitresses’ legs.”
“Coyote” was inspired by Sam Shepard, whom Mitchell was briefly linked to during the Rolling Thunder tour. “Sam and I had a flirtation,” she said in biographer David Yaffe’s Reckless Daughter. “It was like we were twins. The stars were really funny. He was born November 9 and I was born November 7. I was born beneath a really powerful sky, and I think he was, too. He’s multi-expressive. He’s a playwright and a singer and an actor and he’s good at all of them. What I think was happening was that I was forming sentences like he would’ve. Everything was creating an aversion. But for me, on coke, I found him very attractive.”
im6,
This says it all except thank you for finding and then posting this.
I had no background about this song nor any knowledge about Joni and Sam Shepard. I did recognize Gordon Lightfoot and I loved Dylan’s fur hat. I’m glad to know about this song.
im6, thanks for background info!
I go along with Hejira as Joni’s studio album I like the most but I love her live records just as well 🙂 As you wrote, difficult to rank.
Btw, im6 and Kat, have you heard of Terre Roche’s new Roches collection? Some partly known live recordings but also new interesting Roches studio outtakes. All songs are in this playlist:
Wow! This is amazing from the start, this one song. I couldn’t open the link so I had only one, a tantalizing song to hear, but it isn’t near enough. I’ll figure it out, I hope.
Just put youtube(dot)com before the written playlist link-addition.
Old recordings by Maggie and Terre. My highlight is The Colleges but the whole collection is great especially for Maggie fans like me 🙂
Thanks, Birgit, for ANOTHER rabbit hole for me to go down! I always loved The Roches and saw them in concert several times, so this looks like something right up my alley (or down my rabbit hole, as it were!)
January 7, 2023 at 4:30 pm
Interesting find and new to me I think. Also a funny coincidence, this afternoon I took a random CD to check an old CD player, it was Hejira and the first song was Coyote. No time to listen to more Hejira songs, it’s one of my favorite Joni records.
January 7, 2023 at 7:30 pm
A coincidence? Maybe more! It is not one of her songs heard too often. I agree with you about Hejira.
January 7, 2023 at 9:17 pm
Hejira is my favorite JM album, not “one of.” (it IS hard to choose, isn’t it? A Sophie’s Choice.) I was curious about this clip and did a little research. From Rolling Stone:
There’s so much to be said about this video, which appears in Martin Scorsese’s documentary The Rolling Thunder Revue. Mitchell sits in her beret and gold earrings while Dylan accompanies her in a fur hat. They strum their acoustic guitars as Roger McGuinn squeezes in between them. “Joni wrote this song about this tour and on this tour and for this tour,” McGuinn announces proudly, sitting back to assist on guitar. Lightfoot looms in the background in a tank top, observing next to his questionable floral wallpaper. Every line Mitchell drops is like a bomb packaged with a bow: “He picks up my scent on his fingers/While he’s watching the waitresses’ legs.”
“Coyote” was inspired by Sam Shepard, whom Mitchell was briefly linked to during the Rolling Thunder tour. “Sam and I had a flirtation,” she said in biographer David Yaffe’s Reckless Daughter. “It was like we were twins. The stars were really funny. He was born November 9 and I was born November 7. I was born beneath a really powerful sky, and I think he was, too. He’s multi-expressive. He’s a playwright and a singer and an actor and he’s good at all of them. What I think was happening was that I was forming sentences like he would’ve. Everything was creating an aversion. But for me, on coke, I found him very attractive.”
January 8, 2023 at 12:21 am
im6,
This says it all except thank you for finding and then posting this.
I had no background about this song nor any knowledge about Joni and Sam Shepard. I did recognize Gordon Lightfoot and I loved Dylan’s fur hat. I’m glad to know about this song.
January 8, 2023 at 9:21 am
im6, thanks for background info!
I go along with Hejira as Joni’s studio album I like the most but I love her live records just as well 🙂 As you wrote, difficult to rank.
Btw, im6 and Kat, have you heard of Terre Roche’s new Roches collection? Some partly known live recordings but also new interesting Roches studio outtakes. All songs are in this playlist:
January 8, 2023 at 9:44 am
Oh, it looks like only the first Roches song is linked here, it’s
[youtube] /playlist?list=OLAK5uy_knOJKrUJllwGV5pyG5zQRF3jPBMnEcZYM
January 8, 2023 at 1:13 pm
Wow! This is amazing from the start, this one song. I couldn’t open the link so I had only one, a tantalizing song to hear, but it isn’t near enough. I’ll figure it out, I hope.
January 8, 2023 at 2:09 pm
Just put youtube(dot)com before the written playlist link-addition.
Old recordings by Maggie and Terre. My highlight is The Colleges but the whole collection is great especially for Maggie fans like me 🙂
January 9, 2023 at 10:44 am
Thanks!! Another day of inactivity!!
January 8, 2023 at 11:12 pm
Thanks, Birgit, for ANOTHER rabbit hole for me to go down! I always loved The Roches and saw them in concert several times, so this looks like something right up my alley (or down my rabbit hole, as it were!)