Miles Of Aisles: Behind Joni Mitchell’s First Great Live Album

The performances included on Miles Of Aisles are drawn from different concerts rather than being one continuous show. Mostly, the songs were recorded over several nights at the Universal Amphitheatre, in Los Angeles; but Cactus Tree was taken from her performance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, in the city’s Music Center, and Real Good For Free was recorded at the Berkeley Community Theater. During the emotional performance of Real Good For Free (known as For Free in its original version, on the Ladies Of The Canyon album), Mitchell changes the lyrics to “I slept last night in the Fairmont Hotel”: the real-life “good hotel” where she had stayed before the show.

Who are the musicians on ‘Miles Of Aisles’?

Joni Mitchell’s band on Miles Of Aisles was made up of several of the musicians she had worked with on Court And Spark, known collectively as LA Express. John Guerin was on drums and percussion; Max Bennett was the bassist; Tom Scott played woodwinds and harmonica. Two other musicians who had been on Court And Spark, Joe Sample and Larry Carlton, were unavailable. Instead, the 22-year-old Robben Ford tackled Carlton’s guitar parts, and Larry Nash replaced Carlton on piano (at least on the dates recorded for Miles Of Aisles; he would leave the tour before its conclusion).

Mitchell picked her musicians carefully. Extremely musically literate, throughout her career she has looked for people not merely to play to her instruction, but to feed her vision. “It was a different way of being an accompanist,” Ford has said. “I had never heard music like that before. We certainly allowed her to have a more expansive presentation.”

The Miles Of Aisles version of Rainy Night House is a good example of how working with LA Express could transform Mitchell’s earlier material. This quiet track, from Ladies Of The Canyon, now becomes a progressive masterpiece, full of vocal and musical extemporisations. The interpretation of this song in particular anticipates the feel of Mitchell’s next album, the “dark yacht-rock” of The Hissing Of Summer Lawns.

What famous songs are on ‘Miles Of Aisles’?

The Circle Game, Big Yellow Taxi, Woodstock and Both Sides, Now are all on Miles Of Aisles. However, the songs are often arranged very differently to their original album versions. The change in Big Yellow Taxi is especially striking. Mitchell’s audience would have been used to the singular, penetrating message of the original, cast in its creator’s translucent tones; on Miles Of Aisles it’s a boogie playground for Mitchell and the band, the vocals lower and more rounded.

Mitchell relished the opportunity to rework her material in this way, but she knew this would provoke resistance. In the intro to The Circle Game, one of her best-known songs, Mitchell addresses those who wish to hear exact copies of the recorded versions. “Nobody ever said to Van Gogh, ‘Paint The Starry Night again, man!’ He painted it, that was it.”

Perhaps surprisingly, there are five songs from Blue on Miles Of Aisles. This intimate album would seem almost impossible to recreate in a large amphitheatre with a full band. Yet Mitchell does so with authority – and none of the live versions lose their emotional power. The Last Time I Saw Richard, in particular, is painted in new hues as the band murmur jazz-inflected phrases alongside Mitchell’s melancholy. She even treats the audience to her best harried-waitress impression.

Are there any new songs on Miles Of Aisles?

Miles Of Aisles ends with two songs Joni Mitchell had yet to record. The first is Jericho, which Mitchell would not release as a studio version for several years (it would eventually appear on 1977’s Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter). Most intriguing of all was Miles Of Aisles’ closing track, Love Or Money. This serious groove has never been released by Mitchell elsewhere, so all we have is this excellent version: something to sit alongside Steely Dan as a complex jive with cynical lyrics.

Both of these tracks, alongside reinterpretations of songs such as Rainy Night House, point to Mitchell’s later 70s career. On the albums Hejira and Mingus she would push her music further from the mainstream, making some of the most exciting, challenging and intriguing music of her life.

What are Joni Mitchell’s live albums?

Miles Of Aisles was Joni Mitchell’s first live album, and she would go on to make live albums an important part of her discography. Her next was Shadows And Light, released in 1980. Following her surprise return to the stage, in 2022, she released Joni Mitchell At Newport, a sublime document of this historic performance. Mitchell has also released two retrospective live albums as part of her ongoing Joni Mitchell Archives project: Live At Canterbury House: 1967 and Live At Carnegie Hall: 1969.

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For Mitchell, the live arena was often a way to experiment and try out new approaches. She did not want to repeat something people could easily listen to at home – it would, indeed, be like painting The Starry Night over again. She has even claimed that it’s not about the appreciation her audiences give her (“I’ve been moved when the audience was so spellbound they forgot to applaud,” she once said).

Miles Of Aisles bore witness to an artist advancing, leaving the last vestiges of folk behind, taking flight into a new dawn. “She defies categorisation altogether,” LA Express member Tom Scott said in 1974. “Don’t know what she is, except a very talented lady.”

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