{"id":805562,"date":"2020-03-23T08:40:01","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T14:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=969107"},"modified":"2020-03-23T08:40:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-23T14:40:01","slug":"flashback-joni-mitchell-plays-a-warm-for-free-in-1970","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/flashback-joni-mitchell-plays-a-warm-for-free-in-1970\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Joni Mitchell Plays a Warm \u2018For Free\u2019 in 1970"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On September 3rd, 1970, Joni Mitchell<\/a> stopped by the BBC\u2019s Television Centre in London to perform for the premiere of their In Concert<\/em> series. She would play songs from previous albums, including \u201cCactus Tree\u201d from her 1968 David Crosby\u2013produced debut and \u201cChelsea Morning\u201d from Clouds<\/em>, but the majority of her 11-song set came from her then-new album, Ladies of the Canyon<\/em>, released 50 years ago this month.<\/p>\n

With tracks like \u201cBig Yellow Taxi\u201d and \u201cThe Circle Game\u201d \u2014 the latter her response to Neil Young\u2019s \u201cSugar Mountain\u201d \u2014 Ladies of the Canyon<\/em> marked Mitchell\u2019s first platinum record. It was also her first to feature the piano, an instrument she\u2019d use to produce warm, introspective songs less than a year later on Blue.  <\/em><\/p>\n

Side Two of the album is packed with well-known gems, including \u201cWoodstock,\u201d a song that captures the historic 1969 festival that she famously didn\u2019t attend. \u201cTo be young and to have missed that \u2026 that was everything to me,\u201d she told MTV News<\/em><\/a> in 1998. \u201cBut I guess it was meant for a reason. I just sat in front of the TV and wrote most of the song in the first few days of the festival, and it was done by Sunday night.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Side One is more lighthearted, with the wide-eyed opener \u201cMorning Morgantown\u201d and \u201cWilly,\u201d her ode to her former lover, Graham Nash. \u201cFor Free,\u201d which you can hear in the clip above, features a more lyrically driven narrative about a street musician in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI slept last night in a good hotel,\u201d Mitchell sings in the song\u2019s opening lines, her fingers making graceful contact with the piano keys. \u201cI went shopping today for jewels,\u201d she says, stretching out the word into jewwellls<\/em> to make it rhyme. She smiles at the camera, nervously getting through each line.<\/p>\n

When introducing \u201cFor Free\u201d in 1969<\/a>, Mitchell described the origin of the track. \u201cNow, New York is an amazing city and every time I go there, I write a story,\u201d she said. \u201cHere\u2019s another story that\u2019s about a New York street musician who played real good for free and that\u2019s the name of the song, \u2018He Played Real Good for Free,\u2019 and it\u2019s in a kind of a Gene Autry country and western riff. Funky Gene Autry, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 50 years since its release, \u201cFor Free\u201d has been covered by Mitchell\u2019s peers, from Crosby to James Taylor. It\u2019s also been recently introduced to an entirely new generation by Lana Del Rey, who covered it several times on her 2019 tour, including a witchy rendition<\/a> with Weyes Blood and Zela Day. But as with most of Mitchell\u2019s catalogue, nothing is as captivating as when she sings it herself, alone with her piano.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On September 3rd, 1970, Joni Mitchell stopped by the BBC\u2019s Television Centre in London to perform for the premiere of their In Concert series. She would play songs from previous albums, including \u201cCactus Tree\u201d from her 1968 David Crosby\u2013produced debut and \u201cChelsea Morning\u201d from Clouds, but the majority of her 11-song set came from her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-805562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-18 17:28:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}