![]() ![]() “We were already a band and we were rehearsing and working with acoustic instruments,” McGuinn told me. George Harrison proclaimed the Byrds “The American Beatles.” Like Bob Dylan himself, the Byrds were, for the most part, seasoned folk musicians who’d become fascinated by the new style of electric guitar rock and roll that the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks, Yardbirds, Animals and other British groups had brought to the fore. They’re the pied pipers who transported us from “yeah yeah yeah” to Purple Haze, basically. Trungpa was known for his drinking and womanizing, but he was also a great teacher who brought his much needed “crazy wisdom” to the West.At the vanguard of the folk rock phenomenon, the Byrds were the bridge that led from the British invasion into the psychedelic era. Heart and Humor and Humility, he said will lighten up your heavy load, I left him then for the Refuge of the Roads.” The lyrics are perfect and the music is too, with Joni and Jaco in the studio. “I met a man of spirit, He drank and womanized, I sat before his sanity, I was holding back from crying He saw my complications and he mirrored me back simplified, And we laughed how our perfection would always be denied. Another song to mention from “Hejira” is “Refuge of the Roads” about her stop in Boulder to see Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the greatTibetan Buddhist teacher and head of a lineage whose spiritual teachings he brought to America in the late 60s/early 70s. So, who knows when she wrote Coyote, but it is a great song. She sings of being on “the road to Baljenni (sp) near my old hometown,” which IS in Canada as is Gordon Lightfoot’s home, where she performs in this video (along with Dylan and McGuinn.) Sam Shepard was on the RT Revue, invited by Dylan to write about the big experiment. She writes about being on the road, but suggests that she is traveling not with The Rolling Thunder Revue (which she did do) but alone, in search of something intangible. What a gorgeous live performance!! The album “Hejira” is one of Joni Mitchell’s greatest works. Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Woodstock,” the Song that Defined the Legendary Music Festival, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969) See Classic Performances of Joni Mitchell from the Very Early Years–Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell (1965/66) Joni Mitchell Publishes a Book of Her Rarely Seen Paintings & Poetry But Mitchell never needed anyone else to speak for her. How McGuinn could have thought that it was about Dylan’s tour is beyond me. Lyrically, the song is full of dusty, forlorn images like the settings of Shepard’s plays. ![]() The studio version, above, is still driven by her acoustic guitar but incorporates percussion and Mitchell’s serpentine vocal line entwines with Jaco Pastorius’s bass. They’ll also recognize it as the first song on Mitchell’s 1976 album Hejira. Mitchell says nothing, but fans will know she wrote the song about Sam Shepard and first introduced it onstage during The Hissing of Summer Lawns tour. ![]()
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