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Sun 23 November 2025 20:30, UK
Typically, there are a handful of songs that artists find it hard to revisit. Whether the tune is associated with a specific person or it is a complex piece to get through, there are often raw wounds left behind by these songs that are never easy to heal. Although Joni Mitchell may have ripped her heart open more than a few times in her songs, Graham Nash once remembered the track that hit him harder than anything on Earth.
During the late 1960s, Nash had been in a relationship with Mitchell off and on, being knocked out by her sense of wordplay on songs like ‘Woodstock’. Despite Nash writing ‘Our House’ on Deja Vu to chronicle their life together, the partnership wouldn’t last, with both sides leaving aggrieved once everything fizzled out.
Rather than taking time to recover, Mitchell channelled all her creative energy into writing, coming out with one of her first masterpieces, Blue. Across the track listing, Mitchell peels back the different layers of her relationship that tore at her psyche, even claiming she felt like the cellophane on the pack of cigarettes when writing the album.
Although ‘My Old Man’ provided naked confessions about her life, ‘River’ was concerned with finding a safe haven from the heartache. Unlike the more jagged songwriting across the album, this is one of the purest songs Mitchell has ever penned, painting a delicate picture of her skating away on the frozen lakes she’s always known.
While Mitchell may have been working through her fair share of pain, Nash later revealed he couldn’t imagine listening to the album again. When speaking to Songfacts, he talked about how hard it was looking back on that time at first, recalling, “When Joni and I were breaking up, we both knew it was going to be difficult. We both loved each other tremendously. We had spent a couple of years lighting up rooms when we walked in. It was painful. It took me a while before I could re-listen to Blue”.
Even though Mitchell got too close for comfort on a handful of tracks, on some songs, she detailed her subtle fondness for their past relationship. On ‘A Case Of You’, Mitchell reflects on the positive times she had with Nash, thinking that his love is something that anyone would be able to get drunk on.
What makes the track so unique and full of depth, however, is the fact that it somehow functions as both a break-up lamentation but also an ode to somebody, exemplifying the dichotomy of love and love lost. Thus, there is also an argument that the idea of the song being simply about Nash is far too head-on. But there is no doubt the record feels attached to him.
Then again, Mitchell was already looking to go past the realm of romantic relationships in her songs. Throughout the next few years, Court and Spark and Hejira would see her writing tunes about the different intricacies of life, whether that meant looking at the humanity in other people or putting herself in the position of famous legends of days gone by like ‘Amelia’.
Later, Nash would also go on to bigger things by collaborating with David Crosby and Stephen Stills while offering up straightforward folk-rock in his solo career. Although the acoustic setting of Blue gives it a certain intimacy, there are specific blemishes on the album coming from a genuine place.
There are two prominent motifs that run through Joni Mitchell’s iconic 1971 record Blue — two profound themes are a perfect summation of Mitchell as a songwriter, firstly her intent to share herself more than ever before on this album and secondly to do it while using the often forgotten instrument the dulcimer.
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