Album: For The Roses
Recorded: 1972
Released: November 1972
Recorded: 1972
Released: November 1972
Songs / length: 12 / 40:20
In the same year that Joni released Blue, she also bought a plot of land in Sechelt, British Columbia, just north of Vancouver. This rugged, coastal landscape is the backdrop to the album cover of her fifth LP, For The Roses, recorded and released in 1972. There's also a picture inside the record sleeve of Joni standing naked on a rock looking out to the ocean near Halfmoon Bay (I recommend picking up a copy of the album on vinyl, for the printed lyrics and artwork). As per the immortal line in her song Woodstock – “we got to get ourselves back to the garden” – Joni had escaped city life and found inspiration in the natural world, in a new home she called Walden Woods, after the famous work by philosopher Henry David Thoreau. The property also had no electricity, which Joni thought was "carcinogenic" – gotta love those old hippies...
1972 marked a new start for Joni in other ways too. For The Roses was her first album for David Geffen’s new label, Asylum Records, though like Blue the recording sessions still took place at A&M Studios in Hollywood. Also novel was Joni's songwriting approach, mixing the personal with a heavy dose of the political, not least on opener Banquet, which deals with inequality ("some get the gravy / and some get the gristle").
Joni also felt under pressure from Geffen to release a hit single, which led to the release of the tongue-in-cheek You Turn Me On I'm A Radio in late 1972, which reached #25 on the US Billboard charts in January 1973, one of Joni's rare hit singles. The album got as high as 11 in the US charts. Joni performed the song along with Big Yellow Taxi in a May 1972 performance on the BBC, for a new programme called Sounds of Saturday, and the album version was recorded along with Graham Nash (on harmonica), Stephen Stills and Neil Young. You Turn Me On I'm A Radio has throwaway lyrics by Joni's standards – a bit like Picasso doing a realistic landscape painting just to show he can – but the song has a lovely country sound, catchy tune and showcases Joni's wonderful voice.
Around half of the album's 12 songs delve into her relationship with James Taylor – Cold Blue Steel & Sweet Fire (about heroin addiction), For The Roses (about the trappings of fame), See You Sometime (about keeping the door open to an ex-lover), Electricity (about relationship breakdown), Blonde In The Bleachers (about competing with groupies) and Woman of Heart & Mind (about being treated more like a mother than a lover at times). That said, a big part of Joni's genius is her emotional intelligence, and so as a listener the exact subject or target of these songs is less important than the opportunity to inhabit the emotions.
Compared to the rawness of Blue, this album finds Joni in a more angry and confrontational mood, especially on highlights such as Woman of Heart & Mind ("drive your bargains / push your papers / win your medals / fuck your strangers / don't it leave you on the empty side"). In a February 1972 article by Rolling Stone, called Hollywood's Hot 100, Joni was crowned "Old Lady of the Year" and depicted in a chart showing relationships between high-profile musicians as a pair of lips linked to various figures, as though she were no more than a hussy on the arm of the male rock aristocracy. No wonder she was angry and hurt.
Title track For The Roses is about the cruelty of the showbiz industry, which Joni views through the prism of her own career as well as JT's, comparing pop & rock stars to thoroughbred horses that are garlanded with flowers, only to be taken out the back and shot when success deserts them. For The Roses, like many of the album's songs, was written by the time of her Carnegie Hall performance in late February 1972, a concert that finds Joni in magnificent form. Let's hope there are some higher-quality recordings out there somewhere that will allow for an official release one day.
1972 marked a new start for Joni in other ways too. For The Roses was her first album for David Geffen’s new label, Asylum Records, though like Blue the recording sessions still took place at A&M Studios in Hollywood. Also novel was Joni's songwriting approach, mixing the personal with a heavy dose of the political, not least on opener Banquet, which deals with inequality ("some get the gravy / and some get the gristle").
Joni also felt under pressure from Geffen to release a hit single, which led to the release of the tongue-in-cheek You Turn Me On I'm A Radio in late 1972, which reached #25 on the US Billboard charts in January 1973, one of Joni's rare hit singles. The album got as high as 11 in the US charts. Joni performed the song along with Big Yellow Taxi in a May 1972 performance on the BBC, for a new programme called Sounds of Saturday, and the album version was recorded along with Graham Nash (on harmonica), Stephen Stills and Neil Young. You Turn Me On I'm A Radio has throwaway lyrics by Joni's standards – a bit like Picasso doing a realistic landscape painting just to show he can – but the song has a lovely country sound, catchy tune and showcases Joni's wonderful voice.
Around half of the album's 12 songs delve into her relationship with James Taylor – Cold Blue Steel & Sweet Fire (about heroin addiction), For The Roses (about the trappings of fame), See You Sometime (about keeping the door open to an ex-lover), Electricity (about relationship breakdown), Blonde In The Bleachers (about competing with groupies) and Woman of Heart & Mind (about being treated more like a mother than a lover at times). That said, a big part of Joni's genius is her emotional intelligence, and so as a listener the exact subject or target of these songs is less important than the opportunity to inhabit the emotions.
Compared to the rawness of Blue, this album finds Joni in a more angry and confrontational mood, especially on highlights such as Woman of Heart & Mind ("drive your bargains / push your papers / win your medals / fuck your strangers / don't it leave you on the empty side"). In a February 1972 article by Rolling Stone, called Hollywood's Hot 100, Joni was crowned "Old Lady of the Year" and depicted in a chart showing relationships between high-profile musicians as a pair of lips linked to various figures, as though she were no more than a hussy on the arm of the male rock aristocracy. No wonder she was angry and hurt.
Title track For The Roses is about the cruelty of the showbiz industry, which Joni views through the prism of her own career as well as JT's, comparing pop & rock stars to thoroughbred horses that are garlanded with flowers, only to be taken out the back and shot when success deserts them. For The Roses, like many of the album's songs, was written by the time of her Carnegie Hall performance in late February 1972, a concert that finds Joni in magnificent form. Let's hope there are some higher-quality recordings out there somewhere that will allow for an official release one day.
Joni's voice had a really sultry quality at this time in her career, best captured on two of the album's highlights – Let The Wind Carry Me and closer Judgment of The Moon & Stars (Ludwig's Tune). The former song is about Joni's parents and her alternating feelings of sometimes wanting to lay down roots and other times wanting to remain a "wild seed" carried by the wind. The latter song was inspired by reading the biography, Beethoven: His Spiritual Development by J. W. N. Sullivan, and is one of the more daring compositions on the album.
Lyrically, Barangrill is one of my favourite songs on the album, a series of vignettes about small-town life in Canada, with a soft focus on finding our spiritual path and living in the moment, while Lesson In Survival is more confessional in tone and about Joni trying to rebuild her life away from the spotlight in British Columbia.
For The Roses is an old-fashioned album in that it was expertly crafted and rewards multiple listens; sadly, many people don't have the time to invest in this sort of thing any more, preferring playlists or the many other distractions available to us in the attention economy. It's an expertly sequenced album too. Overall, I think Side 1 is more cohesive than side 2, with closer Judgment of The Moon & Stars (Ludwig's Tune) not really flowing with the rest of the tracks.
What I love about the album is Joni's voice and all the innovative musical touches – the woodwind and jazz instruments, the synthesised sound after "down, down, down the dark ladder", the band coming in on Blonde In The Bleachers, the vocal reverbs, etc. For The Roses was a transitional album, a bridge between two of Joni's masterpieces, but no less deserving of discovery.
Highlights: Barangrill, Let The Wind Carry Me, For The Roses, Woman of Heart & Mind
Album rating: A
Lyrically, Barangrill is one of my favourite songs on the album, a series of vignettes about small-town life in Canada, with a soft focus on finding our spiritual path and living in the moment, while Lesson In Survival is more confessional in tone and about Joni trying to rebuild her life away from the spotlight in British Columbia.
For The Roses is an old-fashioned album in that it was expertly crafted and rewards multiple listens; sadly, many people don't have the time to invest in this sort of thing any more, preferring playlists or the many other distractions available to us in the attention economy. It's an expertly sequenced album too. Overall, I think Side 1 is more cohesive than side 2, with closer Judgment of The Moon & Stars (Ludwig's Tune) not really flowing with the rest of the tracks.
What I love about the album is Joni's voice and all the innovative musical touches – the woodwind and jazz instruments, the synthesised sound after "down, down, down the dark ladder", the band coming in on Blonde In The Bleachers, the vocal reverbs, etc. For The Roses was a transitional album, a bridge between two of Joni's masterpieces, but no less deserving of discovery.
Highlights: Barangrill, Let The Wind Carry Me, For The Roses, Woman of Heart & Mind
Album rating: A
Comments