{"id":585247,"date":"2025-11-21T18:54:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T18:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/585247\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T18:54:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T18:54:19","slug":"the-album-joni-mitchell-and-david-crosby-both-worshipped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/585247\/","title":{"rendered":"The album Joni Mitchell and David Crosby both worshipped"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Joni<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy \/ David Gans)<\/p>\n

Fri 21 November 2025 16:30, UK <\/p>\n

May I present a theory? I believe that part of the reason why the music of the 1960s and \u201870s, or the music from those who led that era, is so good, is because people truly loved music. Makers weren\u2019t afraid to be fans, like Joni Mitchell<\/a> and David Crosby, who weren\u2019t shy about the albums they were obsessed with.<\/p>\n

Now, people are always playing it cool. Artists aren\u2019t as forthcoming with their musical opinions as the industry demands media-trained niceties, or even if they are fans of someone else, artists don\u2019t want to be seen as being too referential. <\/p>\n

What you tend to get is a very polished and keeping-with-the-times answer where one band will merely hype up and already hyped band, jumping on the bandwagon rather than genuinely letting people in on who and what they\u2019re listening to, and exactly how much they love it.<\/p>\n

Back in the day, that wasn\u2019t the case. Back then, you had Jimi Hendrix racing out to buy Sgt Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band, obsessing over it all night and then deciding he loved the album so much that he must play the title track at his own gig the next day.<\/a> You had people like Patti Smith being open about her complete worship of her peers like Tom Verlaine and Bob Dylan. <\/p>\n

You had people like Joni Mitchell and David Crosby both loudly loving an album, declaring it one of the best ever made despite the fact that the band itself sometimes splits opinion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Joni<\/a>Joni Mitchell and David Crosby. (Credits: Far Out \/ Asylum Records \/ MUBI)<\/p>\n

However, Mitchell and Crosby were both loud and proud Steely Dan fans. \u201cWe Steely Dan\u2019d it right into the middle distance,\u201d Crosby once said in an interview, completely and utterly overjoyed as he recounted time spent jamming with the band, recalling it like a true fan boy.<\/p>\n

But he was. First, his praise fell mostly at the feet of Aja<\/a>, the band\u2019s 1977 record as he told Spin, it was \u201cStunning writing. Stunning production, stunning singing, outstanding playing, but songs. Unbelievable goddamn songs. It\u2019s too good. They\u2019re all fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, 1980s Gaucho somehow beat that as he declared, \u201cBest goddamn writing anybody was doing or has done. Nobody\u2019s topped it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joni Mitchell completely and utterly agreed. \u201cI never understood why Gaucho didn\u2019t receive the critical acclaim of Aja. I\u2019m convinced that if Gaucho had come first and then Aja, the same thing would have happened in reverse,\u201d she said as she was also wowed by Aja, but completely blown away by their follow up.<\/p>\n

To her, the treatment of Gaucho was representative of a broken industry.<\/a> \u201cTo maintain this high standard of musicality and storytelling through two projects is most praiseworthy \u2013 but there is something ignorant and arbitrary in rock journalism \u2013 editorial policy maybe \u2013 like \u2018We were kind last time, let\u2019s kill \u2019em this time!\u2019\u201d she said, as if Gaucho going somewhat underappreciated was a conspiracy. To her, it must have been as in her mind, that album was one of the best ever made.<\/p>\n

Both celebrating the 1980 album as one of their favourite records of all time, neither were shy about making their position as Steely Dan super fans known. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy \/ David Gans) Fri 21 November 2025 16:30, UK May I present a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[133823,77,4574,269,8589,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-585247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-david-crosby","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-joni-mitchell","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-steely-dan","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115589210768633127","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}