The Canadian songwriter Joni Mitchell produced her ground-breaking album Blue in 1971. It emerged as a singular commercial and critical success around the world and at the time the artist herself puzzled herself over what to give her friends that Christmas. The result was a handmade book with only 100 copies produced, filled with her own handwritten lyrics and reproductions of her many stunning drawings - portraits, abstracts, random concert goers, a road trip psychedelic dream sequence, a very detailed peacock feathered line art princess and Ottoman style palace line drawing, a pensive self-portrait, an aeroplane engine seen just in the fuselage in black and white under a bright zigzag yellow thunderstorm facing a page with the poem 'A Plane is a Bird' dated 28th May 1969. It is all written in her beautiful cursive handwriting, faithfully reproduced in facsimile in this 2019 first edition published by Canongate Books. The album is a better way of understanding what Joni Mitchell found beautiful and worth holding on to, and the lyrics are from her first five albums as well as some unreleased songs, reminding us of what a stunning lyricist and poet she is. In her own words 'This collection of poems and songs and drawings is for myself and for my friends and loves who are this book.' There is a poem about Woodstock, Temptation, and of course the famous Big Yellow Taxi and Let the Wind Carry Me among the 60 lyrics and poems reproduced very neatly with absolutely no crossings out in her own handwriting. Furthermore there are stunning portraits of friends like Jane Lurie in bold psychedelic colours, Judy Collins, Graham Nash, James Taylor, David Crosby, the cover of Court and Spark, Georgia O'Keefe and Neil Young among the 34 full page colour plates. A beautiful big 128 page first edition, 23 x 28.5cm.
Published price: £30
Bibliophile price: £16.50
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