Joni Mitchell's passion warmed chilly Pine Knob

by Ted Shaw
Windsor Star
August 13, 1979

PINE KNOB - When Joni Mitchell appeared at chilly Pine Knob Saturday for the first of a two-night stand, somebody yelled, "You look terrific," and roses showered the stage.

Perched on peacock-blue stilettos (great legs!), she plucked a rose from a box and attached it to her tan blazer. The matching skirt and blonde, shaggy hair fluttered alluringly in the breeze.

Then, when the mood called for something romantic, she sang her second-biggest hit, Big Yellow Taxi, saving Woodstock for an encore.

Next, she soared across the ocean in a rocking version of In France They Kiss on Main Street and returned, a prisoner of the freeway's white lines, singing Coyote.

Only in the fourth song, Edith and the Kingpin, did she settle, still restless, into a dreamy style that permeates her albums.

Her concerts are metaphors for her music. Themes of the road and love meet briefly, then part as quickly as they came, leaving, in the end, a longing for more.

Her audience understand her implicitly because, for the most part, they're as young and restless as she is, yearning for love.

At their best, Mitchell's songs are highly evocative with spare arrangements and assured musicianship. Her stunning back-up band Saturday supplied all the magic needed to enchant the audience.

She had the help of Weather Report bassist Jaco Pastorius, sax player Michael Brecker, and Pat Metheny, a jazz guitarist whose new album, New Chautauqua, is becoming a big seller.

The up-tempo tunes, like Raised on Robbery and Free Man in Paris, were favorites and well served by the band. Especially exciting was a version of Black Crow.

After the opening few numbers, Mitchell and the boys flirted with a wide variety of musical styles, including folk, jazz and rock.

The one low point was Pastorius' solo, perpetrated half-way through the performance. A friend said he looked like a Sumo wrestler on a diet with his pants tied at the ankles, baggy shirt and pinned-up hair.

He whipped the strings of his bass with the guitar strap, pounded them with his fist, then leaped on the instrument feet first.

Pastorius' numb-skull theatrics were unnecessary, however pleasing to some of the audience, and almost wiped out the mood of the entire set.

Luckily, Mitchell returned with Dry Cleaner from Des Moines, a scat-voiced tune from her new record, and a moving solo rendition of Amelia.

She was able to wrap her subtle voice around every style with ease, right down to a bouncy rendition of the '50s hit, Why Do Fools Fall In Love.

Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, a Charlie Mingus melody to which she added words, was lovingly handled by Brecker on a tenor sax while Mitchell's soprano vocals floated behind.

Metheny chipped in with a magnificent, mellow solo in Amelia.

But the absolute show-stopper was an impassioned version of Shadows and Light, the chant that ends the Hissing of Summer Lawns album. Employing the gospel talents of the Persuasions, who opened the show, Mitchell was stirring in a rich, sonorous performance.

And when she encored quietly with Woodstock, alone and accompanying herself on guitar, all the restless years that thoughtful song has travelled were brought into sharp focus. Her audience was transfixed.

The Persuasions, five singers from Brooklyn, were in top form as a warm-up act, and warming up is what the Knob needed Saturday when it dipped to 11C. They drifted freely, a cappella all the way, through a well-balanced set ranging from Paul Simon to genuine gospel and ending with a flourish with an Elvis Presley hit, Return to Sender.