Bob Dylan has inspired countless musicians, authors, artists, and really anyone and everyone who has listened to his music. The man has garnered comparisons to Shakespeare, thus, his lyrical and ideological influence even touches people whose native language is not English. With all that in mind, it comes as no surprise that he deeply influenced his musical contemporary, Joni Mitchell.
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Dylan and Mitchell have had their menial and public feuds in the past. However, not even an adversary of Bob Dylan’s can detest his lyrics. That being so, one of Dylan’s classic songs touched Joni Mitchell in such an irreversibly profound way that it changed her entire view on songwriting.
Joni Mitchell & Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street”
If one is familiar with Dylan’s 1965 single, “Positively 4th Street,” they know it is one of the greatest and most poignant break-up songs of all time. Consequently, and at the time of its release, it caught the attention of the masses and the musicians of the decade. Many folks and musicians cherished this song and kept it near, but Mitchell, in a way, used this song as her North Star.
In an interview with HotPress in 2000, Joni Mitchell candidly divulged the impact of Dylan’s song. She stated, “There came a point when I heard a Dylan song called ‘Positively Fourth Street” and, ” I thought ‘oh my God, you can write about anything in songs’. It was like a revelation to me.”
According to Mitchell, it was Dylan who influenced her to write more vulnerable and darkly melancholic songs such as the ones on her infamous album, Blue. Regarding this revelation, she said, “I started scraping my own soul more and more and got more humanity in it” and “It scared the singer-songwriters around me; the men seemed to be nervous about it, almost like Dylan plugging in and going electric.” “It’s just humanness that I’m trying to describe,” Joni Mitchell concluded.
Even though Mitchell did not strictly declare Bob Dylan as a major influence on Blue, her comments might suggest that he did have a role in its inception. According to Mitchell, before she listened to Dylan, she wrote mythical and philandering lyrics that took a roundabout approach to articulate subtextual truths. However, after she heard Dylan’s song, she aimed for the heart. And she accomplished just that, as her lyrics are some of the most troublingly beautiful of all time.
Photo by Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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