Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell

Well written, lots of personal anecdotes, and portrays a good representation of this amazing artists’s life and the years of the 60’s and onward.

Very well explained about her life and music. Pleasant to read, unique to fill the questions you may have after decades following a real composer-poet-artist.Glad to see that she overcame to any of the incredible accidents of her life, till the end and forever.Her music and poems are for sure the most significant of the century, an example for all those seeking for harmony and strong commitment.

Plenty of details that help you uderstand her unique personality and groundbreaking work. Also explains her personal choices as a woman of heart and mind, and of genius, in a men's world - hard choices indeed. Still have to read to the end. As a biography, it lacks structure and imagination. But I still have to read it to the end.

Sehr kenntnisreich geschrieben, der Autor ist offensichtlich ein Fan, schreibt aber nicht kritiklos daher. Insgesamt sehr informativ und unverzichtbar.

The author gets why Joni is one of a kind and rightly focuses on her best music from 68-79. She clearly seems to have some bitterness coloring her view when looking back on her marriage to Larry Klein (who was in his early 20's and 13 years her junior when they married) and the role he and other collaborators played in the failure of her work to sell and connect with audiences in the 1980's. The author gets both sides of the story when she stars assigning blame in a bitter way in her later years when looking back on her albums from the 1980's and their low sales. She failed to take the good advice she was given and it is clear she only has herself to blame. She does all the cliche things like fire her long time manager and engineer who clearly always had her best interest at heart, and blamed the music industry in general when album sales started to fall off. Despite her missteps in the 1980's, artists like Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter recognized a fellow genius and stayed friends with her and would help keep her artistry in the public sphere and make sure her genius and influence was not forgotten.The author did his homework and, to put it simply, he 'gets' her and why she is so important and still relevant. Although it is the only biography currently out, it is the definitive biography because she participated and its so well written in every respect. There's room for another book that just goes through her catalog and other contributions with a fine tooth comb, but this covers her catalog pretty well considering it is a more general biography. And there may be room for more in depth coverage of some of the less flattering aspects of her life in a biography in which she has no participation, but the author doesn't skip over any of her major mistakes or the weaknesses she demonstrated in her life in order to spare her. The book does not descend into hagiography as far as I can tell from the other sources I've read. This is the most in-depth and unsparing book I know of despite her cooperation, which I think says a lot about her fundamental honesty. It doesn't seem like she attached any conditions when she gave interviews to the author. I learned a great deal I never knew and I still think the world of her and her music. Despite her human failings she isn't afraid to fess up to them, at least the things she proper perspective on. What's that line from the Janet Jackson song that sampled her when Q-tip is singing: "Joni Mitchell never lied". Yeah, I'll go along with that.