Joni Mitchell-Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire

[beelzabubba]

... there is really nothing that can be said... she's beyond words to describe her.

[xftcoach47]

She wrote like no other. She played like no other. She sang like no other. An original.

[MrSprite69]

OH YA, SHE ALWAYS WAS SO COOL. I MISS HER MUSIC. THEN YOUTUBE BRINGS IT ALL BACK.

[RobinLenora]

Great Song !!!

[custardflan]

My favorite Joni song. This helps show why she made Rolling Stones top 100 guitarists.

[MegaWildswan]

it is about my #1 loved song  how do you like the quality tone background singers?

[animascat]

killer stuff on this album.

[MegaWildswan]

@animascat it is such beautiful music

[animascat]

@MegaWildswan not sure what you're saying, friend. i said pretty much the same thing in a different way.

[astrelsa]

The music is as seductive as the subject matter. Joni is a genius.

[animascat]

@astrelsa hey hey well said. music rich and full.

[skylark1998]

Incredible artist!

[minutemanbob57]

I have been a loving fan since her first album. I can listen to her for hours and hours without getting tired of hearing it. Every song is special, as is she. {kiss}

[beelzabubba]

"concrete concentration camp; bashing in things for peace.... I mean what does it really matter if you come now or you come later....

[Huija]

I <3 Love <3 this <3 woman <3

[beelzabubba]

Thanks for posting this; quite a song...... how songs like this go un-noticed for the most part is amazing to me..... this is a masterpiece.

[Longtack55]

Thanks Brilister

[JackSmith07]

i sometimes enjoy heroin as a side note. This song is very seductive but also somewhat of a deterrent.

[GalaxyHorse]

@JackSmith07 I think the song, while being a stunning creation, does somewhat rest on negative stereo-types,

the demonisation of a substance, sure these exist, but any more than other intoxicants?

Love the song, while being aware that opiates are not to blame, it is the choices people make.

[909chuck]

Haunting, one of her best! Great arrangement and in the post folk, pre jazz era when she had her greatest strength. Ah, well, all is change. Do you want to contact somebody first? Just get in the big yellow taxi, the meter's running.

[Longtack55]

Hmm - I can't find lyrics or chords on the Chordie site. Have they been pulled over the drug theme?

[Brillister]

@Longtack55

Tabs/Lyrics and "Joni Tuning" at Joni's official website...

Great song to learn!

[Longtack55]

When I see her compared with Bob Dylan (whom she occasionally bags) I listen to her musicianship and lyrics and I just know who is doing it for me. Such passion-wringing emotion...

[funkfanzzify]

watercollarpainting with Joni in my ears, a drumplayer living nextdoor to me, sweet life memories

[poipu96756]

for me, this was one of her best albums. thank you Black for a quality post. the sound quality is excellent even here in Viet Nam. she was at her height of creativity and i remember when she visited Stephen Stills at Nederland Ranch in Colorado. we tried to see her by parking on the road and waiting... @GalaxyHorse. you have an amazing perception of music. your comment was A+++. the chord progressions are pure genius and are meant to re-create the effects of I.V. drug use. a classic.

[SupernalOne]

when she modulates in that unexpected jazzy way (0:38) it's like a zen insight, a completely new, unsuspected emotion -

[WhenToWatch]

What kind of incredible pinhead would hit a dislike button for a song like this? Thankfully JM is above such petty options, anyhow. Bless you, Joni...this entire album is a gold standard unto itself.

[TimeWarpLady]

Only Joni Mitchell could paint such an ugly scene with such amazingly beautiful words and music. I truly believe that the disguise -- the deception, if you please -- was intentional, complete with unusual harmonies in the latter choruses. An amazing work by a genius artist!

[GalaxyHorse]

@TimeWarpLady Can you elaborate on what you mean by 'The disguise', in relation to this song please?

I'm intrigued.

[TimeWarpLady]

@GalaxyHorse The disguise as I see it is the use of pleasing chord progressions and emphasized base string slides, combined with Joni's crisp voice + her celestial (albeit strange) self-harmonizing. Without listening to the lyrics, the song is ear-candy; a pleasure to hear. It is behind this innocuous facade that she slams through lyrics about the grip of I.V. drug addiction and Blue Steel's constant craving for Lady Release.

[GalaxyHorse]

@TimeWarpLady Ahh, yes, I see where you are 'coming from'-the apparent pleasing musical forms overlay a very dark story indeed. You could view this is a form of musical irony, to me the music has an underlying sadness and the refrain 'Come with me, I know the way' implies a sinister inevitable force at work. And that Clarinet figure at the end, is melancholy and bluesy. Thank you for taking the time to answer my query, you have a unique take on it.

[Laboheme5]

outstanding!

[pnyc1969]

This is a magnificent song from a magnificent album. Personally, I think "For the Roses" and "Hijira" are her very best (NOT "Blue" and "Court & Spark"!) I also think "Taming the Tiger" was incredible and a wonderful late career offering. The lyrics of this song, I think, find Joni channeling the abstraction of Laura Nyro's lyrics on songs like ""Sweet Lovin' Baby". But this is just my opinion. (I'm slightly partial to Laura!)

[poeticjournalism]

@pnyc1969 joni + laura tour...how amazing would that have been? D:

[lynn8659]

Not many artist use such prose in their lyrics. Excellent artist excellent female performer...the best Love Ya Joni you are the best and always have been, and will be. No one can campare to you.

[Vlaxitov]

It pains me to see Joni getting lost over a generation.

[Valeriamytube]

I feel you Lady.

[wdrayr]

There is no one quite like Joni Mitchell in all of popular music. She channels a multitude of humanity's common experience good and bad. She then reveals it in her art.

This is but one example.

[brianallancobb]

First heard this song, in concert, March, 1972, DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. It was just Joni on acoustic guitar.

This song has always been special to me, as I've been addicted at one time or another to just about every substance known to humanity.

Fall into Lady Release.

Also like Woman of Heart and Mind from this album. Looking for affection and respect, a little passion...

[contigo121]

I've just heard this song on an old tape and I now realize how much a beautiful song this is!

Thank you Joni! (and Gerry Lyseight)

[millvalleyrn]

i forgot how gritty her guitar work is here, exquisitely played. it's such a deeply layered experience to listen and appreciate these songs of hers - you're drawn in to a story she tells as if to you alone, so deeply personal it seems... ah, so many well spent hours alone with Joni.

[childofiona]

blackendoll, i think i love you

[lgdatsme2]

I absolutely agree. These were my becoming times. I have kept a copy of this album since it came out.

[TheNigelr]

"forget about it"

[sammy76]

This song always makes me remember my years at UC Santa Cruz and gazing at the mist coming in on the Redwoods surrounding my dorms... lots of studying to Joni in the 90s!

[froghills]

Thank you Joni, I love to remember the day.

The spirit was apon us.

[dangloverenator]

I'm usually not one for reading into lyrics, but I was listening to a live recording of this the other day, Joni explains what it means... It's about a heroin addict. I'm quoting the woman herself: "Cold Blue Steel is the needle and the junkie, Sweet Fire is the drug and the dealer, and Lady Release is madam death herself. It's a morbid little song."

[ArkadyRenkovich]

That's all true, and it is morbid, but isn't it sweet blue beautifully lyric, at once?

Who else could make 'Fever in the scum brown bowl' sound like it came from an angel?

[dangloverenator]

Her words, not mine! But I absolutely agree :)

[lambadalasse]

no suicide...no heroin...just smokin' some weed over in the Barn...

[stan2211stan]

@lambadalasse How's the AC30CC2 holdin' up? Life without a Barn? Uncivilized.

My comments are way way back on Page 6.

Lookin' at a Farm in Massachusetts close to The River.

[lambadalasse]

@stan2211stan Hi. Life without a barn is not good. Beam me back to before it all got cranked up with global economy and subprime loans. The waves are hitting DK hard. I swapped the AC30 for a Twin Reverb...felt the need to seek back to the roots of Country Tele which in my horizon was the Twin. It spanks and sends out memories of me 7 yeard old lying under the tv and watching a guy play a Tele. AC30 sounds awesome but I could not get even with the settings and tweaking...

How are you?

[fuzzyprism]

mmmmmm what I lovely, lyrical and haunting song. I really enjoyed reading the interpretations/takes on the song's meaning, I confess to not paying that much attention to it in the past.

Listening to Joni as a teenager and young adult, she had the uncanny knack to see the world as if she was looking through my eyes, with a vision I didn't even acknowledge til she gave voice to it.

[TMKchld]

Good God, HOW did I forget this epic of Joni's!!!Thank-you for the re-introduction of, IMHO, one, if not the, best writers of our time...

[451jude]

To me this is about Suicide via Heroin.  Do you wanna contact somebody first?

It's down, down, down the dark ladder. Love this woman, she says it all!

[ghanick]

"For the Roses" -- one of Joni's finest and most enduring albums

[PhillipAndrewMorton]

Supposedly this song is about James Taylor's addiction to heroin. They were dating around the time of this album.

[bookkeeper57]

It's about addiction: drugs or sex. Taylor beat his substance problem long before they began dating.

[GalaxyHorse]

It is clearly about Heroin , nothing about sexual addiction in the lyrics whatsoever-cold blue steel is the needle, fire the cooking of the dose, 'lady release' the sweet oblivion of the drug...(fever in the scum-brown bowl/corridors spit on prayers and pleas-LYRICS ya got to read em...

[bookkeeper57]

Absoutely I agree with that.

[d0md0mt0mt0m]

@bookkeeper57 - Lol it's funny how far people will go to admit something is not about drugs. Sex lol wtf.

[stacksovids12]

in 1987 I had something of a emotional breakdown, bit of an identity crissis plus some health problems, it was just at this point I discovered Joni's music, it was this alone that saved me from almost certain oblivion, I have more than just the beauty of her music to thank her for, my very existance now.

[normalil]

Just browsing and took another peek. She is the best and always will be, with her ability to say what one always thought...

[bookkeeper57]

Best songwriter of the last 50 years: huge songbook. All of it first rate.

[Laboheme5]

amen!

[rick400171]

I listen to everything but would agree that Joni is Number One.

Number Two would have to go to Peter Gabriel mainly for

the body of work done with Genesis and his pre sledgehammer era which is beyond genius.

[bookkeeper57]

Agree with you.

[iwys]

As normalil says: "genious," This song is the 20th century equivalent of a great 19th century work of art, like Rodin's "Le Penseur."

[spotbelly]

listen to the words, they should be posted, as they are printed on the album cover, the CD as well..all her songs should have the lyrics in the "more info" section

[stan2211stan]

This is still regarded as "dangerous" by The Establishment that's why it's never heard on Big Brother's Corporate Radio Stations.

[2shacks1house]

Please explain... Thanks

[chuckm51]

She is singing about heroin. The cold blue steel is the needle. Though I never remember anything about her being a junkie. Probably friends of hers.

[2shacks1house]

Thanks for the reply Chuckm51. This possibly one of her greatest songs that she ever did. I found it out by shear accident. Great Stuff...

[gazzylime]

unfortunately, JOni was a pretty bad junkie back in the day. She hit the drugs pretty hard at one point.

[GalaxyHorse]

I was not aware of this, but of course it is possible-with all that money she certainly had the means..and really it is less damaging than alcohol if managed properly.

she certainly has not suffered as a result,if so.

[gazzylime]

My sister read a biography of Joni Mitchell. When she met her first spiritual guru she says she remembers holding up a bag of cocaine and saying "This is my God" and then snorting a line and saying "And this is my prayer". She was hard core!!

Apparently, back in the 70s people actually didn't think cocaine was that dangerous. People thought it was less dangerous than marijuana.

[billyguns2]

One of her best, from an album that doesn't get much attention.

[Khultan]

@billyguns2 Because some kids from the 70s, such as myself, were avid radio listeners and relatives collected popular groups of the time, information, somehow, is not passed on.

[normalil]

She is a genius. Artist,poet,musician, philosopher and a great beauty.

[npadln]

My favourite of hers and that is saying a lot.

[stan2211stan]

Plus One +1.

First time I heard it - it was like, where'd She pull this one up from?

Amazing GROOVE.

[gordeux2006]

A fantastic song about a tabo subject, injecting drug use/addiction, poignant.

[lifter1545]

maybe her best