Sonic Youth Gossip - Lee on Joni's "California"

From Uncut's recent-ish special on Joni Mitchell's "30 Greatest Songs":

Quote:

CALIFORNIA
Blue, 1971

LEE RANALDO, SONIC YOUTH: Joni managed through her personal experiences to embody the pulse of the times in so many ways. "California" is one of those songs which I always come back to. She's not quite wearing the pearls and perm that would come with the Court And Spark era, but it's certainly got this jet-set vibe — there's a verse set in Paris, one on the Greek Islands, and one in Spain. But deep within all this travelling is this unsettling sadness about the war and the fact that on those fronts nothing is really changing — she's travelling around the world, but the war is the thing that's on her mind, and going back to her adopted home in California. There's something about the lyrics to this one — it sends chills up me. It's not saying anything very directly, but it says so much in such economical means.

When Sonic Youth was working on Daydream Nation, I wrote "Hey Joni". It stemmed from an odd comment that Thurston made — he mentioned "Hey Joe" while we were working on the song, and it gave me the inspiration to flip it around. Although the song wasn't really about her, I always thought by putting her name in the title I was professing my deep love for her music.

I don't think she was a touchstone for the group, tuning-wise, but definitely something about those rich modal tunings she was using left a big impression on me. Back then, it was really hard to sit down and figure out what her tunings were — now you can look on the internet. So what Joni was doing was very mysterious, it's hard to figure out. I wonder if there are any Sonic Youth tunings that actually overlap with Joni's?