RE: Joni Mitchell: Shadows and Light
The Definitive Biography
by Karen O'Brien
Not Yet Published:
Hardcover - 352 pages (October 4, 2001)
Virgin Publishing ISBN #1852279761
due for initial publication next thursday, "Shadows and Light" is
apparently not being published or offered for sale in the USA or
Canada.
searches at <Amazon.com> and <Borders.com> yield no results
regardless of whether you search under Title, Author or ISBN #.
However -- not to worry.
there IS another source -- <http://www.amazon.co.uk/>.
the following URL will take you directly to the relevant page
where you can order your copy. the books will be shipped on
the publication date (10-4-01).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/1852279761/reviews/
/o/qid=999880288/sr=2-2/ref=/026-2438595-2895629
here's a little more information:
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Icon, artist, poet and muse, Joni Mitchell has been a creative
force for more than thirty-five years. Written and researched
with her co-operation, and including new interviews with close
friends, contemporaries, musicians and industry insiders, this
is the first in-depth biography of one of the world's most
influential recording artists.
FROM THE PUBLISHER:
It is perhaps surprising that, despite being one of the most
innovative and influential artists of the twentieth century,
Joni Mitchell has been largely ignored by the 'serious' rock
writing fraternity until now.
We are very proud to be publishing the first in-depth biography
of this artistic icon, which focuses on both her music and her
visual art and assesses its place in modern cultural history.
Karen has really done justice to her subject, spending a year
immersed in research, visiting Joni's birthplace in Canada,
interviewing many of Joni's closest colleagues and friends,
including Larry Klein and Joel Bernstein, and digging out
unpublished correspondence between Joni and modernist painter
Georgia O'Keeffe during the last years of the artist's life.
Detailed, balanced and analytical, this book is sure to be
considered the last word on Joni Mitchell for years to come.
FROM THE INSIDE FLAP:
Renaissance woman, painter and poet, one of the great formative
influences on contemporary popular music, Joni Mitchell is a true
icon. In an artistic career spanning four decades, she inspired
the 1960s baby-boomers, created a soundtrack for the Woodstock
generation and received critical acclaim for a succession of
groundbreaking albums including Clouds, Blue, Court and Spark and
The Hissing of Summer Lawns. By the late 1970s Mitchell had been
largely written off by the mainstream music industry and the
critics, but in the years that followed, she came to be acknowledged
as a pivotal inspiration for a new generation of musicians and
songwriters: women like Suzanne Vega, Rickie Lee Jones, Sheryl Crow,
Tori Amos and Alanis Morrisette, as well as male artists including
Prince, Elvis Costello, Morrissey, Seal and Beck.
Mitchell has always defied musical fashion and genre, experimenting
boldly with samples and exploring world music before they were
'discovered' by the mainstream and merging jazz and poetry at a
time when it was painfully unhip to do so. During the 1990s and
into the new century, she has continued to create adventurous and
highly-regarded music with albums like Turbulent Indigo and
Both Sides Now, and has been honoured with numerous industry awards
and international accolades. Her musical creativity is matched by
her passion for the visual arts - her paintings and photography have
been exhibited to acclaim in Canada, the USA, Japan and the UK.
Shadows and Light is the first book to comprehensively chart the
life of this extraordinary woman. Mitchell's story is told with
an unrivalled degree of access, through revelatory interviews with
many of those closest to her (many with Mitchell's blessing),
including friends and musical collaborators. Broad in scope and
full of fascinating detail, Shadows and Light is the definitive
biography of a musical legend.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Karen O'Brien is a music journalist and a BBC World Service
radio news producer. She has written and broadcast widely on the
arts. Karen's previous book, Hymn to Her, a collection of writings
on women musicians, was published by Virago in 1995. She is a New
Zealander by birth and a Londoner by choice.
for now ~ take care,
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simon
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