JONI MITCHELL – WILD THINGS RUN FAST LP – Nr MINT A2/B1 UK 1982

Joni Mitchell – Wild Things Run Fast
(Geffen Records  1982  GEF25102)
Matrix No’s: A2/B1 – UK Pressing

Gatefold Sleeve in Nr MINT/Excellent+ condition
– some wear to edges

Vinyl in Nr MINT condition
(there are some surface marks visible on the vinyl (one visible in first track) when held up to the light but they don’t affect the sound quality apart from some light crackles at the very start)

Roberta Joan “Joni” Mitchell, CC (née Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and painter. Rolling Stone called her “one of the greatest songwriters ever”, and AllMusic has stated, “When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century”.

Drawing from folk, pop, rock and jazz, Mitchell’s songs often reflect social and environmental ideals as well as her feelings about romance, confusion, disillusionment and joy.

Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatchewan and western Canada before busking in the streets and shoddy nightclubs of Toronto. In 1965, she moved to the United States and began touring. Some of her original songs (“Urge for Going”, “Chelsea Morning”, “Both Sides, Now”, “The Circle Game”) were covered by folk singers, allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her debut album in 1968. Settling in Southern California, Mitchell, with popular songs like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock”, helped define an era and a generation. Her 1971 recording Blue was rated the 30th best album ever made in Rolling Stone‘s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, the highest entry by a female artist. Mitchell switched labels and began moving toward jazz rhythms by way of lush pop textures on 1974’s Court and Spark, her best-selling LP, featuring the radio hits “Help Me” and “Free Man in Paris”.

Around 1975 her vocal range began to shift from mezzo-soprano to more of a wide-ranging contralto. Her distinctive piano and open-tuned guitar compositions also grew more harmonically and rhythmically complex as she explored jazz, melding it with influences of rock and roll, R&B, classical music, and non-western beats. In the late 1970s, she began working closely with noted jazz musicians, among them Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, and Charles Mingus, who asked her to collaborate on his final recordings. She turned again toward pop, embraced electronic music, and engaged in political protest.

She is the sole producer credited on most of her albums, including all her work in the 1970s. A blunt critic of the music industry, she quit touring and released her 17th, and reportedly last, album of original songs in 2007.

With roots in visual art, Mitchell designed her own album covers. She describes herself as a “painter derailed by circumstance”.

Wild Things Run Fast is Joni Mitchell’s eleventh studio album and her first for Geffen Records. Released in 1982, it represents her departure from jazz to a more 80s pop sound.

The resulting world tour took Mitchell through the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. A video of the tour was released in 1983, entitled Refuge of the Roads. The recorded performances were not live but recorded in a studio once the tour had been completed, with applause dubbed-in in post production. There was also some Super 8 footage taken by Mitchell on the road. It has since been released on DVD.

Mitchell claimed that her inspiration for the album came from hearing the music of popular bands such as Steely Dan, Talking Heads and The Police at a discothèque during a trip to the Caribbean in 1981. She said that hearing The Police, especially, affected her sound, saying, “their rhythmic hybrids, and the positioning of the drums, and the sound of the drums, was one of the main calls out to me to make a more rhythmic album”.^[5]

Track listing

All tracks composed by Joni Mitchell; except where indicated

1. “Chinese Café/Unchained Melody” – 5:17 (Mitchell, Alex North, Hy Zaret)
2. “Wild Things Run Fast” – 2:12
3. “Ladies’ Man” – 2:37
4. “Moon at the Window” – 3:42
5. “Solid Love” – 2:57
6. “Be Cool” – 4:12
7. “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care” – 2:36 (Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller)
8. “You Dream Flat Tires” – 2:50
9. “Man to Man” – 3:42
10. “Underneath the Streetlight” – 2:14
11. “Love” – 3:46

Personnel

• Joni Mitchell – vocals; acoustic guitar on 3,5,9,10,11; electric guitar on 4,6,8; piano on 1; electric piano on 10
• Larry Klein – bass
• Michael Landau – electric guitar on 5,7,8,10
• Steve Lukather – electric guitar on 1,2,9,11
• John Guerin – drums on 1,4,6,9
• Vinnie Colaiuta – drums on 2,3,5,7,8,10,11
• Larry Williams – Prophet synthesizer on 1,2; tenor saxophone on 3,7
• Russell Ferrante – Oberheim synthesizer on 4,6,9
• Wayne Shorter – soprano saxophone on 4,6,11
• Larry Carlton – guitar on 3
• Victor Feldman – percussion on 9
• Kim Hutchcroft – baritone saxophone on 7
• Lionel Richie – backing vocals on 3,8
• Charles Valentino, Howard Kinney – backing vocals on 3
• James Taylor, Joni Mitchell – backing vocals on 9
• John Guerin, Joni Mitchell, Kenny Rankin, Robert De La Garza, Skip Cottrell – whisper chorus on 6