Today’s classic song of the day is Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game.” This song has touched countless millions of people for more than five decades and continues to touch people today.
Joni Mitchell wrote “The Circle Game” in 1966, when she was just 23 years old. She said she wrote it in response to fellow Canadian Neil Young’s “Sugar Mountain,” a song that lamented growing old. (“You can’t be 20 on Sugar Mountain.”) Here’s how she recalled it at a 1970 concert:
“In 1965 I was up in Canada, and there was a friend of mine up there who had just left a rock’n’roll band (…) he had just newly turned 21, and that meant he was no longer allowed into his favourite haunt, which was kind of a teeny-bopper club and once you’re over 21 you couldn’t get back in there anymore; so he was really feeling terrible because his girlfriends and everybody that he wanted to hang out with, his band could still go there, you know, but it’s one of the things that drove him to become a folk singer was that he couldn’t play in this club anymore. ‘Cause he was over the hill. (…) So he wrote this song that was called ‘Oh to Live on Sugar Mountain’ which was a lament for his lost youth. (…) And I thought, God, you know, if we get to 21 and there’s nothing after that, that’s a pretty bleak future, so I wrote a song for him, and for myself just to give me some hope. It’s called ‘The Circle Game.'”
“The Circle Game” is a song about change, about loss, and about hope. The lyrics trace a young boy’s journey from childhood to adulthood and how his dreams change over time. As a young child, he catches dragonflies in jars and is afraid of thunder; as he grows older, his “cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town.” All along he has dreams of his future, but the adults keep telling him to “take [his] time, it won’t be long now.” By the time he turns twenty, “his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true.” But don’t worry, with time “there’ll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty, before the last revolving year is through.”
Then there’s the singalong chorus that ties it all together in a giant circle:
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
Those are remarkably insightful lyrics from someone who was just 23 years old at the time, and they meant something hopeful for those of us when we were younger. As we’ve aged, the lyrics take on a special poignancy, mean something slightly different now. We’ve all had those dreams when we were younger, some of which were realized and others that simply drifted away. Now that we’re older, we can recall those dreams with fondness even as there are fewer things to dream of in a rapidly shortening future.
As noted, Joni Mitchell wrote “The Circle Game” back in 1966 but didn’t put it in on record until 1970’s Ladies of the Canyon album. That wasn’t the first recording, however. In 1966, Ms. Mitchell was playing “The Circle Game” in a Detroit nightclub, opening for fellow folkie Tom Rush. When he heard the song, he knew that “As long as kids grow up, that song will remain relevant.” He recorded it in 1968, on his album The Circle Game, but both Ian and Sylvia and Buffy St. Marie beat him to the punch with their 1967 recordings of the song. For Ms. Mitchell’s own 1970 recording, her pals Crosby, Stills & Nash contributed backup vocals, credited as The Lookout Mountain United Downstairs Choir.
Joni Mitchell ended up having a long and storied career, inspiring generations of singer-songwriters with her memorable songs. As she got older she fell out of favor, however, and hadn’t played a full concert since 2006. Then, in 2015, she suffered a debilitating brain aneurysm that left her unable to walk or talk, let alone play guitar. She had to relearn basic motor skills as well as how to play all those unusual guitar chords for which she was famous. She told one interviewer that she had to watch videos of her old concerts to “see where I put my fingers.” Most people thought she’d never perform again.
Fast forward to July 24, 2022. Joni’s friend Brandi Carlisle coaxed her into making a surprise performance at the Newport Jazz Festival. Surrounded by fellow musicians and friends, Joni Mitchell made a triumphant return to the stage, performing many of her old hits and a few extras (including a stunning performance of the Gershwins’ “Summertime”). The standout of the concert, however, and one sure to bring both a smile and a tear to older eyes, was the group performance of “The Circle Game.”
Joni’s older voice is an octave or or lower than when she was a young folksinger, but that brings a wisdom and maturity to her performance. Those lyrics about the passage of time have a special meaning now, fifty-odd years later, after everything Ms. Mitchell and the rest of us have been through over the years. Still, as you listen to Joni and her friends in the singalong chorus, the years melt away and we’re all 20 again, then we’re 16, then we’re just young kids, catching fireflies in mason jars. As the lyrics go, we can’t return to where we’ve been, we can only look behind from where we came. We’re all going round and round and round in this circle game—and Joni Mitchell, in her ageless wisdom, is leading the way.
