With “The Circle Game,” Joni Mitchell delivered a touching meditation on growing up at a time when she was still in the process of dong so herself. The song was already well-known via cover versions before Mitchell did her own gorgeous rendering on her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon.
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What is the song about? Which superstar musicians pitched in to help Mitchell with her version? And what rock legend inspired the song due to his own worries about getting older? Let’s go back, and round and round, as we take an in-depth look at “The Circle Game.”
Playing the “Game”
The notion of the singer/songwriter wasn’t really prevalent when Joni Mitchell started writing and performing in the mid-‘60s. While there were outliers like Bob Dylan, the music infrastructure still very much favored either self-contained groups or artists who interpreted the material of others.
Mitchell slowly built up a following in the U.S. over her first several albums, although she was much more well-known in her native Canada pretty much from the beginning of her career. In America, it took artists covering her stuff to bring her songs to the mainstream, often well before Mitchell even delivered her own versions of those songs.
In the case of “The Circle Game,” there were several covers that popped up before Mitchell finally got around to releasing her own version in 1970. Buffy Sainte-Marie, Ian & Sylvia, and Tom Rush (who even made it the title track of an album featuring several Mitchell covers) all released takes of the song within a short period in 1967 and 1968.
By the time she recorded the song, Mitchell’s star had risen, and she was quickly becoming one of the leading lights of the California singer/songwriter scene. That brought her into the orbit of Crosby, Stills & Nash, who appear on the “The Circle Game” as backing vocalists in support of Mitchell’s lovely trill.
That’s kind of a coincidence, because the person who inspired Mitchell to write the song in the first place was none other than Neil Young, who would of course go on to join CSN in later years. Mitchell explained in a 1968 interview with Broadside she was trying to help Young see a different side of growing up:
“I wrote ‘Circle Game’ about a friend of mine named Neil Young, who was lamenting lost youth at 21. He decided all the groovy things to do were behind him now, he was too old to do them; suddenly he was an adult with all the responsibilities. He had been told all his life that all the things he wanted to do, they said, ‘Wait ’till you are older.’ Now he was older and he didn’t want to do those things any more.”
What is the Meaning of “The Circle Game”?
Mitchell follows a young child through four different periods of life in “The Circle Game.” She begins at an undefined age, but we can assume he’s hardly more than a toddler based on the wonder he experiences all around him: Fearful when the sky was filled with thunder / And tearful at the falling of a star. We then meet him again at age 10, longing for the experiences only adults get to have: Words like when you’re older must appease him.
At age 16, he’s able to drive, and the advice starts to shift from the older folks: And they tell him take your time it won’t be long now / Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down. Finally, we check in on him at 20, somewhat jaded and overlooking the pleasures still to come as he bemoans his lost youth: There’ll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty.
As if to emphasize the circular phenomenon, that chorus keeps coming back around to remind us that We’re captives on a carousel of time. Joni Mitchell’s effortless poetry and wisdom beyond her years will likely keep audiences coming back to “The Circle Game” for many revolving years to come.
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Photo by Tony Russell/Redferns
