She's An Artist, She Don't Look Back

I quite enjoy listening to Avril Lavigne. Partly it's because of the way she spells her last name, but mostly it's because her songs are rollicking great fun to listen to. But that they aren't exactly poetry, I think we can all agree. For instance this morning on my way to work I was listening to her recent single Girlfriend. Somewhere between the "Hey hey"s and the "No way"s were the spectacularly wooden lines

She's like so whatever
You can do so much better

That made me daydream wistfully about Joan Baez, an altogether superior songwriter with a voice of liquid gold. If you've listened to Diamonds and Rust, and I mean really listened, you know what I'm talking about. And if you have not, then I invite you to linger on scene she described when she wrote

Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air

There is something very wistful about the image of a solo songstress. It represents what I'd like to believe the sixties were like. Under a greasy crust of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, I picture a dreamy nether-world of flower children living unfettered in peace. Noone conjures up the image better than Led Zeppelin in Going to California

Someone told me there's a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair
:
:
They say she plays guitar and cries, and sings


Appropriately enough, that song was inspired by Joni Mitchell, who was one of the most acclaimed musicians of the sixties. And who ironically missed the Woodstock festival because her dingbat manager thought it was more important for her to make a television appearance on The Dick Cavett Show than to "sit around in a field with 500 people". Don't ask me, I'd never heard of Dick Cavett either. As it turned out, Woodstock was attended not by 500, but by 500 thousand people. Joni Mitchell cried as she watched the Woodstock concert on television. And then in a further ironic twist, she listened to her boyfriend describe the event and went on to write Woodstock, the definitive song about the festival:

I'm going to join in a rock n roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try and get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Years later, she would inspire Sarah MacLachlan, who in turn influenced her fellow Canadian Alanis Morissette, who was an influence on yet another Canadian singer .... Avril Lavigne. So maybe there is hope yet.