Re: [AFMUG] OT - song from 50 years ago

[Bill Prince]

I also did some googling, and found this explanation about the concept for the song. It doesn't explain the meaning of who her old man (or the taxi) was, but I'm thinking it's a metaphor for something else altogether.

What have the artists said about the song?

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Joni Mitchell said:

I wrote “Big Yellow Taxi” on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart … this blight on paradise. That’s when I sat down and wrote the song. When it first came out, it was a regional hit in Hawaii because people there realized their paradise was being chewed up. It took 20 years for that song to sink in to people most other places in the country. That is a powerful little song because there have been cases in a couple of cities of parking lots being torn up and turned into parks because of it.

bp
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On 9/7/2020 9:34 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:

Radio station played a song I haven’t heard for a while – Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell.  From before most of the folks on this list were born.  Great song.

 

It struck me that the last verse where a big yellow taxi takes her old man away is probably not really about a taxi.  So I Googled it, and Toronto police cars at that time were yellow.  (Joni Mitchell is Canadian.)  I had always assumed it meant her boyfriend just up and left.

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