Joni Mitchell’s song ‘For Free’ is a superb example of storytelling in a song.  It uses a simple story – a moment, really – to illustrate a complex situation, a common moral and ethical dilemma… what might be called an everyday tragedy.

She never lectures or draws a conclusion for us.  She just paints a vivid and detailed picture and lets the story speak for itself.

Listen to it below – while you read along with the lyrics.

The song’s form is simple – ABABAB.  Verse/Chorus; repeated three times. (You could make a case that the first 1 lines of the ‘Chorus’ are actually a Pre-Chorus, followed by a 1 line Chorus, or Refrain.)

Vs 1 – Setup – singer’s situation, location:

I slept last night in a good hotel
I went shopping today for jewels
The wind rushed around in the dirty town
And the children let out from the schools

Refrain 1 – Singer notices a clarinet player, playing for free:

I was standing on a noisy corner
Waiting for the walking green
Across the street he stood
And he played real good
On his clarinet for free

Vs 2 – Her luxurious life as a musician/star:

Now me I play for fortunes
And those velvet curtain calls
I’ve got a black limousine and two gentlemen
Escorting me to the halls

Refrain 2 – Contrasts their differing motivations and rewards for making music:

And I play if you have the money
Or if you’re a friend to me
But the one man band
By the quick lunch stand
He was playing real good for free

Vs 3 – His neglected music – he’s great but not famous:

Nobody stopped to hear him
Though he played so sweet and high
They knew he had never been on their TV
So they passed his music by

Refrain 3 – She appreciates his music but, like everyone else, passes it by:

I meant to go over and ask for a song
Maybe put on a harmony
I heard his refrain
As the signal changed
He was playing real good for free

Note how at the end she doesn’t lean on the fact that she passed him by.  She simply says, “I meant to go over…”  This illustrates not only her subtlety, but also the conversational tone of the lyric, like she’s just telling a friend the story… “I meant to go over…”.

The song is a tremendous example of a great writer’s restraint –  telling us enough… but not too much.  What’s left out?  Well, there are no feelings expressed or described, for one thing (unlike many of Joni’s other great songs).  And no explicit opinions.  She trusts us, the listeners, to have our own feelings and make up our own mind.  The aesthetic choice of detached involvement is extremely effective here.

Also, the narrator puts herself in a very vulnerable, non-heroic position.  How easy would it have been for her to sing as an observer of this scene and lecture us about this ‘shameful neglect of talent… the selfishness of humanity’?  Instead she walks on by, just like most of us do every day.  I think most lesser writers would have tried to overtly teach us a lesson in some way.

The form also helps put the story across.  The simplicity and folk song-like familiarity keeps the focus on the lyric.  The precise matching of the (lovely) melody and scan from section to section helps us feel and appreciate a story that is about contrasts.

Along similar lines, the first half of the refrain is always about ‘I’, the second half always about “He’.  And the refrain always ends with ‘for free’, giving us a simple and appropriate Title to wrap all the other ideas around.

I have to mention that for me one thing mars this masterpiece – the stretching out to two notes and subsequent mispronunciation in the first Verse of ‘schoo-els’ and ‘jew-els’.  The words ‘schools’ and ‘jewels’, correctly pronounced, rhyme.  Since it’s the first Verse, she decided to start with the two-notes in that part of the melody – which I think was good idea.  Unfortunately, without a better lyric choice it resulted in the mispronunciation, and a really weird rhyme.  All the more unfortunate because it’s in the first Verse and it’s the first rhyme in the song.

So it’s not perfect!  It’s pretty close.  As I said, a masterpiece… by one of the greatest songwriters North America has ever produced.

ps  Sing and play it yourself!  You’ll learn something, I promise you.   The chords:

3/4 || C | Bb | A- | A- | D- | F | Bb | F | F | F | F | C | Bb | A- | A- | D- | F | Bb | F | F | F | F |
| D- | D- | C | C | F | C | Bb | A- | G | G |  C | Bb | A- | A- | D- | F | Bb | F | F ||