1971 · song
Mitchell’s account follows a song written around a Cretan village into the Hollywood studio where she recorded it for Blue.
Carey connects Joni Mitchell’s 1970 stay in Matala with the recording of Blue in Hollywood. In her interview with Marc Myers, Mitchell described writing the song over several weeks around the Cretan village as a birthday present for Cary Raditz. The later recording returned to those experiences from a different place.
These historical places remain in the list while their map positions are researched.
Mitchell recalled carrying a dulcimer because it was lighter and less bulky than a guitar, then finding solitary places to write while walking around Matala. Her account describes several locations, rather than one demonstrable writing spot. The village and its surroundings belong to the song’s making through movement and repeated work. Keeping that scale preserves a more useful geography than attaching the whole composition to a particular cave without evidence. [3]
Mitchell placed the Blue sessions at A&M Studios in early 1971. She described using sense memory to recover the feelings of older experiences when recording personal songs, and identified her dulcimer and Stephen Stills’s bass on Carey. The album’s original credits also place the recording at A&M in Los Angeles and name Henry Lewy as engineer. Matala supplies the remembered experience; the Hollywood studio supplies the recorded performance. The connection crosses time as well as distance. [3] [2]
The A&M archive places the studios on the former Chaplin property at 1416 North La Brea Avenue. The recording complex was created by converting the older of two soundstages, with construction beginning in 1967. A place built for filmmaking acquired another creative use. Mitchell’s session belongs to that later musical chapter: a song carrying memories of Crete was recorded within a Hollywood property that had already accumulated a substantial screen history. [1] [2]
Matala village area, Crete, Greece; no individual cave or writing spot established
During her 1970 stay
Joni Mitchell recalled writing Carey on her dulcimer over several weeks in different locations in and around Matala, Crete, as a birthday present for Cary Raditz. [3]
1416 North La Brea Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles
The Matala connection identifies a village area, not an exact cave or writing position. Follow current local access rules. The Hollywood property is a working studio site; no access to a recording room or session setting is implied.
