“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot:” exactly what we’ve done

The words “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot” have reverberated through my mind ever since I first heard them, presumably in 1970 when the song was released, but now they come to me again and again—because they describe so well exactly what we have done.

I knew that the song, Big Yellow Taxi, was by Joni Mitchell, but I couldn’t remember the rest of the lyrics. Now I’ve looked them up:

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot

Don’t it always seem to go

That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone?

They took all the trees and put ’em in a tree museum

And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them

No, no, no

Don’t it always seem to go

That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone?

Hey, farmer, farmer, put away your DDT

I don’t care about spots on my apples

Leave me the birds and the bees

Please!

Don’t it always seem to go

That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone?

She’s right as well that as with health, wealth, and freedom, we won’t appreciate nature and a climate fit for humans “ ‘til it’s gone.”

The song was in a sense “inspired” by a parking lot. Mitchell described how she came to write the song:

“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.”

But it was also clearly inspired as well by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which was published in 1962.

Mitchell was one of the singers of my youth, and another phrase of hers that reverberates through my brain is “The wind is in from Africa/Last night I couldn’t sleep.” The song was written in Matala on the Southern Coast of Crete, which Chicken and I visited in July 1976 in the month between when I completed my finals and started as a doctor.

The song is called Carey, which I either didn’t know or didn’t remember, but I looked up the words:

The wind is in from Africa

Last night I couldn’t sleep

Oh, you know it sure is hard to leave here, Carey

But it’s really not my home

My fingernails are filthy

I’ve got beach tar on my feet

And I miss my clean white linen and my fancy French cologne

Oh Carey, get out your cane (Carey, get out your cane)

And I’ll put on some silver (I’ll put on some silver)

Oh, you’re a mean old Daddy, but I like you fine

Come on down to the Mermaid Cafe

And I will buy you a bottle of wine

And we’ll laugh and toast to nothing and

Smash our empty glasses down

Let’s have a round for these freaks and these soldiers

A round for these friends of mine

Maybe I’ll go to Amsterdam

Or maybe I’ll go to Rome

And rent me a grand piano and put some flowers ’round my room

But let’s not talk about fare-thee-wells now

The night is a starry dome

And they’re playin’ that scratchy rock and roll

Beneath the Matala Moon

I still sing to myself the words “Maybe I’ll go to Amsterdam/Or maybe I’ll go to Rome,” and I can still do that. Indeed, I’d never bee to either Amsterdam or Rome when I first heard the word but now I’ve been to both muliple times. Otherwise, the words capture a youthful freedom that now feels distant, although I suppose there is nothing to stop me going down to the Mermaid café.

A song of Mitchell’s that I don’t remember and encountered only recently is The Last Time I saw Richard.

The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in 68

And he told me, “All romantics meet the same fate

Some day, cynical and drunk and boring

Someone in some dark cafe”

“You laugh”, he said, “You think you’re immune

Go look at your eyes, they’re full of moon

You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you

All those pretty lies, pretty lies

When you gonna realise they’re only pretty lies?

Only pretty lies, just pretty lies”

He put a quarter in the wurlitzer, and he pushed

Three buttons and the thing began to whirl

And a barman came by in fishnet stockings and a bow tie

And she said, “Drink up now, it’s getting on time to close”

“Richard, you haven’t really changed”, I said

It’s just that now you’re romanticising some pain that’s in your head

You’ve got tombs in your eyes, but the songs

You punched are dreaming

Listen, they sing of love so sweet, love so sweet

When you gonna get yourself back on your feet?

Oh, and love can be so sweet, love so sweet

Richard got married to a figure skater

And he bought her a dish washer and a coffee percolator

And he drinks at home now most nights with the TV on

And all the house lights left up bright

I’m gonna blow this damn candle out

I don’t want nobody coming over to my table

I’ve got nothing to talk to anybody about

All good dreamers pass this way some day

Hiding behind bottles in dark cafes, dark cafes

Only a dark cocoon before

I get my gorgeous wings and fly away

I was a Romantic, and I still am. But I havn’t met the fate of being “cynical, drunk and boring in some dark café.” Or perhaps I have but not recognised it. Nor have I married a figure skater, but I have married an artist—and I have bought with her a coffee machine and a dishwasher. Maybe I have “tombs in my eyes,” but I’m still here. So it Mitchell, still playing live at 79.