“Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell (1970)

The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Music by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 16 June 2024

We’re back with our featured music this Sunday that is both so close to our Mass readings and Fathers’ Day celebration: Joni Mitchell’s 1970 hit Big Yellow Taxi from her album Ladies of the Canyon.

Written, composed and recorded by Canadian Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi is known as an environmental song that was so popular during the early 70’s but its message remains so valid up to this time, of the folly of modern man destroying nature in the name of material progress. It is perhaps the main reason why the song has been covered repeatedly by other artists up until the turn of this century (Counting Crows featuring Ms. Vanessa Carlton in 2002).

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 paved paradise and put up a parking lot

Ooh, bop-bop-bop
Ooh, bop-bop-bop (na-na-na-na-na)

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

In today’s Sunday Mass first reading, we heard the Prophet Ezekiel announcing to the Israelites exiled in Babylon at that time how God would plant a Lebanon cedar on a mountain that would grow majestically with birds building nest on its branches. This prophecy was eventually fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Emmanuel or God-with-us who is like a big tree in our midst.

And that’s where we find Mitchell’s song very relevant to us when some people no longer care at all for God with their lack of concern for Mother Nature too. Mitchell perfectly captured that human stupidity of cutting trees to build parking lots (and malls in our time), then exhibit these trees in museums to charge people with fees just to see something freely given to us by God!

According to an interview, Mitchell wrote this song after arrival in Hawaii for the first time. She was so impressed with the beautiful expanse of nature as viewed from her window but upon looking down from the same window, she saw a huge parking lot that made her felt so bad that she immediately wrote the song. Her heart further sank deeper in sadness after learning a living museum in Honolulu that kept rare and endangered plants and trees. What an irony indeed!

Another poet we have mentioned in our homily this Sunday who extolled the beauty of trees is the American Joyce Kilmer who wrote Trees in twelve lines that sound so much like a gospel too: “I think I shall never see//A poem lovely as a tree… Poems are made by fools like me//But only God can make a tree.” Kilmer’s poem was a staple in English classes during our elementary school days that we have memorized it by heart. Though apart by almost 3000 years, both Mitchell and Ezekiel exhorted us in a song and a prophecy respectively of a spirituality of trees worth reflecting (https://lordmychef.com/2024/06/15/poems-are-made-by-fools-like-me-but-only-god-can-make-a-tree/).

Towards the end of Mitchell’s song, we just realized lately that her Big Yellow Taxi is also a Fathers’ Day song:

Listen, late last night, I heard the screen door slammed
And a big yellow taxi took away my old man
Now, don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?
They paved paradise to put up a parking lot

According to some accounts, Mitchell could be referring to her lover or boyfriend taken by the Toronto Police whose mobile cars used to be painted yellow until 1986 while in some covers, that line clearly referred to their lovers leaving them by taking the yellow taxi.

Whatever may be the meaning behind that line, Big Yellow Taxi invites us all to reexamine our priorities in this life, including those that pertain to our nature and environment, and family life, especially fatherhood that is now in crisis. Here now is Ms. Joni Mitchell to help you in reflecting the points we have raised. Happy Fathers’ Day to all the great men and dads remaining faithful in their love and responsibilities!