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Baker's Dozen

Music For Falling Through Life: Peter Broderick's Favourite LPs
Elizabeth Aubrey , August 2nd, 2017 08:02

Ahead of his appearance at the Southbank Centre as part of Erased Tapes' tenth birthday celebrations later this year, Peter Broderick speaks to Elizabeth Aubrey about 13 records that inspired him, from Dylan to Arvo Part and Philip Glass

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Joni Mitchell - Clouds
It's interesting because I didn't really start listening to Joni Mitchell until the last year at the most. My wife, Brigid, got that record, Clouds, on a cassette tape, and the car we were driving around at the time just had a cassette player. I'd always heard Joni Mitchell, but it never really clicked with me. I could always appreciate her, but it didn't hit me, and it took hearing that record in the car probably half a dozen times before all of a sudden it was really like a flick of a switch. I was just enamoured.  And then I started to dig into more of her music. That one, for me, is hard to beat. I just love the simplicity of it and how raw it is: it's just her – kind of like that Nina Simone album as well. Rather than a bunch of dudes in a studio trying to tell them what to do, those records are more like just them doing their thing. But then I started to get some other records, and I picked up one from the 1990s called Night Ride Home, and I was listening to that often. I suddenly realised that my mum used to listen to that all the time when I was really young – like four-or-five-years-old – and I knew every bit of every song. I hadn't heard it in 20 years, but I knew the whole thing. It was such an incredible experience, and I actually started weeping: it was like something coming around full-circle again. [My wife and I] are both into folk, it's something that we both share. Whenever we see a Joni Mitchell record somewhere that we don't have, we'll almost always pick it up. Some of them are easier to get into than others, and some of them take a good few listens before we really get into them. She's a fearless, unbelievable artist with a very unique vision and an incredible voice. I really admire her so much. Every time I meet someone who doesn't like Joni Mitchell, I just want to say to them, 'just try it!', because once you get it, it's so rewarding.