Labour & Pop Culture: Free man in Paris

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Free man in Paris” by Joni Mitchell. This 1974 song is about music producer David Geffen who (apparently) found the demands of his job to be oppressive at times and longed for the simpler days when he was a free man in Paris.

There's a lot of people asking for my time
They're trying to get ahead
They're trying to be a good friend of mine
I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
There was nobody calling me up for favors

Mitchell focuses her attention on the corrosive effect of competition on relationships. Suggesting that each person acting in their self-interest is a bad thing is a controversial position in most settings (try it at a family barbecue this summer…). But there are compelling arguments in favour of it.

But you don’t need to read much to see the value of cooperation: the evidence that cooperation is a more effective way to prosper than competition is all around us. Society and its boons—clean drinking water, literacy, reliable food shipments—are all the result of long-standing cooperative arrangements. And these arrangements tend to go off the rails when subjected to unfettered competition.

So perhaps Mitchell was on to something (beyond remedying Geffen’s happiness) when she suggested that we all might be happier as free (wo)men in Paris?



"The way I see it," he said
"You just can't win it
Everybody's in it for their own gain
You can't please 'em all
There's always somebody calling you down

I do my best
And I do good business
There's a lot of people asking for my time
They're trying to get ahead
They're trying to be a good friend of mine
I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
There was nobody calling me up for favors

And no one's future to decide
You know I'd go back there tomorrow
But for the work I've taken on
Stoking the star maker machinery
Behind the popular song
I deal in dreamers
And telephone screamers
Lately I wonder what I do it for
If l had my way
I'd just walk out those doors

And wander
Down the Champs Elysees
Going cafe to cabaret
Thinking how I'll feel when I find
That very good friend of mine
I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
Nobody was calling me up for favors
No one's future to decide
You know I'd go back there tomorrow

But for the work I've taken on
Stoking the star maker machinery
Behind the popular song.

-- Bob Barnetson