Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell, (Roberta Anderson), was born on 7th Nov, 1943. Mitchell is one of the most important and influential female recording artists of the late 20th century. Ask any female singer from Tori Amos, to Sheryl Crow and newbies like Adel who their favorite female singer songwriter is and all will say Joni. Led Zeppelin sang about her in “Going To California” so did Prince in “The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker”. Even Madonna cited Mitchell as the first female artist that really spoke to her as a teenager.

Joni Mitchell is Neil Young playing folk music on weird guitar tunings who got drunk at a jazz club. And like her fellow countryman Young, Joni has played it her way, never looking for hit records (she’s only ever had one US top 10 hit). Her early albums have become timeless classics; just listen to Ladies Of The Canyon, Blue and Court And Spark.

So, what do we know about Joni? She was stricken with polio at the age of eight and while recovering in a children’s hospital, she began her performing career by singing to the other patients. She later taught herself to play guitar with the aid of a Pete Seeger instruction book, she went off to art college, and became a fixture on the folk music scene around Alberta, Canada. After relocating to Toronto, she married folksinger Chuck Mitchell in 1965, and began performing under the name Joni Mitchell.

After performing in Coffee Houses and clubs in Ontario, Joni spread her wings and ventured south. One night when she was performing at a club in Coconut Grove, Florida, David Crosby walked in and was immediately struck by her ability and her appeal as an artist. He took her back to Los Angeles, where he set about introducing her and her music to his friends. Crosby convinced a record company to agree to let Mitchell record a solo acoustic album without all the folk-rock overdubs that were in vogue at the time, and his clout earned him a producer’s credit in March 1968, when Reprise Records released her debut album, alternately known as Joni Mitchell or Song To A Seagull.

While some of Mitchell’s most popular songs were written on the piano, almost every song she composed on the guitar uses an open, or non-standard, tuning; she has written songs in some 50 tunings, playing what she has called “Joni’s weird chords”.

Several artists have had success covering Mitchell’s songs. Judy Collins’s 1967 recording of “Both Sides, Now” reached No. 8 on Billboard charts and was a breakthrough in the career of both artists.

Retrospectively, her fourth album Blue has been widely regarded by music critics as one of the greatest albums of all time; the cohesion of Mitchell’s songwriting, compositions and vocals are frequent areas of praise. In 2020, Blue was rated the third greatest album of all time in Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, the highest entry by a female artist.

At least four notable versions of her song “Woodstock” were released in the same year, 1970. Mitchell’s version appeared in April 1970 on her album Ladies of the Canyon and as the B-side to her single “Big Yellow Taxi”. This was preceded by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s version, which appeared on their March 1970 album Déjà Vu and became a staple of classic rock radio and the best-known version in the United States. A third version, by the British band Matthews Southern Comfort became the best-known version in the United Kingdom, and was the highest charting version of the song, reaching the top of the UK Singles Chart in 1970. A fourth version by studio project the Assembled Multitude also became a chart hit.

Mitchell didn’t attend Woodstock. She composed the song in a hotel room in New York City, watching televised reports of the festival as well as what she had heard from her then-boyfriend Graham Nash.

Amy Grant in 1995 scored hits with covers of “Big Yellow Taxi”, the third-most covered song in Mitchell’s repertoire (with over 300 covers). Other releases of this song included versions by Counting Crows in 2002 and Nena in 2007. Janet Jackson used a sample of the chorus of “Big Yellow Taxi” as the centrepiece of her 1997 hit single “Got ‘Til It’s Gone”, which also features rapper Q-Tip saying “Joni Mitchell never lies”. Rap artists Kanye West and Mac Dre have also sampled Mitchell’s vocals in their music.

Mitchell announced in October 2002 that she had made her last ever record; she’d grown tired of the industry. She told W magazine that she intended to retire. She also claimed she would never sign another corporate label deal and in Rolling Stone magazine blasted the recording industry for being “a cesspool.”

She has received eight Grammy Awards during her career, with the first coming in 1969 and the most recent in 2008. She received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, with the citation describing her as “one of the most important female recording artists of the rock era” and “a powerful influence on all artists who embrace diversity, imagination and integrity.”

She was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1981 and received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, Canada’s highest honour in the performing arts, in 1996. In 2002 she was named a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honour.

On March 31, 2015, Joni Mitchell was found unconscious in her Los Angeles home. She regained consciousness in an ambulance on her way to hospital, but was taken to intensive care for tests. On May 29, 2015, it was confirmed that Mitchell had suffered a brain aneurysm and that while speech was difficult, Mitchell had been communicating with others.

Since 2015 Mitchell has made several recent public appearances as she recovers, according to some reports she is still learning to walk again, and she has not spoken in public. She appeared on stage on 7 November 2018 at the conclusion of Joni 75, a benefit performance in honor of her birthday at LA’s flagship performing arts destination, the Music Center.

Since her debut album in 1968, Mitchell has released 19 studio albums. In the United States alone, Mitchell has accrued record sales of 7 million certified by the RIAA.

On 24 Jul 2022, Joni surprised the crowd at Newport Folk Festival, Rhode Island when she joined Brandi Carlile on stage for two songs. Fans were treated to a rare performance from the music legend when she appeared during Carlile’s set. Performing from a chair the pair sang Mitchell’s classics ‘Both Sides Now’ and ‘A Case Of You’, released in 1966 and 1971, respectively. She also played the guitar solo from her 1974 song ‘Just Like This Train’.