Joni Mitchell

Saskatoon

Joni Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson on 7 November 1943 in Fort Macleod, Alberta. She caught polio at nine, and at eleven moved to Saskatoon, the city she counts as her hometown. She played her first paid show there on 31 October 1962, studied at the Alberta College of Art in Calgary, dropped out, and moved to Toronto in 1964.

In February 1965 she gave birth to a daughter and placed her for adoption. The story became public in 1993, and the two met in 1997. In June 1965 she married the folk singer Chuck Mitchell, and they worked as a duo in the United States, Detroit among other places, until their divorce early in 1967.

Reprise

In 1967 she moved to New York. David Crosby came across her in Coconut Grove, Florida, and she signed to Reprise, which released Song to a Seagull in March 1968, Clouds in April 1969 and Ladies of the Canyon in April 1970. She lived in Laurel Canyon from 1969 to 1974.

At the Isle of Wight Festival in August 1970 her set was disrupted by a hostile crowd. She later said they fed her to the beast, while Melody Maker reported a triumph. She closed that set with A Case of You. In October she shared a Greenpeace benefit in Vancouver with James Taylor and Phil Ochs, released in 2009 as Amchitka.

Blue

Blue came out on Reprise on 22 June 1971. Mitchell wrote and produced it, and recorded it at A&M Studios in Hollywood with the engineer Henry Lewy. Most of the songs were written on an Appalachian dulcimer she had bought for $200 at the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival, After her breakup with Graham Nash she travelled in Greece and Europe, and Carey and California came out of that journey. Stephen Stills, James Taylor, Sneaky Pete Kleinow and Russ Kunkel play on a handful of tracks. With the first pressing under way, she had Reprise stop it and dropped Hunter and Urge for Going. The last two songs she wrote for it were All I Want and The Last Time I Saw Richard.

The album reached 15 in the United States and 3 in Britain. Mitchell told Cameron Crowe in 1979 that she had no personal defences at the time, and that there was hardly a dishonest note in its vocals. She called the confessional label insulting, though AllMusic later named Blue the quintessential confessional singer-songwriter album. Rolling Stone ranks it the third greatest album of all time, and NPR placed it first among the greatest albums made by women.

I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes.

Joni Mitchell to Cameron Crowe, 1979

Asylum, Geffen and after

She moved to Asylum for For the Roses (1972) and Court and Spark (1974), toured with the L.A. Express, and released the double live album Miles of Aisles, which reached number two in the United States. The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Mingus followed through 1979, then the live Shadows and Light in 1980.

At Geffen she made Wild Things Run Fast (1982), Dog Eat Dog, Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm, Night Ride Home and Turbulent Indigo (1994), which won the Grammy for Best Pop Album, and Taming the Tiger (1998). She was married to Larry Klein from 1982 to 1994. Both Sides Now (2000) and Travelogue (2002) recast her songs with orchestra, and Travelogue was described as her last album until Shine arrived in 2007. She painted most of her own album covers and calls herself a painter derailed by circumstance. She entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

Return

A brain aneurysm ruptured in March 2015, and her rehabilitation was long. From 2020 Rhino opened the Joni Mitchell Archives, whose first volume won the Grammy for Best Historical Album in 2022, the year MusiCares named her Person of the Year. On 24 July 2022 she appeared unannounced at the Newport Folk Festival in a set led by Brandi Carlile, her first public performance in nine years, and the recording won the Best Folk Album Grammy in 2024. She received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize in 2023, headlined the Gorge Amphitheatre that June, her first headline concert in 23 years, and played the Hollywood Bowl in October 2024.

Prince wrote her fan mail and recorded A Case of You, and he joined Björk, Sufjan Stevens, Elvis Costello and James Taylor on A Tribute to Joni Mitchell (2007). David Crosby called Blue the best singer-songwriter record ever made, and Taylor Swift names it her favourite album.