Joni Mitchell was born on 7 November 1943 as Roberta Joan Anderson in Fort Macleod, Canada. Mitchell took piano lessons when she was seven, and when she was nine, after being hospitalised due to polio, she began singing for her fellow patients. With the help of a book by Pete Seeger, she taught herself to play guitar and ukulele. In 1964, when she was twenty, she told her parents she wanted to become a folk singer in Toronto. She left Western Canada for the first time and moved to Ontario. At the end of 1964, Mitchell discovered she was pregnant by her ex-boyfriend Brad MacMath. In February 1965, she gave birth to a daughter. Unable to care for the baby, she gave her daughter, Kelly Dale Anderson, up for adoption. The experience remained private for most of Mitchell's career, although she referred to it in several songs, such as "Little Green," which she recorded for the 1971 album Blue, and "Chinese Cafe," from the 1982 album Wild Things Run Fast.
Joni Mitchell's best-known song is 'Woodstock', performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. With 'Big Yellow Taxi', the singer scored her only hit in the Netherlands in 1970. Janet Jackson used a line from it for her 1997 hit 'Got 'Til It's Gone'.
Farewell
In 2002, she told the American music magazine Rolling Stone that she might never record anything again. She expressed harsh criticism of the music industry and MTV. According to Mitchell, Madonna is an example of the decline in the music world, as she was marketed as a product and reached the top "by hiring the right people." She cited herself and Bob Dylan as examples of good singer-songwriters. In the same year, the album Travelogue was released, an overview of much of her work performed with an orchestra.
In 2014, Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting To Be Danced was released; a four-part CD box set with 39 songs that had previously been released on CD and/or LP.
In 2015, it was announced on Mitchell's own website that she had been suddenly hospitalised. She had suffered an aneurysm, a severe brain haemorrhage. She lived alone and lay on the kitchen floor for three days before being found. She has been seen in public occasionally since, in a wheelchair. She told the music magazine Billboard that she was having problems. A form of skin disease makes it impossible for her to sing or make music.
Top 2000
In the 23rd edition of the Top 2000, Joni has one entry. Both Sides Now is at #1193.
Sunday Morning Classics: Blue
On 5 June 2022, Joni "stood on stage one last time" with her top album Blue, our Sunday Morning Classic.
In 1971, Joni Mitchell represented the female ideal on the West Coast. It was a status Mitchell neither asked for nor wanted. In response, she wrote the album Blue.
From the smoky, introspective cover to the completely unguarded approach to songwriting, Blue was the first time a major rock or pop artist had opened up so fully. With the help of acoustic instruments and her octave-leaping voice, Mitchell portrayed herself as a lonely painter, struggling to understand all her heartbreak. She reflects on past relationships and encounters, including a chef from Crete ("Carey") and rock stars like Graham Nash ("My Old Man"), Leonard Cohen ("A Case of You") and James Taylor ("This Flight Tonight"), who also lent a hand on a few tracks. Alongside its romantic melancholy, Blue was the sound of a woman using the romantic and sexual freedom that until then had been reserved for male rockers. The songs on the album have a grim and emotional intensity and caused a shock reaction among the men around her.
On "Little Green" she sings about a baby she gave up for adoption, and on the dizzying piano-driven "River" she takes responsibility for a romance gone wrong, forever changing the scope of love songs: "I'm so hard to handle / I'm selfish and I'm sad," she complains. "Now I've gone and lost the best baby / I ever had."
Mitchell continued to release excellent records in the seventies, but Blue remains her masterpiece.
Source: NPO, Rolling Stone and Wikipedia Photo: Capannelle
