okeydokey
Well, it's Joni, maaaan - the most interested and interesting musician of my time.
I worked with and got to know many of that gen of female tunesmiths but i never met her. And i wish i had because i am more overwhelmed by her power & curiosity than any modern artist of which i'm aware. I first went to Hollywood with a great female artist, Bonnie Raitt and, even with it being her home turf (her dad was in showbiz) and with the protection of Lowell and the Feat guys, she got bashed 'round, bullied & belittled at every turn by the cool & brutal sexism that overran that town. For Miss Mitchell, not only a pretty blonde but one goofy-looking enough that those freaques (even, and sometimes especially, the ones she loved) could put her down just as easily as adore her, to hang in with that scene til she was taken seriously as a str8up player was a feat which actually deserves the word "awesome".
My most significant Joni Mitchell memory is more interesting to me than any showbiz story anyway. There was a preacher's kid in my town who i started to hang with when my course as a teen runaway brought me back to Salem cuz his father, as a minister, considered his home a sanctuary (time for moose cupcakes, kids!) and wouldnt rat me out to my folks if i stayed with them a couple days. The wandering hippie course was generally scary for a 16-17yo so it was a nice break to get in a couple days hang with my ol school buds now & then before i hit the road again.
The other good thing is that the PK was a big, goofy good-lookin' kid that chicks loved so there was always cute girls at his hangs, a rarity for hangs then. And speaking of goofy, the only turntable in the house was a largish portable that Andy would place in the middle of the living room and we'd all sit around it. I remember the hot records with our set were Aqualung, Tapestry (ugh), Tarkus, a Cat Stevens, Every Picture Tells a Story and a Nilsson record that had the f-word on it. Somebody wanted to put on the new Joni Mitchell album, Blue, but us doods had already listen to Tapestry like twice and wanted to rock out. Joni was a chirpy folk chick anyway (though i had loved her
song from
Alice's Restaurant) but the girl who wanted it was cute so......
Strummy strummy strummy. I HATE strummy ####. Wanna rock....Hmmmm.....her voice is deeper and she's not singing about about flowers & clouds & peace. She's singing about being lonely & sad. Chicks aren't lonely & sad, they're cute & confusing. If her old man is a singer in the park, walker in the rain, dancer in the dark, why is she so damn sad?!
By
Blue, she had us. We weren't kids on the make, in on the take, we grew up into depressed ####s in the course of one record. We could feel the cold of the river she wanted to skate away on. We listened to it again. We listened to it again. We put on another record, took it off and listened to it again. I look into the eyes of the other girls without looking for signs they might dig me. Weirder than an acid trip, man. Wassupwiddat?
I've traveled everywhere Joni has gone since. It's been over a decade since she made an album and i miss it even though some of the latter ones were as awful as Neil Young records. Bach is the only other artist i'm a completist on. So there's that.
@1 
, like all the good ones, she was taken. As i negotiated her release, there were two things she was adamant on - i do sum'n w my hippie hair (that's a whole nuther story) and i get a vehicle she werent embarrassed by. She was a car gal - drove Zs her whole adult life and would literally hit me w metallic objects if i rode the clutch on her car.
for the above responsibility.
