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Joni Mitchell talks with Cameron Crowe about health, 'Blue' - Los Angeles Times
Jun 20, 2021 5 mins, 26 secs
It is a Saturday night in late May, and Joni Mitchell finds a seat in her living room, a high-ceilinged space with a pool table, an array of guitars, a grand piano and a generous collection of her paintings.

It was just a few years after the sudden brain aneurysm that stilled Mitchell’s voice and brought her the medical verdict that she’d likely never walk again.

Not long after that, at a dinner with a friend, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile, Mitchell suggested she help round up some musicians for a more regular jam session.

“Joni’s Jam” would occur from time to time, always with a small group of musician friends like Chaka Khan, or Herbie Hancock, and maybe some of the “young’uns” who’d wanted to blend in and meet her, like Harry Styles.

“Oh you’re a mean old daddy,” sings Joni Mitchell, “but I like you … fine.”.

Soon after, John joins Puth for a stirring version of his own “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” Lucius sings a new song and Carlile does the same, along with her show-stopper “The Joke.” Near the end of the evening, John serenades Mitchell with a burnished, world-wise version of “Moon River.” “I just want to say,” he’d announced earlier, “this is such a gift to see you doing so well.

… We just love you.”.

A goosebumps evening to be sure, but it’s the rousing version of Mitchell singing “Blue’s” “All I Want” with Carlile that might linger longest.

“It was a fun evening,” says Mitchell.

It’s a long way Mitchell has come from her early roots in Canada as a young folk singer and art student.

Hearing Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” inspired Mitchell to head for even deeper emotional territory.

Then just 27, Mitchell had written her most personal work yet.

With the help of her longtime friend and associate Marcy Gensic, she’s been approving rare live takes, outtakes, demos and remastered versions of tracks from her first four albums, in what will become “Joni Mitchell Archives Vol.

Once judgmental of her earliest songs being “the work of an ingenue,” these days Mitchell has a more holistic view of her peerless body of work.

(Her verdict on “Ladies of the Canyon”: “Not bad.”) Often Mitchell listens on a Bose system in her kitchen while playing her own version of Solitaire.

Mitchell: Sometimes I wonder why it got all the attention, and not my other “children,” you know.

It didn’t really take off until later.

It was kind of like Dylan going electric.

I felt I was in a very vulnerable place.

I felt like that.

I felt exposed, like I couldn’t have people in the room witnessing me.

I couldn’t really be around people.

I felt too vulnerable.

I felt like everybody could see into me, and see that I was suffering?

The image from that dream is still the best metaphor for how vulnerable I felt.

It was kind of like Dylan going electric.

Joni Mitchell.

Penelope was a girl I knew and she was going, and I asked if I could tag along.

There was a kind of an apple-crate guitar there that some of the poets played.

I played, and people threw money at me.

[Laughs.] But everywhere we went in Greece, people would say to us, “Sheepy, Sheepy, Matala Matala!” We didn’t know what that meant.

That’s where your kind are!” So we rented a car and took a ferry boat and we arrived there.

And when we were looking out towards Turkey, Penelope started thinking about her namesake, you know, Penelope, the wife of Ulysses.

He exploded into my life, just like that.

And Cary becomes a kind of partner in crime, protector, raconteur as you lived for a time in the caves of Matala.

When I arrived in Matala, there was a bit of a fuss, you know, and people would say, “Donovan is coming on a sailboat!” and stuff.

Like it was going to be a star invasion.

[Laughs.] And Cary watched all of his friends go kind of gaga over me.

He wanted to show that he wasn’t going to be intimidated by celebrity.

Cary himself says he knew you’d been talking about being homesick, but he didn’t realize you were actually saying goodbye until he heard the song, which you played to him on his birthday.

I like hellos.

I love that Laurel Canyon house, you know.

I looked forward to coming back and meeting up with CSN, you know.

Joni Mitchell.

We had shorthand, it got kind of cryptic.

People would visit a session and ask Henry, “Do you know what she’s talking about?” And he would say, “I know exactly what she’s talking about.”?

No, just, you know, it expresses regret at the end of a relationship.

So many people are lonely at Christmas.

I heard somebody on the radio, or maybe it was in print, but they were ragging on “River.” You know, it has been recorded a lot, and called a Christmas song.

“This is not a Christmas song!” And I thought, “It’s absolutely a Christmas song.

It’s a Christmas song for people who are lonely at Christmas.

We need a song like that.”.

I didn’t expect that?

(Mitchell shakes her head “no.”) You just roll in and do it.

Like a plumber.

I was watching you sing songs from “Blue” the other night and wondered, is it like going through old photos and thinking — I was a different person then.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the recent documentaries on Laurel Canyon.

I didn’t really see them, but I’ve heard the laundry list of people who “lived” there.

They didn’t seem to know who really lived in Laurel Canyon.

David Crosby didn’t.

She didn’t like that either.

Joni Mitchell.

I decided I was going to be a hermit.

The pine trees and the ocean and the brine is just so distinctive, you know!

You know, it’s amazing to me, looking at all of this attention my work has gotten recently … the response when I’ve gone to Clive Davis’ Grammy parties too.

I’m always so moved when people tell me how the music has affected them

It really did help people face their own intimacy, you know

Cameron Crowe is a writer-director who first interviewed Joni Mitchell for a Rolling Stone cover story in 1979

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