49 Fun Facts About Joni Mitchell

What was Joni Mitchell's name at birth?

Roberta Joan Anderson became Joni Mitchell in 1965, when she married the folk singer Chuck Mitchell; she kept his surname after the marriage ended two years later.

In which Canadian province was Mitchell born?

Alberta was a wartime posting: her father, an air force flight lieutenant, was teaching new pilots at Fort Macleod when she was born there in 1943.

Which city does Mitchell consider her hometown, having moved there at age 11?

Saskatoon is where a seventh-grade teacher told her that if she could paint with a brush she could paint with words; she dedicated her first album to him.

Which illness did Mitchell contract at the age of nine?

Polio put her in hospital at nine and weakened her left hand, which is why she later devised her own guitar tunings to compensate.

Which instrument did Mitchell settle for first because her mother thought guitars were 'hillbilly'?

The ukulele was what she bought when her mother banned the guitar; she played it at parties where friends sang Kingston Trio songs, then taught herself guitar from Pete Seeger's lessons.

Which vocal jazz group's album did Mitchell call 'my Beatles'?

Lambert, Hendricks and Ross's The Hottest New Group in Jazz was so hard to find in Canada that she paid a bootleg price for it; she later recorded two of its songs, Twisted and Centerpiece.

Mitchell dropped out of which art school in 1964 after a year?

The Alberta College of Art in Calgary lost her after a single year: she left at 20, newly pregnant, telling her mother she was off to be a folk singer.

Mitchell wrote her first song, 'Day After Day', during what journey?

A three-day train ride to Toronto, taken to hear Buffy Sainte-Marie at a folk festival, gave her the song; she stayed in the city and never went back to art school.

Why did Mitchell resolve to write her own material early in her folk-club career?

Veterans claimed the traditional songs: each city's folk scene gave established singers sole right to their signature numbers, so whenever she named one she was told 'You can't sing that. That's my song.'

What name was Mitchell's daughter given after adoption?

Kilauren Gibb was adopted at six months by two teachers; Mitchell had hidden her story in the song Little Green, and mother and daughter finally met in 1997.

In which US city did Joni and Chuck Mitchell live and play coffee houses in the mid-1960s?

Detroit was Chuck Mitchell's base, and he took her there in 1965; when the marriage ended in 1967 she left for New York and a solo career.

Which musician saw Joni Mitchell in a Coconut Grove club in 1967 and took her to Los Angeles?

David Crosby, newly out of the Byrds and in Florida to buy a sailboat, went on to produce her first album, using his name to stop her songs being dressed up as folk-rock.

Which label released Mitchell's 1968 debut, Song to a Seagull?

Reprise signed her in 1967 through talent scout Andy Wickham and issued her first four albums; in 2021 she remixed the debut, saying the original sounded as if recorded under a Jello bowl.

Whose 1967 recording of 'Both Sides Now' became a top-ten hit before Mitchell released her own version?

Judy Collins's single made the song famous before its writer had it on a record; Mitchell began it on a plane, reading Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, when she looked out of the window as his hero does.

Which 1969 album brought Mitchell her first Grammy, for Best Folk Performance?

Clouds has her own painted self-portrait on its sleeve, and it gave her own versions of Both Sides, Now and Chelsea Morning, songs other singers had recorded first.

Which 1970 album holds both 'The Circle Game' and Mitchell's own version of 'Woodstock'?

Ladies of the Canyon is named for Laurel Canyon, the Los Angeles hillside where she lived while writing it; its title song sketches three real women she knew there.

On what instrument did Mitchell perform her own version of 'Woodstock'?

A Wurlitzer electric piano and her own overdubbed voices are all she used on her slow version; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young turned the same song into a fast rock hit.

Which Mitchell album did Rolling Stone rank third on its 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time?

Blue grew out of a break-up: as her romance with Graham Nash came to an end she travelled through Europe, writing some of the album's songs along the way.

Which track was released as the first single from Blue?

Carey began on Crete as a birthday present for Cary Raditz, an American cook she met among the hippies living in the caves at Matala; it came out as a single in the summer of 1971.

Which 1974 album became Mitchell's best-seller and hit No. 1 on the Cashbox chart?

Court and Spark put Bob Dylan to sleep when she played him the finished tape, by her own account; it became her biggest seller all the same.

Which song is Mitchell's only US top-ten single?

Help Me earned a nod from Prince, who counted Mitchell among his favourite artists: his 1987 song The Ballad of Dorothy Parker has a lyric about hearing Joni sing it.

Which jazz-fusion band did Mitchell call her first real backing group?

The L.A. Express won her over at a Los Angeles jazz club, the Baked Potato; she took them on the road in 1974, and the tour's double live album, Miles of Aisles, reached No. 2.

On which 1975 track did Mitchell make an early attempt at sampling African musicians?

It appeared on The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

Mitchell wrote most of Hejira (1976) while doing what?

Driving alone across America, heading home from Maine in her own car, she wrote on guitar as she went, which is why, she said, the album has no piano songs.

Which virtuoso bassist played on Hejira and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter?

Jaco Pastorius arrived after Hejira was already recorded: she overdubbed his bass on four songs, delighted by a player who, as her drummer put it, almost never played the root.

Which jazz giant asked Mitchell to collaborate on his final recordings, released in 1979?

Charles Mingus, by then gravely ill with ALS, wrote six melodies for her to put words to; he died in January 1979, before the album that bears his name was finished.

What was Joni Mitchell's blackface alter ego on the cover of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter called?

Art Nouveau began as her costume for a 1976 Halloween party and went onto the album sleeve a year later; in 2024 the cover was replaced on new pressings and streaming services.

Whom did Mitchell marry in 1982?

Larry Klein was the bassist and engineer on the album she was making when they met; the marriage ended in 1994, but he went on co-producing her records into the 2000s.

Which British synth-pop musician did Mitchell struggle to work with on Dog Eat Dog (1985)?

Thomas Dolby was her label's choice of producer; she wanted him only as a programmer and player, saying that if he took charge it wouldn't really be her music.

Which 1994 album, winner of the Best Pop Album Grammy, marked Mitchell's 'startling comeback'?

It coincided with the end of her marriage to Larry Klein, who co-produced it.

What device let Mitchell play her many tunings on one standard-tuned guitar from the mid-1990s?

A Roland VG-8 processor left the strings in standard tuning and altered the signal instead, so a technician offstage could punch in the right tuning for each song.

Roughly how many different guitar tunings has Mitchell written songs in?

About 50 by her own count: in 1996 she put the figure at 51, so high partly because her tunings sank lower over the years and old ones came back at new pitches.

Shine, Mitchell's last album of new songs, came out in 2007 on a record label owned by which company?

Starbucks' Hear Music label released it five years after she had called the record business a cesspool and declared that Travelogue would be her last album.

Which jazz pianist won the 2008 Album of the Year Grammy with River: The Joni Letters, a tribute to Mitchell?

Herbie Hancock, an old friend who had played on her records, had Mitchell herself sing one track, Tea Leaf Prophecy, beside guest vocalists such as Tina Turner and Leonard Cohen.

What medical emergency did Mitchell suffer in March 2015?

A brain aneurysm rupture left her unable to walk or talk; she had to relearn both, and seven years later she surprised a festival crowd by singing again.

Where did Mitchell make her surprise return to live performance in July 2022?

Newport Folk Festival listed the set only as Brandi Carlile and Friends; Carlile had the stage laid out like Mitchell's living room, and Mitchell sang from a golden chair at its centre.

What are the informal music sessions with famous friends at Mitchell's Los Angeles home called?

Joni Jams began during her recovery as singalongs at home, organised by Brandi Carlile with guests from Paul McCartney to Harry Styles; Carlile later took the idea onto the stage.

Mitchell's first headline concert in 23 years, in June 2023, took place at which venue?

The Gorge Amphitheatre show came about because, after her surprise festival appearance the year before, she told Brandi Carlile she wanted to do another; it ran for almost three hours.

Why did Mitchell pull her music from Spotify in January 2022?

In solidarity with Neil Young over COVID misinformation: he had told Spotify to choose between him and Joe Rogan's podcast, and she wrote that 'irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives'.

Which song did Mitchell write after waking in a Hawaii hotel to see a parking lot spread beneath green mountains?

Big Yellow Taxi came from that view on her first trip to Hawaii, a 'blight on paradise' that she said broke her heart; fittingly, the song was a regional hit in Hawaii first.

What did Mitchell do when inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997?

She did not attend the ceremony, so her former partner Graham Nash accepted the honour for her after the singer Shawn Colvin gave the induction speech.

Which Graham Nash song was written about his two-year relationship with Mitchell?

Our House records an ordinary morning at her Los Angeles home: they bought a cheap vase after breakfast, she picked flowers for it, and Nash wrote the song at her piano within the hour.

Which director was revealed in 2023 to have been secretly developing a biopic with Mitchell?

Cameron Crowe had her trust from 1979, when she chose him for her first in-depth interview in over ten years; the two had worked on the film in secret for two years before word got out.

Which phrase completes Mitchell's description of herself as a painter?

'Derailed by circumstance' was her phrase in a 2000 interview, in which she also explained the split: she sings her sorrow, she said, and paints her joy.

Which Led Zeppelin song is said to be about Robert Plant and Jimmy Page's infatuation with Mitchell?

Going to California pictures a guitar-playing woman waiting out west; on stage Robert Plant would often add the name 'Joni' after that verse.

'My Secret Place', the first single from Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm (1988), was a duet with whom?

Peter Gabriel offered her his studio near Bath in 1986, while her husband was there playing bass on Gabriel's album So; the duet was recorded on the spot.

Mitchell wrote 'Free Man in Paris' about which record executive, a close friend who ran her label?

David Geffen was with her on a trip to Paris; she built the lyric from things he said there, and he then begged her to keep the song off the album.

Mitchell's orchestral 2000 re-recording of 'Both Sides, Now' plays over an emotional Emma Thompson scene in which film?

Love Actually has Thompson's character unwrap a Joni Mitchell CD where she expected a necklace, realise the necklace was bought for another woman, and slip away to cry as the song plays.

Mitchell wrote 'Woodstock' after missing the 1969 festival to keep a booking on which TV talk show?

The Dick Cavett Show was booked for the Monday after the festival, and it was feared she would not get back in time; she watched the news in a New York hotel room and wrote the song from that.