Background

Ethnicity: Joni Mitchell's father was from a Norwegian family, with possibly some Sami ancestry as well. Her mother was of Scottish and Irish ancestry.

Joni Mitchell was born on November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada, to Myrtle Marguerite (McKee) and William Andrew Anderson. Her father was a flight lieutenant in the Canadian Air Force while her mother worked as a teacher. She spent her initial years in Alberta before traveling across different parts of Western Canada and relocated to Saskatchewan before finally settling in Saskatoon when she was 11 years old.

Education

From an early age, Mitchell seemed to be more into athletics than academics. She also developed an interest in literature and started playing the piano as well. She performed poorly in academics and was a freethinking soul. At the age of 9, Mitchell contracted polio, and it was during her recovery in the hospital that she began performing and singing to patients.

Mitchell grew up listening to her mother quote the works of poet and playwright William Shakespeare. She was also encouraged early in her musical abilities; after the family moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, her father bought her a secondhand piano.

Initially interested in painting, it would take Mitchell’s English teacher from her high school in Saskatoon to steer her towards music. These encounters would prove formative as he inspired her to "paint with words," though she has described herself since as a "painter derailed by circumstance." Mitchell would go on to dedicate her debut album Song to a Seagull to him, writing, "This album is dedicated to Mr. Kratzman, who taught me to love words" in the album’s liner notes.

After Mitchell finished high school at Aden Bowman Collegiate in Saskatoon, she attended art classes at the Saskatoon Technical Collegiate. Later Mitchell attended the Alberta College of Art in Calgary. In 1964, Mitchell dropped out of college.

Career

Joni Mitchell started performing shortly after she learned to play the guitar. Her unique style was quite appreciated by the folk-music loving audiences. At the beginning of her career, Mitchell's compositions were highly original and personal in their lyrical imagery. It was this style that first attracted attention among folk-music audiences in Toronto while she was still in her teens. She moved to the United States in the mid-1960s, and in 1968, she recorded her first album, Joni Mitchell, produced by David Crosby.

Mitchell was given very little compensation in her first recording contract. Eventually, Elliot Roberts negotiated a better deal for her at Reprise, and she received total artistic control of her work. When Mitchell left Reprise, she was able to negotiate similar arrangements with Asylum Records - and later with Geffen Records - that gave her considerably more autonomy than most other recording artists enjoyed. However, disagreements over unpaid royalties would follow and relations with record boss, David Geffen, were strained.

Other highly successful albums followed. Joni Mitchell won her first Grammy Award (best folk performance) in 1969, for her sophomore album, Clouds. Her third album, Ladies of the Canyon, was a mainstream success for the folk singer, becoming her first gold album, which included the hits The Circle Game and Big Yellow Taxi. It was during this time she was already starting to experiment with pop and rock genres.

Mitchell came to popularity after the release of her fourth studio album Blue. The album was a success commercially, peaking at the 15th position on the United States Billboard 200 and at the 9th position on the Canadian RPM Albums Chart. The album was appreciated by critics as well and is considered one of the best albums ever made. The album has been named on several lists, such as Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

In 1974, Court and Spark was released. The album found Mitchell increasingly embracing a "pop" sound, but with the addition of orchestral arrangements and jazz-inspired sounds. Court and Spark had the distinction of appearing when Mitchell was at the peak of her popularity.

The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) further indicated a transition to a more complex, layered sound. Whereas earlier albums were more confessional in their subject matter, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, on which she satirized the role of the 1970s housewife, showed Mitchell’s movement toward social observation.

Her next offering, Miles of Aisles (1974), was a live rock album based on concerts she gave during the summer of 1974 at the Universal Amphitheater, backed up by the L.A. Express. The Hissing Of Summer Lawns (1975), although a top seller, evoked some of the first negative reviews to greet Mitchell's work. Some of her fans took particular issue with the criticisms that Mitchell leveled at society in the album.

A year later, Mitchell's Hejira (1976) found the artist vocalizing about a spiritual journey she had made. On this album a guitar, bass, and drums accompanied her. With songs written for the most part when Mitchell was traveling by car through the United States, the album was recorded in the summer of 1976. Many of the songs dealt with Mitchell's concerns about not having a family.

Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (1977) was followed by Mingus (1979). It is generally felt that in Mingus, which Mitchell composed with jazz great Charles Mingus shortly before his death, she failed to reach her own, and presumably Mingus's, expectations. The news was scarcely better a year later when Mitchell released Shadows and Light (1980), which contained live versions of songs that Mitchell had already recorded in the studio on Miles of Aisles. Critics called the album a disappointment.

Having proved that she could make commercially successful albums and win critical acclaim, Mitchell became a prestigious artist. Moreover, because her songs had become hits for others, she was a source of considerable publishing revenue for her record companies. As a result, they went along with her musical experiments. After Mingus, however, Mitchell stood back a little from the pop world. From the beginning of her career, she had illustrated her own album covers, so it was not surprising that in the 1980s she began to develop her visual art, undecided about whether to concentrate more on painting or music.

Mitchell's momentum slowed as she moved to Geffen in the early '80s but her restlessness didn't wane, as she reckoned with a new wave on 1982's Wild Things Run Fast and 1985's Dog Eat Dog. The response to Dog Eat Dog was, as usual by this time, mostly negative, and the album ended up with only moderate sales. The disappointing reception led Mitchell to cancel her six-month 1986 tour. She instead stayed home and painted.

But there would be bright spots too. In the fall of 1990, the Los Angeles Theater Center put on a revue with five singers performing the songs of Mitchell. The show ran for three months. Then in the early part of 1991, a traveling exhibit of Mitchell's paintings made the rounds in Europe. In Night Ride Home, released the same year, Mitchell made do without any guest artists, and her vocals came across as deep and rich. Turbulent Indigo (1994) saw Mitchell return full circle in a melancholy mood to her earlier work.

Taming the Tiger (1998) further mined her personal life for inspiration, notably on the track Stay in Touch, a nod to the daughter she gave up for adoption in 1965 and with whom she reunited in 1997. She covered standards on Both Sides Now (2000) and reworked a wide-ranging selection of her oeuvre on Travelogue (2002).

On Shine (2007), her first album recorded for the Starbucks coffee chain’s music label, she returned to themes of environmental and social justice. Mitchell also issued several retrospective compilations, including The Beginning of Survival (2004), Dreamland (2004), Songs of a Prairie Girl (2005), and the 53-song omnibus Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting to Be Danced (2014).

Her continuing influence was shown by the release of the tribute album Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration (2019), on which such artists as Chaka Khan, Diana Krall, Rufus Wainwright, Norah Jones, James Taylor, and Emmylou Harris performed Mitchell’s songs.

Achievements

• 

  One of the first women in modern rock to achieve enviable longevity and critical recognition, Mitchell was a major inspiration to everyone from Bob Dylan and Prince to a later generation of female artists such as Suzanne Vega and Alanis Morissette. Although she regularly collaborated with producers and arrangers - such as Jaco Pastorius, Mike Gibbs, and Larry Klein - Mitchell maintained coproducer credit and always had control over her material. Her songs were covered by a range of stars, including Dylan, Fairport Convention, Judy Collins, Johnny Cash, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash.
  
  Joni Mitchell is only one of three Canadian songwriters to be given the Order of Canada. Along with Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen, she’s a recipient of Canada’s second-highest honor of merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of the country. Mitchell has also been inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Works

More photos

• music

  • Song To A Seagull 1968
  • Clouds 1969
  • Ladies of the Canyon 1970
  • Blue 1971
  • For The Roses 1972
  • Court and Spark 1974
  • The Hissing of Summer Lawns 1975
  • Hejira 1976
  • Don Juan's Reckless Daughter 1977
  • Mingus 1979
  • Wild Things Run Fast 1982
  • Dog Eat Dog 1985
  • Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm 1988
  • Night Ride Home 1991
  • Turbulent Indigo 1994
  • Taming the Tiger 1998
  • Both Sides Now 2000
  • Travelogue 2002
  • Shine 2007
  • Miles Of Aisles 1974
  • Shadows & Light 1980

Religion

When asked about her religious views, for instance, Mitchell says: "I kind of see the beauty of the teachings of Christ, you know, even though I turned Buddhist. And, of course, Jewish by injection." A self-described Buddhist-Gnostic hybrid, she was introduced to Buddhism through a mind-bending encounter with the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual master Chogyam Trungpa while performing on Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder tour.

Views

Quotations: "I don't like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshipped or spat out."

"When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark."

"I need to explore and discover and so that has given me, really, to some what seems like courage, but really it's just in my stars, there's nothing I can do about it... I guess I'll just take my award and run now."

Personality

Joni Mitchell is addicted to smoking cigarettes since she was 9.

Interests

• Poker

• Writers

  Beethoven - His Spiritual Development by J. W. N. Sullivan, Rudyard Kipling

• Artists

  Pablo Picasso

• Music & Bands

  Sergei Rachmaninoff, Claude Debussy, Duke Ellington & His Orchestra, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington & His Orchestra, Louis Jordan, Steely Dan, Deep Forest, Edith Piaf, New Radicals

Connections

Around 1964, Joni lost her virginity to a local boy in Saskatchewan and became pregnant. After becoming pregnant, she moved to Toronto and gave the child up for adoption. In 1997, she was reunited with her long-lost daughter Kilauren Gibb after medical and adoption records linked them up, but the relationship disintegrated into rancor and violence.

Joni married Chuck Mitchell in 1965. The couple divorced after just two years. She later married Larry Klein in 1982. He was a bassist who worked with her on her albums Wild Things Run Fast as well as Turbulent Indigo. They divorced in 1994.

Father:

William Andrew Anderson

Mother:

Myrtle Marguerite Anderson

ex-spouse:

Chuck Mitchell

A few weeks after giving birth to Kilaruen, Mitchell met American folk singer Chuck Mitchell and married him 36 hours after meeting him. The couple left for Michigan where they had an official ceremony in June 1965 and she took his last name. They divorced two years later.

ex-spouse:

Larry Klein

In 1982, Mitchell married bassist Larry Klein, who worked on her album Wild Things Run Fast. Klein soon became an established music producer and worked on a number of Mitchell's albums throughout the late '80s and early '90s. While the couple worked on Turbulent Indigo, they eventually divorced in 1994.

Daughter:

Kilauren Gibb

colleague:

Neil Young

Acquaintance:

Bryan Adams

References

• Joni Mitchell - Official Website