And we got to the house in Laurel Canyon, and I said—got through the front door—and I said, you know what? I'll light a fire. Why don't you put some flowers in that vase that you just bought?—Graham Nash in an interview with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air, October 2013

Joni Mitchell. That's the music that I play at home all the time, Joni Mitchell. Court and Spark. She brings tears to my eyes. What more can I say? It's bloody eerie.—Jimmy Page in an interview with Cameron Crowe, Rolling Stone, March 13, 1975

When you're in love with Joni Mitchell you've really got to write about it now and again.—Robert Plant

Graham Nash. Jimmy Page. Robert Plant. Like many men before me, I'm in love with Joni Mitchell.

Joni Mitchell seen here enchanting David Crosby (left) and Eric Clapton

How could I not be? This woman of immense powers and beguiling beauty, she reminds me of Tolkien's mighty elf queen Galadriel. (And with all deference to Cate Blanchett, if I could cast anyone from any era in my own version of The Lord of the Rings, Joni Mitchell gets that part.)

To the greatest generation of Folk and Rock artists, Joni Mitchell was both peer and Muse. She has been a guiding star to ensuing generations of Pop minstrels, notably Madonna, Prince, Björk, Jewel, and, of course, Taylor Swift. Listen to music and you hear her everywhere; she informs and influences, leads and eludes. Quite simply, when I listen to Joni Mitchell I say to myself: She's the greatest of them all.

Joni Mitchell is the essential artist. And a genius. And how could I not be in love with the woman who sings "Help Me" and
"Coyote"?

That was how Graham Nash felt. As he recounted in an interview on Amanpour & Company in June of 2023, on meeting Joni he instantly fell under her spell:

And she played me probably 18 of the most beautiful songs I had ever heard in my life and I knew that she was the full package. Not only was she a great songwriter, not only was she an interesting musician, and not only was she an interesting painter, but she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my life at that time.

Graham and Joni fell in love and moved into a house in California's famed music mecca, Laurel Canyon. His song "Our House," one of the many treasures on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's second album, Déjà Vu, casts in warmest amber those two years of domestic bliss. As he has mentioned numerous times in interviews, Nash has sent flowers to Joni on her birthday every year since 1971.

"We are stardust, we are golden / We are billion-year-old carbon / And we've got to get ourselves / Back to the garden" —Joni Mitchelll, "Woodstock"

I've often written about the almost unfair concentration of musical firepower in The Beatles; take any one of the lads and put him in an otherwise pedestrian band and that group becomes a chart-topping juggernaut. Well, the only thing Joni Mitchell doesn't do is play drums….

— Her lyrics stand on their own as sublime poems—ahem, this is Planet Earth calling Norton Anthology, come in?

— As a singer, her vocals enchant and mesmerize; they've also influenced a legion of female Pop singers. And next time you hear those ethereal harmonies on any number of her songs, take a moment to realize that she sings them herself, over-dubbing the variations of her own voice.

— She's an innovative and underrated guitarist. Chrissie Hynde, leader of The Pretenders and no slouch herself as a songwriter, singer, and musician, told Rolling Stone: "She's a fuckin' excellent guitar player! I don't know any guitar player—any of the real greats—who don't rate Joni Mitchell up there with the best of them."

— And Joni's a superb pianist, no mean dulcimer player, and a full-on composer and complex arranger.

But she'd have you know: "Well, I'm a painter first and I kind of apply painting principles to music."

The boys in Led Zeppelin revered her, so much so that they crafted a song in her honor: "Going to California." In both its musical textures and its lyrics, "Going to California" is a total homage. It nods to "California," one of many masterpieces on Mitchell's magnificent 1971 album Blue. The line "The mountains and the canyons start to tremble and shake" subtly refers to her third album Ladies of the Canyon of 1970. The lines "To find a queen without a king / They say she plays guitar and cries and sings" most certainly allude to Joni's song "I Had a King" off of her 1968 debut LP Song to a Seagull. And if there was even the slightest doubt about that queen in question, Plant routinely called out "Joni!" in concert after crooning that line.

Both Sides, Now

I could cite dozens of Joni Mitchell's songs, some of them made more famous by her contemporaries, most notably "Woodstock," which Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young cover with electric brio and signature harmonies on Déjà Vu. But I'll choose one exemplar. "Both Sides, Now" is a case of how an artist becomes a cipher to a message far more potent than she initially imagines. Joni has said as much, stating in interviews that she admired covers by older artists, such as a rendition by Mabel Mercer when she was in her 70s, because she felt they had the gravitas, the lived experience, to pull it off. It's a song, as Joni says, that she "grew into."

On the Lyrics page of the official Joni Mitchell Website, a footnote for this song states: Both Sides Now has been covered by 1718 other artists and then alphabetically lists all of them, with hyperlinks where available. Here are the words to that song, a timeless poem in its own right:

Rows and flows of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons ev'rywhere

I've looked at clouds that way

 

But now they only block the sun

They rain and snow on ev'ryone

So many things I would have done

But clouds got in my way

 

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down, and still somehow

It's cloud illusions I recall

I really don't know clouds at all

 

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels

The dizzy dancing way you feel

As ev'ry fairy tale comes real

I've looked at love that way

 

But now it's just another show

You leave 'em laughing when you go

And if you care, don't let them know

Don't give yourself away

 

I've looked at love from both sides now

From give and take, and still somehow

It's love's illusions I recall

I really don't know love at all

 

Tears and fears and feeling proud

To say "I love you" right out loud

Dreams and schemes and circus crowds

I've looked at life that way

 

But now old friends are acting strange

They shake their heads, they say I've changed

Well something's lost, but something's gained

In living ev'ry day

 

I've looked at life from both sides now

From win and lose, and still somehow

It's life's illusions I recall

I really don't know life at all

 

I've looked at life from both sides now

From up and down, and still somehow

It's life's illusions I recall

I really don't know life at all

As far as I'm concerned, for both the perfection of its melody and the crystalline, soul-aching beauty of its lyrics, "Both Sides, Now" reigns alongside "Yesterday" by The Beatles as greatest songs of the 20th century.

The two songs have striking similarities. Joni wrote the melody and lyrics of "Both Sides, Now"; while it's a "Beatles" song per se, the melody and lyrics of "Yesterday" are entirely Paul McCartney's and when they played live he always performed it solo. And Mitchell and McCartney were both uncannily young when they wrote their hauntingly profound insights into the human condition: Joni was 21 and Paul 22.

Just as the scrap of paper on which Paul McCartney wrote the words to "Yesterday" is enshrined in the British Library alongside the Magna Carta and Shakespeare's First Folio, I hope the manuscript of "Both Sides, Now," if there is one, finds its way to an equally august home. Once again: hello editors at Norton Anthology!

* * * * *

Ultimately, the reason Joni's music moves me—and often to tears—is how she articulates better than anyone things I feel deeply: the isolation of being out of step with the world; the terrible, unrelenting gift of keen perception; and the longing to love and be in love. William Blake wrote: "Excess of sorrow laughs, excess of joy weeps." Joni Mitchell brings so much joy, whether she's sings or strums or talks, that my eyes often get moist. Many of her songs hit so hard that they're too much for me at times—I'm simply not up to being moved that deeply. She famously sings: "Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling, / And I would still be on my feet." But to me, much of her music is whisky , which comes from the Irish "usice beatha" or usquebaugh, which means "water of life." And that stuff just knocks me on my ass.

So I'm in love with Joni Mitchell. I won't be the last.