Don't Forget Where One Is: An Excerpt From My Joni Mitchell Interviews

The first of many excerpts for Call & Response subscribers

Joni Mitchell and John Guerin at the wedding of songwriter Jimmy Webb and Patsy Sullivan, July 1974. Photo: Fairchild Archive/Penske Media/Shutterstock

In the summer of 2008, I met with Joni Mitchell on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, where she’s long had a home. I was researching the book that became Will You Take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell’s Blue Period.

In September, after I’d returned home, Joni and I had a series of epic phone conversations. Back in 2008, no conversation with Joni was shorter than two hours. Usually much longer. Below is a brief but rich excerpt from one of those phone discussions, both the lo-fi audio and the transcription. I’ll publish these 15-minute excerpts intermittently for Call & Response’s paid subscribers.

My book research was well underway by the time of this discussion. Like any fan, though, I’d spent a lifetime listening to Joni’s songs, making my own connections and finding poetic truth in them. In her responses here, Joni brought my understanding of both her life and work down to earth with some practical information. Being Joan, she did this brilliantly.

Highlights of this interview excerpt:

• The sense of spirituality Joni found in nature as a child and continued to find on the Sunshine Coast as an adult.

• Joni’s depiction of her non-traditional music and its jazz influences.

• When I brought up Pound’s "ideogrammic method,” Joni was interested, but then couldn’t sit through my application of the theory to her lyrics and broke in to explain the meaning of an “Amelia” verse. I can’t say that I blame her.

• Joni’s brushes with psychiatrists.

• Wayne Shorter’s understanding of Joni’s music (Joni and I first met through Wayne, and we’d spoken about him back in 2004. She adored him).

Note: In this excerpt I’ve cut some of Joni’s commentary on other artists.

Here it is. A special offering for paid subscribers. Just over ye olde paywall, please find both the interview audio and transcript.