Debbie Smith, 63, Eastbourne ‘I saw her in Birmingham for £6. My favourite track is probably People’s Parties, though picking one track is really impossible. I can always find a Joni Mitchell song to fit my mood and her words are so clever – she is a poet. I managed to make my way nearer to the front, singing along to every song. We were standing in the main arena but quite a long way back. I remember crying as we walked up the long path to the old Wembley Stadium and feeling overwhelmed with emotion that I was surrounded by hundreds of other people who felt the same way I felt about Joni Mitchell’s music and her words. In 1983, I had been married for 18 months, living and working in London and managed to get two tickets for Joni Mitchell at Wembley in April. The first album I heard was Song to a Seagull and I still listen to it now. The first track I heard was The Circle Game – not one of my favourites now – but I was hooked. I was 15 years old when I first heard Joni Mitchell. Cathey Sawyer, theatre director, actor and playwright, West Virginia ‘I was overwhelmed with emotion’ĭebbie Smith. With the slightest smile, she said: “Nobody ever asked Van Gogh to paint Starry Night again.” We cheered, and in the moment, she changed for ever how I view performing artists. She quietly commented: “I can’t believe things can be so beautiful and yet so mean.” Later in the evening, as she glided gracefully through her acoustic set, some audience members lovingly shouted out requests. It was an amazing night after several days of bad, sometimes scary, weather. I saw her in Nashville in 1974 with Tom Scott and the LA Express. Iain Forsyth, 60, business analyst in the public sector, London ‘She changed for ever how I view performing artists’ I have come and gone a bit with Joni over the years, but along with Bowie she is an artist who has been a companion all my adult life.
There was a short solo acoustic set, which was sublime.Īfterwards, I hung around by the stage door with a few others, where a limo was waiting, and she autographed my programme (remember those?). It was not her greatest period or band, but the set ranged across her career. I remember in particular just how relaxed she seemed, holding the audience enthralled. I was right at the front and I don’t think that I really appreciated at the time quite how privileged I was. I only got to see Joni once, on the Wild Things Run Fast tour in 1983 at the Edinburgh Playhouse. Photograph: Guardian Community ‘I don’t think I appreciated how privileged I was’ Joni had also released three more albums – Blue, For the Roses and Court and Spark, and was an acknowledged talent. By this time the UK had woken up to west coast music. The next time I saw her was at Wembley Stadium in 1974, with much the same band, led again by Tom Scott, this time with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the Band. I was 18, just entering the music industry, managing one of very few official food outlets on site, which gave me the huge benefit of a stage front pass. But when record mogul Mickie Most heard her singing background vocals on a song by her brother Ricky, Kim quickly became poised to make a name for herself as a musician. Working at the festival, I had the opportunity to take photos in front of the stage. Kim Wilde - daughter of British rocker Marty Wilde - was by her own admission more of a Joni Mitchell fan. But once she got the measure of the occasion, she delivered a stunning performance, with the help of a great band led by Tom Scott. Her third album, and her breakthrough in the UK, Ladies of the Canyon had only been released a few months before so she was not at all well known. Here, it acts like she's summoning a succubus from hell itself.Joni Mitchell and Tom Scott playing at the Isle of Wight festival in August 1970. There are also very few moments in her music more thrilling than the trill she does straight after “I sing soprano in the upstairs choir”. Any live recording of hers will feature a perfect rendition of “The Circle Game” – a song designed to be sung by crowds – but not enough love is given to her rearrangement of Ladies Of The Canyon’s “Rainy Night House”: already a corker, a beautiful little love story between a Sunday school teacher and a radio evangelist, her reimagining turns it from acoustic Californian melancholy into something that drips in liquid copper – a strange, spangly, sexy encounter.
As she says on this album, nobody asked Van Gogh, “Hey, paint ‘A Starry Night’ again, man.” While her live shows often feel like watching a hostage perform for their captors, Miles Of Aisles feels like it came at just the right moment: right after Court And Spark and right before The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, it’s the perfect midpoint between folk Joni and jazz Joni. The lyric 'They say you bought a bunch of land somewhere/Chose the rose garden over Madison Square' is rumoured to reference this. Frankly, she doesn’t like revisiting her songs. Aside from Joni Mitchell and Shania Twain, another possible candidate is the English singer Kim Wilde, who at one point downscaled her music career to become a landscape gardener. ‘Rainy Night House’ – Live (from Miles Of Aisles)
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