Trivia / Joni Mitchell

• All-Star Cast: The backing band for her 1979 tour, as captured in Shadows and Light, featured some major jazz musicians, including Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorious, Lyle Mays, Michael Brecker and Don Alias.
• Black Sheep Hit: "Raised on Robbery" is more upbeat and poppy compared to the rest of Mitchell's material.
• Breakthrough Hit: "Both Sides Now" was her breakthrough as a songwriter, and "Big Yellow Taxi" was her breakthrough as a performer after being known for writing songs for other artists.
• Channel Hop: She started her recording career on Reprise Records before moving to Asylum for her most popular work. She was one of Geffen Records' first signings in the '80s, before moving back to Reprise, then finally to Starbucks' Hear Music before her retirement. 1991's Night Ride Home would be the first time her work was on a label not distributed by Warner Music Group after Geffen changed its distribution to MCA in 1990.
• Creator Couple: She was married for twelve years to bassist and Record Producer Larry Klein. The two have continued to collaborate even after their divorce and remain friends.
• Denial of Digital Distribution: Once Neil Young asked Spotify to remove his music as he didn't want to share a platform with Joe Rogan spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 Pandemic, Mitchell decided to follow the step of her friend, as after all like Young she's also a survivor of polio, and removed her WMG-distributed albums from the service. Her Geffen-era material was still on Spotify. In 2024, after Young announced his own return to Spotify after Rogan's podcast was distributed on other service, Mitchell's WMG-era material was also reinstated on Spotify.
• Disowned Adaptation: Counting Crows cover of "Big Yellow Taxi" has been critically panned. A scathing review of the cover by The Village Voice, which calls it the worst song of the 2000s, is archived and displayed on Mitchell's website in a potential sign of her own disapproval of their cover. It is the only article of its kind on the site.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: She took up painting as a way to strengthen her muscles after polio affected her; her "alternative tunings" on guitar were a way of making it more comfortable for her to play. Smoking was also taken up to relieve her polio afflictions.
• What Could Have Been: She turned down a spot at Woodstock after her manager and agent David Geffen talked her into keeping scheduled appearance on The Dick Cavett Show instead.^note Geffen was worried Mitchell wouldn't make it back to New York City for the taping in time. Ironically, that episode — taped the day the festival ended and aired the next night — turned into something of a Woodstock post-show, considering Cavett's other guests were the Jefferson Airplane, David Crosby and Stephen Stills She's spoken ever since about how much she regrets listening to Geffen. She later wrote the song "Woodstock" about the festival, based on what her then-boyfriend Graham Nash had told her about it.

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