The song Joni Mitchell wrote after David Crosby cheated on her: “Joni was very angry”
Joni Mitchell is an autobiographical songwriter. Never has a sentence so effortlessly summed up the career of an expansive artist such as her. Every lyric she wrote on the page and every note she let reverberate around the airwaves had been lived by the singer to its fullest. Her ability to craft lyrics that touched our souls as an audience was mined from the veins of gold connected to her own heart.
What’s more, Mitchell was also an accomplished musician, arranger, and supreme lyricist. This meant that not only could she write potently and poetically about her personal life, but she could also turn songs around quickly. That ability made her a decisive creator and a devastating opponent should you cross her.
The result of her unique and rapid talent for creation, more often than not, was songs created about experiences that had happened to Mitchell in recent weeks prior to her writing session. Chances are, if you had a disagreement with Mitchell as Bob Dylan (‘Talk To Me’) did or simply took her away to a new city like David Geffen did (‘Free Man in Paris’), you may well have been immortalised in song. It also meant that if you so happened to be a boyfriend of Mitchell’s, you were almost guaranteed to hear pieces of your life put out as songs—it’s certainly something David Crosby can attest to.
Crosby and Mitchell shared a relationship after they began dating around 1967. The duo had a significant impact on one another’s careers. Crosby exposed Mitchell to the rock ‘n’ roll set, providing her with the lift-off she needed after returning from Britain. When she touched down on North American shores, she did so with new vigour to become a pop musician in her own right, and Crosby’s connections provided a neat gateway to make that happen.
But it wasn’t all one-way. Mitchell had a profound effect on the former Byrds man’s career, too and introduced Crosby to Buffalo Springfield, two members of which, Neil Young and Stephen Stills, would join Crosby to form the rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. It wasn’t all plain sailing, though.
The relationship deteriorated as the two musician’s paths began to diverge. Before they could completely separate, however, Crosby took up semi-permanent residence with an old girlfriend and began a romantic relationship. When Mitchell found out, she was rightly incensed. It saw the singer confront Crosby at a party held at The Monkee’s Peter Tork’s house and do so, as one might imagine, with a vengeful pop ditty in hand.
“Joni was very angry and said, ‘I’ve got a new song’,” Crosby reveals in David Browne’s book, The Wild, Definitive Saga of Rock’s Greatest Supergroup. It’s a scary thought for any person to be the subject of a song from a jilted lover but to receive one from Mitchell must’ve sent a shiver down his spine.
Mitchell then played ‘That Song About the Midway’, which had “references to a man’s sky-high harmonies and the way she had caught him cheating on her more than once… there was no question about the subject of the song,” Browne writes. “It was a very ‘Goodbye David’ song,” said Crosby. “She sang it while looking right at me, like, ‘Did you get it? I’m really mad at you.'”
That wasn’t enough, however, “And then she sang it again. Just to make sure.”
Naturally, the pair broke up shortly after, but their friendship remained. Decades later, the duo still meets from time to time to have dinner and share stories. As time passes, the troubles between them have been forgotten, but if Mitchell or Crosby ever needed reminding, they’ve always got ‘The Song About the Midway’ to enjoy.
