“Embarrassed”: The awkward moment Joni Mitchell crashed a John Lennon session
Anyone who has even been in the presence of John Lennon would have had a profound experience interacting with him. It feels like most people can’t manage to breathe the same air as The Beatles, and given Lennon’s tragic passing in 1980, he has practically become a musical deity in some fans’ eyes for the gifts he has given to the world. But when working with some of his favourite acts in the 1970s, things could get slightly uncomfortable in the studio.
Then again, Lennon was never the kind of person to sit in during sessions. The Beatles had been his group since day one, and given that he wasn’t the most musically-trained out of the Fab Four, he never had the kind of confidence to jam with Cream like George Harrison did or contribute to a Steve Miller Band album like Paul McCartney did shortly after leaving. If he was going to work with someone, he was going to be a little bit more picky about the new kids on the block.
Anything he did always had to come from a place of artistic expression for him, and since the 1970s had turned towards more eccentric performers, Lennon was paying attention when he heard something that no one else was doing. He was no stranger to a great pop song when he heard tracks by Elton John, but when talking to his son about his musical taste later in life, he remembered bringing up bands like Sparks and visionaries like David Bowie far more often than Led Zeppelin.
Even by art-rock standards, though, Joni Mitchell was one of the most singular artists of her generation. She could work her way around virtually any song she touched, but when she wrote her own material, it was like listening to a version of folk music from a different generation. Bob Dylan had shown everyone what could be done with the written word, but Mitchell was the one bringing complex harmony into the mix, taking the purest lyrics she could and marrying them to tunes that wouldn’t feel out of place on a jazz record.
Anyone would have been glued to her records if they found themselves in Los Angeles, but Lennon was already in California under different circumstances when he met Mitchell. He was in the midst of his “lost weekend” and had been seeing May Pang after separating from Yoko for a bit, but the minute that Mitchell walked into his studio, there was a much different temperature in the room.
According to Pang, Mitchell wasn’t afraid to be more than a little bit flirtatious with Lennon once she walked in the studio door, saying, “[Phil] Spector was still working with the saxophonists when Joni Mitchell sauntered into the studio. She was recording in the next studio and decided to pay Spector a visit. She sat down next to the producer and watched while he worked. Occasionally, she looked at John and smiled languidly. It was clear that she was flirting with him and he was embarrassed by it.”
But for Lennon, this could have been another instance of the lights coming on for him. He had already begun working with Spector on the album Rock ‘n’ Roll during this period, but listening to albums like Walls and Bridges, he was already ready to come back home to Yoko, so any kind of flirtatious looks from someone else would have only complicated things if she had stayed for too long.
Once he finally settled down with Yoko again in the late 1970s, he seemed to have put his womanising days behind him, finally being content to raise his son in peace, even if his time on this Earth was cut short. And while Blue was already a fantastic tale of heartache from Mitchell, having any album be made about her affair with Lennon would have been too Earth-shattering for most people to take.
