The one show Joni Mitchell couldn’t bring herself to attend: ‘She feels like they were forced into it’
Joni Mitchell never made any of her music thinking about what the rest of the industry thought about her.
Some of her biggest songs weren’t meant to be singles in the traditional sense, and even when she was making great strides with the best musicians in the world, her work with jazz greats wasn’t going to be given the same attention as some of her folk classics. But even when she got the respect from the entire industry, there were some shows that she couldn’t ever imagine giving the time of day to.
Then again, Mitchell had already had her fair share of moments when she missed out on pieces of history. ‘Woodstock’ is still one of the greatest songs to ever capture what the spirit of that weekend in 1969 was actually like, but Mitchell’s inability to be there was enough for people to feel like they were walking through that New York field listening to Jimi Hendrix absolutely annihilate ‘The Star Spangled Banner’.
But after a while, the rock and roll scene didn’t seem to fit her all that well. She had outgrown the biggest names in the genre, and while she still had an affection for the early rock and roll that she grew up with, there was a lot more that she had to offer when she began working with people like Charles Mingus. Looking at her early work, she was always doing her homework when it came to the biggest artists in the world.
She wanted to go down in history with people like Miles Davis, and Mitchell wasn’t going to give people the time of day if they only thought of her as a rock and roller for the rest of her days. She had to keep moving on, and while she had her own moments where she could get a little bit nostalgic about her past on Both Sides Now, the idea of going back to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and being treated like a higher being wasn’t anything she was remotely interested in.
It would have been great for her to see many of her friends, but her advisor sent the Cleveland institution a letter explaining that Mitchell didn’t feel like she was welcome in the first place, with her official website saying, “She feels like they were forced into it by the New York Times, which condemned the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for sexism in an article a few weeks ago because they haven’t inducted very many women.”
Then again, Mitchell was strictly about snubbing the Hall of Fame, either. She had spent years trying to reconnect with her estranged daughter, and she would have gladly spent some time getting to know this person that she never got to connect with, rather than worrying about whether she would play songs with some of her friends or have to give some acceptance speech to the higher-ups of the industry.
And given how her other supergroup moments went, no one would have faulted her for wanting to go in a different direction. Her performance in Roger Waters’s The Wall is still one of the finest that she gave that decade, but looking at all of the other people involved with the show, she also admitted that she was disappointed to see the entire operation becoming more than a little bit juvenile backstage.
So, whether it was because of making a statement or wanting to spend more time with her family, Mitchell was sending a message about who she always was by not turning up to her own induction. She wanted the chance to make the best music that she could, and her outlook on the industry was never about wanting to get the kind of trophies that everyone else sought after whenever they wrote a song.
