50 years ago I was at the Woodstock festival, in the mud and the mire and the morass. Joni wasn’t, but she got it right in the song. True Woodstock is in the mind.

50 years ago the Woodstock festival took place in upstate New York. I was there. I got wet and muddy and cranky and went back home after one night to listen to some of the same artists on my headphones.

The albatross of fame and fortune. Young Joni crafting her disillusion into a gem, 1970.

Joni Mitchell’s songs can be deceptive, because they’re so darn attractive. But she is also a mistressful artisan who happens to possess a magnanimous soul. Her works aren’t merely moving – they’re also marvels of craft.

Joni, skating on thin ice, on a river so long that our own feet can fly us away from this troubled world.
Peace on earth, goodwill towards men and women, everyone.

My granddaughter Nogah has me wrapped around her finger, and she knows it. So when she asked me to write a Song of The Week for her high school graduation, it was a no-brainer.

Why Joni Mitchell isn’t relevant in a world of Millenial zombies.

Much of the little I understand of the female psyche I’ve learned from Joni Mitchell. I don’t take her to be emblematic of Womanhood. She’s an individual, with a unique vision of the world, but one that is profoundly female. She has thoughts and feelings and desires and disinclinations that seem to me engendered in that other side of the fence, visions and versions that would never cross my testeronic landscape.
‘Cactus Tree’, from her first and very elusive album, is a catalogue of her ex-lovers. She’s new to the city, untethered and unbridled, liberated, exploiting to the fullest the sexual freedom just becoming available to the fairer sex circa the spring of 1968. One thing I’ve learned with Joni Mitchell – the more you focus and dig and concentrate and delve, the more you discover. You always get more than your money’s worth.