JONI MITCHELL
She’s best known as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of her generation, but her mostly open-tunings one-of-a-kind guitar playing occupies a field of its own.
Words: Bill DeMain
Joni Mitchell’s guitar playing has influenced a generation of singer-songwriters.
JONI MITCHELL: GETTY; DAVID CROSBY: ANNA WEBBER/PRESS
In Martin Scorsese’s documentary Rolling Thunder Revue, there’s a great scene from a picking party at singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot’s house in 1975. Lightfoot, Dylan and Roger McGuinn, guitars in hand, are gathered around Joni Mitchell, who’s trying out a new song of hers called Coyote. As she starts, you see the guys doing what guitar players do, checking her hands to get their bearings. But it’s like trying to throw a lasso around a meteor. Mitchell’s left hand moves through unfamiliar shapes. Her right hand brushes and flicks the strings in a deceptively non-linear rhythm. By the second verse the guys have given up and are noodling quietly behind her. They look slightly embarrassed. ‘We just come from such different sets of circumstances…’ she sings.