Joni Mitchell: Verbatim

JONI MITCHELL: VERBATIM (320kbs-m4a/130mb/57mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 4th November 2023

As part of the celebrations for Joni Mitchell's 80th birthday, this programme describes the legendary singer/songwriter's life and career - in her own words.

Over a singular career that has spanned many different cultural eras, Joni Mitchell has explored in public, to an almost unprecedented degree, exactly what it means to be female and free, in full acknowledgement of all its injustice and joy.

And there are two major physically and emotionally charged life changing events that defined Joni's artistic development and deeply influenced her creative output - a severe bout of polio as a child and an unwanted pregnancy as a teenager, which forced Joni to support her and her baby as a destitute single mother. Fearing her inability to cope, Joni gave the baby up for adoption.

The lessons learned from dealing with these traumas have shaped every personal and professional decision Joni has ever made, recalling them as transformative, character-building episodes that caused her to develop self-reliance and a slow, almost meditative way of being in the world.

With the same determination Joni used to prove to doctors that she would walk again, she set about proving that a woman could make it in the patriarchal world of folk music and very quickly blazed a trail as a fiercely independent spirt through one of the most exciting and influential periods in modern music, producing a catalogue of deeply influential albums.

As her success grew, so did her strength and, as we'll hear, Joni remains defiant and determined. She suffered a brain aneurism in 2015 and, summoning the same spirit that enabled her to survive polio and walk again as a child, Joni has been slowly re-building her life and recently played her first live concert in over 25 years.

A Zinc Media production for BBC Radio 4