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JONI MITCHELL - LIVE TV CENTRE 1970 (320kbs-m4a/131mb/57mins)
BBC Radio 6 Music broadcast: 24th October 2023
Joni Mitchell performing live at BBC TV In Concert, Paris Theatre, 29th September 1970.
Joni Mitchell - Chelsea Morning
Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi
Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now
Joni Mitchell - My Old Man
Joni Mitchell - The Priest
Joni Mitchell - California
Joni Mitchell - Carey
Joni Mitchell - For Free
Joni Mitchell & James Taylor - The Gallery
Joni Mitchell - Song About The Midway
Joni Mitchell & James Taylor - The Circle Game
LEGEND: THE JONI MITCHELL STORY (320kbs-m4a/415mb/2hrs56mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 2nd November to 7th December 2023
Legend is a new music biography series from BBC Radio 4 exploring the extraordinary life stories of pioneering artists who changed music forever.
Joni Mitchell's songs have soundtracked our lives and her pioneering work changed music forever. Jesca Hoop explores her extraordinary story to reveal the life behind the legend.
"I've always been a creature of change" - Joni Mitchell
Through archive, fresh interviews, narration, immersive sound design and an original score, we trace the story of an extraordinary life and explore what makes Joni Mitchell a singular artist: the genius of her lyrics; her incredible talent as guitarist, painter and producer; and her restless drive for innovation.
We follow Joni from her 'flatlander' childhood on the Canadian prairies, through the folk clubs of Toronto and Detroit, to a redwood cottage in L.A.'s Laurel Canyon, to a cave in Crete, to a deserted desert highway, to recording studios and stages around the world. From her earliest home recordings to masterpieces like Blue, Court and Spark, and Hejira, we explore some of the stories behind her best-loved songs and celebrate her remarkable return to live performance in the past year: "like seeing, in the wild, a rare bird long feared extinct".
Our guide through the series is the California-born, Manchester-based musician, Jesca Hoop. We hear tributes from musicians who have played alongside Joni and from those who have been inspired and influenced by her music. We hear from friends, including Larry Klein and Graham Nash; and from music critics and biographers, including Ann Powers, David Yaffe, Lindsay Zoladz, Kate Mossman, Barney Hoskyns, Miles Grier and Jenn Pelly.
The Joni Mitchell Story comes from the production team behind BBC Radio 4's award-winning podcast Soul Music - "… the gold standard for music podcasts…" (Esquire).
Producers: Mair Bosworth and Eliza Lomas
Production Coordinator: Andrew Lewis
Editor: Chris Ledgard
Story Editor: Emma Harding
Story Consultant: John Yorke
Sound Design and Original Music: Hannis Brown
Studio Engineers: Ilse Lademann and Michael Harrison
LEGEND: THE JONI MITCHELL STORY - 0. INTRODUCING LEGEND: THE JONI MITCHELL STORY (320kbs-m4a/7mb/3mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 22nd October 2023
How did the greats become the greats? And what did it cost them to get there? Legend is a musician biography series from BBC Radio 4 exploring the life and music of the pioneering artists who shaped modern music.
Series one tells the story of Joni Mitchell and explores her incomparable body of work - from her earliest home recordings to masterpieces like Blue, Court and Spark, and Hejira.
It's a story that takes us from the remote prairie towns of Saskatchewan to the bohemian idyll of Laurel Canyon; through the hippie dreams of the Woodstock generation and into the dog-eat-dog world of 1980s LA.
Her path has not been straightforward. There have been lonely roads and wrong turns. Road rage, and car crashes - symbolic and real. Joni walked away from fame many times. She gave up a daughter and found her again. She came close to death more than once. And now, she's back on stages again at the age of 80.
LEGEND: THE JONI MITCHELL STORY - 1. URGE FOR GOING (320kbs-m4a/67mb/29mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 2nd November 2023
In the first episode, we hear how young Joni loves to watch the trains go by from the window of her house in a Saskatchewan prairie town. Even as a child, there is a desire to see what's around the next bend. She's a tomboy and an athlete, until polio forces her into a period of convalescence; she's no longer picked first for sports teams but when she gets the use of her legs back she rock 'n' roll dances her way through her teens. Her childhood ambition is to be a painter, but when she finally makes it to art school everything changes....
LEGEND: THE JONI MITCHELL STORY - 2. LADY OF THE CANYON (320kbs-m4a/71mb/31mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 9th November 2023
In episode two we follow Joni from 1964 through to late 1969. Joni makes a 'bad marriage', signs adoption papers, leaves a bad marriage, makes it to Greenwich Village and then to LA's Laurel Canyon. We find out about the inspiration for some of her best known songs, including Little Green and Both Sides Now. In 1968, her recording career begins with her debut album 'Song to a Seagull'; with two more records following in quick succession - Clouds, and Ladies of the Canyon. In 1969, she is heartbroken to miss out on one of the biggest events of her generation - Woodstock. But - despite not getting to go - she writes a song that will help to define the event, and the era, in the popular imagination.
LEGEND: THE JONI MITCHELL STORY - 3. BLUE (320kbs-m4a/69mb/30mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 16th November 2023
In episode three we follow Joni from 1970 through to 1974 - an incredibly fertile period during which she creates her albums Blue, For the Roses and Court and Spark. A period of romantic highs and lows, heady successes and hermit-like retreats, of psychoanalysis and vulnerability, and of new creative directions.
LEGEND: THE JONI MITCHELL STORY - 4. REFUGE OF THE ROADS (320kbs-m4a/72mb/31mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 23rd November 2023
In episode four we follow Joni from 1974 through to 1978. In 1974 Court and Spark is released to huge acclaim but already Joni is heading in new directions musically. This is the era of The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. Through '74 and '75 she tours extensively and joins Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. Her creative restlessness and refusal to be put in a box take her in new directions, but also into controversial territory.
LEGEND: THE JONI MITCHELL STORY - 5. DOG EAT DOG (320kbs-m4a/64mb/28mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 30th November 2023
In episode five, we hear how meeting a towering figure of jazz leads to a new collaboration, but Joni's hopes for a hit are unfulfilled. As the 1980s arrive, Joni continues to experiment with new sounds, but discovers the cost of being a middle-aged woman in pop. This is the decade of new politics and new love, hard knocks and bad omens. Joni experiences a series of misfortunes, and the pain of giving up her daughter resurfaces once more, in a song.
LEGEND: THE JONI MITCHELL STORY - 6. BOTH SIDES NOW (320kbs-m4a/65mb/28mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 7th December 2023
In the final episode, we hear how Joni comes full circle. She reunites with the daughter she gave up for adoption, retires then returns to music, suffers from and then recovers from a near-fatal brain aneurysm, all those years after contracting and surviving polio. With the love and support of a community of musicians, Joni once again returns to the stage, celebrating all that she's created over 80 years.
JONI MITCHELL - LIVE WEMBLEY ARENA 1983 (320kbs-m4a/124mb/54mins)
BBC Radio 6 Music broadcast: 24th October 2023
Joni Mitchell recorded live at Wembley Arena in 1983.
Joni Mitchell - Freeman In Paris
Joni Mitchell - Solid Love
Joni Mitchell - God Must Be A Boogie Man
Joni Mitchell - (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care
Joni Mitchell - Carey
Joni Mitchell - I Could Drink A Case Of You Honey
Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi
Joni Mitchell - Woodstock
Joni Mitchell - Chinese Cafe / Unchained Melody
Joni Mitchell - Ameila
Joni Mitchell - Song For Sharon
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
SOUL MUSIC: SERIES 27 - 1. RIVER (320kbs-m4a/64mb/28mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 19th December 2018
A new series of Soul Music begins with stories of Joni Mitchell's 'River', from her iconic 1971 album Blue. A song about the breakdown of a relationship and of a longing to be elsewhere that has become a melancholy Christmas anthem.
It's coming on Christmas / They're cutting down trees / They're putting up reindeer / And singing songs of joy and peace / Oh I wish I had a river / I could skate away on....
Emotional true stories of what the song means to different people, including comedian Chris Forbes, who lost his father on Christmas Day; Isobel, who fell sick far from home and understands the longing to be elsewhere captured in the song; Laura, who heard the song while pregnant at Christmastime; writer Rob Crossan, who will forever associate the song with his first love; Canadian poet Lorna Crozier who describes the frozen rivers of her and Joni's Saskatchewan childhood; and from Joni Mitchell's biographer David Yaffe.
Includes a rare live recording of 'River' from a BBC Concert in 1970, hosted by John Peel. The other versions of the song are by (in order of appearance) Joni Mitchell (Blue, 1971), Scott Matthews (Live Session for BBC 6 Music, 2011), Béla Fleck and the Flecktones (Jingle All the Way, 2008) and the Belgian indie choir Scala & Kolacny Brothers (Live Session for BBC 6 Music, 2011).
Producer: Mair Bosworth
ARCHIVE ON 4: JONI MITCHELL TAUGHT ME HOW TO FEEL (320kbs-m4a/130mb/57mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 24th November 2018
Music writer and broadcaster Ann Powers explores Joni Mitchell’s impact on her fans and on songwriting.
"Even the songs of hers I’ve heard a thousand times can still give me the weird feeling that she knows me personally," she says.
In the month of Joni Mitchell’s 75th birthday, Ann Powers considers what it is about her music that speaks to people in this way. And how does this emotional connectedness square with an artist who has constantly shape-shifted, who is full of contradictions? She’s a master lyricist who dislikes most poetry. Her words challenged who women were supposed to be, who they could be, and yet she bristled against feminism. And when she’s had such a powerful effect on so many listeners, why has she only had one top 20 hit?
Through excerpts from live BBC recordings from the late 1960s and 70s, and the conversations Joni Mitchell recorded in the same period with broadcaster Malka Marom, we travel across a decade of her music. From the familiar territory of songs like Woodstock, we reach the wilder, exploratory sounds of her late 70s work, via some of her most critically acclaimed albums from earlier that decade - Blue, Court and Spark, The Hissing of Summer Lawns and Hejira.
Writers and critics Linda Grant, Sean O’Hagan, Jessica Hopper and Barney Hoskyns reflect on the rapid evolution of Joni Mitchell’s musical and lyrical approach, alongside the memories of some of those who’ve been closest to her -: songwriter and former lover Graham Nash, bassist and ex-husband Larry Klein, and longstanding friend Malka Marom.
With thanks to Malka Marom and the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library at the University of Toronto, for sharing clips Joni Mitchell’s conversation with Malka Marom.
Producer: Chris Elcombe
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4.
BBC Radio 6 Music broadcast: 26th December 2016
Joni Mitchell continues to talk to Amanda Ghost. In the second episode, Joni considers the effect her music has had on the world, explains why she dropped out of the hit-making rat race and what it was that brought her back to songwriting and recording as a form of creative expression.
She discusses her most revered album, Blue, and Amanda describes the effect the record had on her and the millions of other listeners who identified with its poignant sentiments. There's also music from other work in the 70s, including For The Roses, Court and Spark, and US hits such as You Turn Me On I'm A Radio, which, Joni says, she wrote as a joke.
First broadcast in 2007.
BBC Radio 6 Music broadcast: 25th December 2016
Joni Mitchell talks to Amanda Ghost in the first episode of a two-part series. The Grammy Award winner talks about her formative years as a songwriter, when she moved from Alberta, Canada, to Detroit and then New York,
She also discusses her early working relationship with David Crosby and signature songs such as Both Sides Now and Help Me. Mitchell also talks about more recent recordings and reveals why she quit the business.
This documentary was first broadcast on Radio 2 in 2007.
