Anyway, to recap what I said on The Watchtower: Joni was no doubt irked by the question, or rather statement, from the LA Times reporter, which was one of the most fatuous in history. "The folk scene you came out of had fun creating personas. You were born Roberta Joan Anderson, and someone named Bobby Zimmerman became Bob Dylan."
Well, first, little Joans are often called Jonis, and Joni Anderson changed her last name not to "have fun creating a persona," but because Mitchell was the surname of her first husband.
Second, though she put it rather harshly, Joni is right that Dylan constantly creates a persona, or personas in his art. You never get a glimpse of the real man, even when you think you do. What is 'Sara'? It's holiday snapshots (which resemble everyone else's snapshots) and idealization/deification of a woman ("sweet virgin angel" "mystical wife" "scorpio sphinx" "glamorous nymph"
, not a real woman at all. I'd love to see him try that stuff on Joni. She's likely to tell him, "If you want me, I'll be in the bar." They come from such different sets of circumstance, and they certainly approach their art in different ways.
Third, no doubt she's absolutely sick to death of being told, as if it were a compliment, that she is the "female Dylan." No one describes Bob as the "male Joni Mitchell," and if put that way around the absurdity of the comparison becomes even more obvious. For some reason Joni is supposed to take it as a compliment. Joni is absolutely right -- she and Bob are completely different songwriters. The comparison is not only rude, it's lazy.
Fourth, Joni has exhibited an ambivalent, but generally respectful attitude to Bob in the past. No doubt she was very irritated if he did indeed disrespectfully fall asleep while 'Court and Spark' was being played for the first time, but wind on 30+ years, and what do we find Bob playing in the 12th programme ("Cars"
of the first series of Theme Time Radio Hour? Why, it's "Car on the Hill" from that very album. And when Bob came to choose his contribution to a Starbucks compilation of Joni Mitchell songs chosen by other songwriters, he chose another one from that album: "Free Man in Paris." So maybe he was paying attention all those years ago after all...
For good measure Bob chose three more Joni Mitchell songs in TTRH: "Little Green" (in the "Colors" programme), "California" in the show devoted to that state, and "Coyote" on one of the "Noah's Ark" programmes.
(Some years ago I read an article somewhere that suggested that Bob's "Up to You" was an answer to Joni's "Down to You" -- yet another song from
Court and Spark.)
Over the years Joni has covered Mr Tambourine Man, Girl of the North Country, and It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. She's also singled out Positively 4th Street as a song that showed her there were no boundaries to the pop song lyric.
There is a fine recording of Joni's 7 November 1998 performance in Atlanta, the final night of her tour with Bob and Van. Some yahoo is giving her lip during her set and shouting for Dylan. During her introduction to "Magdalene Laundries" (which is the finest song of the nineties by
anyone), he shouts at her to shut up and get off stage.
She shuts him up with, 'You're an idiot. A rude idiot. You don't deserve Bob!" At the end of her set she announces that today is her birthday, and she's going to do an extra song, which she dedicates to the heckler (not realizing that he's been removed by security). It is "Both Sides Now," the song she wrote in her twenties that is even more appropriate in late middle age.
Joni Mitchell is sheer class.
Message Board 
