On March 15, 1968, after our show in Ottawa, Canada, I went to a party thrown by our record company’s local rep at our hotel. It was the usual corporate affair, impersonal and aimless. I was about to make my escape when I noticed a striking woman sitting in the corner by herself. Absolutely beautiful: great face, long blond hair cut in Cleopatra bangs, extremely short pale-blue dress, sapphire eyes. There was a Bible of some sort on her lap—one of those old jobs, with tooled leather, embossed, big, maybe half the size of a night table. That interested me right there. Who the hell carries something like that around? She wasn’t reading it because she was looking at me … and I was looking at her. Man, I wanted that woman the moment I laid eyes on her. Our manager, Robin Britton, said This blonde wants to meet you. She’s a friend of David Crosby’s. Her name is Joni Mitchell.” Oh. Fantastic! I remembered Crosby telling me something about her. He’d met her in the Gaslight South, a coffeehouse in Coconut Grove, heard her sing, and felt he was hit by a grenade. He was absolutely gone forever. “If you ever run across her in Canada,” he said, “mention that we’re friends because I’ve already told her about you.” So I shuffled over and introduced myself. “I know who you are,” she said, slyly. “That’s why I’m here.” Oh. Fantastic! I sat down next to her and asked about the Bible business in her lap. Joni pulled back its ornamental cover. “It’s not a Bible, it’s a music box,” she said. And it played a funny little melody with a broken note in it: dee-da, dee dee-da, da-doink. It cracked us up in a way that only people succumbing to infatuation could find funny, and we played it—and laughed—over and over again. Eventually, she invited me back to the place where she was staying, the Château Laurier, a beautiful old French Gothic hotel in the heart of town. Her room on the seventh floor was out of this world, literally: It had a beautiful steepled ceiling, walls made of stone with gargoyles hunched just outside the windows. Flames licked at logs in the fireplace, incense burned in ashtrays, candles were lit strategically, and beautiful scarves had been draped over the lamps. It was a seduction scene extraordinaire. That was all any healthy man needed, but Joni wasn’t done, not by a long shot. She picked up her guitar, sat in front of the fireplace, and started to play songs: “I Had a King,” “Marcie,”“Michael from Mountains,” “Song to a Seagull,” “Nathan La Franeer,” “Urge for Going” … She played fifteen of the greatest songs I’d ever heard in my life, and I’m dying. She killed me with those songs, each one a gem. I never knew anyone could write like that. There was pure genius sitting in front of me, no doubt about it. I was awestruck, not only as a man but as a musician. I thought I knew what songwriting was all about, but after listening to Joni’s masterpieces, one after the next, I realized how little I knew. She was twenty-four years old. My heart opened up and I fell deeply in love with this woman on the spot. Nash, Graham. Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 15:32:00 +0000
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