I Dream of Joni: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell in 53 Snapshots

"Henry Alford provides a clear, incredibly thoroughly-researched recounting of Mitchell’s abundant life."

Based solely on the title, an eager reader would assume there will be at least 53 photos of the Queen of the Folk-Woodstock Era. But, no . . .

Those “snapshots” turn out to be 53 essays reflecting the life of Joni Mitchell, from childhood in Saskatoon, Canada, to the Laurel Canyon years and beyond, based on the author’s interviews with important people—mostly well-known—throughout her well-lived life.

Lyrics to two of her biggest hits, in three-octave range, have been included in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot” from “Big Yellow Taxi,” and “We are stardust, we are golden. . . and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden” from “Woodstock.”)

Roberta Joan Anderson is born in 1943, the only child of a former schoolteacher-turned-obsessive housekeeper and the Norwegian son of a violin maker, in Alberta, Canada, “settling in . . . Saskatoon when Joan was eleven.”

Experiencing isolating polio at age nine and its primitive, torturous treatments with only one visit from her mother, the author postulates this “emotionally-scarring” experience to be “responsible for the Joni Mitchell songbook’s preoccupation with travel and flight . . .” as well as difficulty and improvisation, later on, with certain guitar chords. She smokes cigarettes.

Judy Collins meets Joni and Joni performs at the 1967 Newport Jazz Festival. Then, back to growing up in ninth grade Saskatchewan and her love of fashion, colors, and “Winged words (flowing) from her pen.”

All sorts of namedropping ensue; after all, she is Joni Mitchell. In 1978 she received a fan letter from the 90 y/o Georgia O’Keeffe, with whom she subsequently spent five days visiting in Santa Fe, both sharing a common interest in painting.

Communal gatherings of the hipperati in Laurel Canyon, “another planet” away from Sunset Strip in the late sixties, bring out the most talented singers and songwriters sharing pot brownies and new songs. Legends include Joni, her then-beau David Crosby, Peter Tork, Cass Elliot, James Taylor, and the list goes on. Joni buys a piece of Laurel Canyon real estate “for $36,000 in the spring of 1968.”

Enters Graham Nash and the hit “Our House,” about Joni’s place they immortalize as “the unofficial prince and princess of Laurel Canyon,” for just two years.

While attending art college and performing at folk clubs, Joni became pregnant; her daughter, Kelly, was born in February 1965. She met and married (then divorced) musician Chuck Mitchell who refused to raise “another man’s child,” so Kelly was given up for adoption. (Joni reunites with her daughter, renamed “Kilauren Gibb,” and grandson, Marlin in 1997; Kilauren’s daughter, Daisy, is born in 1999.)

Joni wrote four of her best-known songs in the late ’60s, including “The Circle Game,” and “Both Sides Now.” Eventually her stern mom, Myrtle, becomes proud of Joni’s achievements. As to Joni’s songwriting process, “It’s like they’re writing me.”

Mitchell marries musician Larry Klein in 1982, has a miscarriage in her early forties, and they subsequently divorce. Other partners ensue. “Love needs oxygen.”

Brain aneurysm hits in 2015, and as she had with polio at age nine, “She worked assiduously with physical therapists.” Brandi Carlisle encourages her to get back to performing, beginning with “Joni Jams,” including Chaka Khan, Elton John, and Herbie Hancock.

Conclusions: Expect the chapters to jump back and forth across the decades in no particular order. If a reader appreciates a bio written in order of the MC’s life, Alford’s accounts of Mitchell’s greatness will in no way provide this; it can be dizzying. Who really cares about Kilauren Gibb’s three pages of Facebook details?

If one is starstruck, the reader will encounter much celebrity namedropping; Joni’s been famous for a long time. However, there are far too many unnecessary asides about those celebrities, which act as pure (snore!) scholarly filler. This biography is all over the place and could have ended 100 pages earlier.

Regarding “snapshots,” all one gets are a total of 12 black and white Mitchell portraits solely on the book’s cover. Although most readers would expect photos of such a celebrated individual’s quirkiness throughout the pages—and the reviewer was disappointed at the lack thereof—Henry Alford provides a clear, incredibly thoroughly-researched recounting of Mitchell’s abundant life.