Joni's Blue Period

Waiting to meet your heroine can be nerve-wracking -- especially if she happens to be the formidable, fascinating, endlessly innovative and chronically reclusive Joni Mitchell.

Yet there she was, in a restaurant on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast last year, floating gracefully across the room in loose linens and the kind of slouchy cap only she could pull off.

"She looked so hip and cool," recalls Michelle Mercer, who met Mitchell as part of a series of interviews for her new musical biography on the singer, Will You Take Me As I Am? "At 65, she's a dish."

Not that Mercer, who had already conducted "marathon conversations" with Mitchell by phone, expected anything less. What she didn't anticipate was the moment when the otherwise friendly singer suddenly turned on Mercer over a comment made about humour and therapy, berating her and calling her ignorant.

Intimidated, Mercer nevertheless held her ground, in what became a turning point in their relationship.

"It was a critical moment," she says.

Posted in Music on 05/19/2009 - 0 Comments