From Saskatchewan to stardom

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/03/2025 (520 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Does the world need yet another fanboy book about Joni Mitchell?

If so, it could do worse than New York-based author and humorist Henry Alford’s obsessively researched and often-amusing meditation on the revered Canadian singer-songwriter who has been called the most important female recording artist of the late 20th century.

Alford is true to his sitcom-witch inspired title, I Dream of Joni. Not only does he place himself front and centre (thus the first-person pronoun I) with his whimsical observations, but the book unfolds as a dreamscape.

I Dream of Joni is unbound by biographical chronology; Alford jumps back and forth among the events and themes of Mitchell’s storied life and career, making connections as they occur to him, each chapter a so-called “snapshot.”

He devotes Chapter 4, for instance, to a series of quotations from the numerous interviews folksinger Judy Collins has given over five decades about how she came to record Mitchell’s breakthrough song Both Sides Now. In each quote, Collins changes the story slightly.

In Chapter 7, Alford recounts Mitchell’s friendship with the rock journalist Larry “Ratso” Sloman. It began warily in the 1970s but warmed to the point where by the ‘90s Mitchell had asked Sloman to ghost write her memoirs.

The project died because of the “protracted” negotiations between each’s lawyers: “Joni got cold feet.”

One chapter points out the similarities between Mitchell and one of her art idols, the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe.

“Both women were severely beautiful, prairie-raised, cloud-obsessed painters and feminist role models… not to mention prickly, self-made, highly influential artistic pioneers and semi-hermits,” Alford writes.

Another chapter examines the notion of Mitchell’s songs — she has penned too many classics to single out a few — being akin to her children.

Yet another collates the various grumpy public comments she made about everyone from biographer Sheila Weller to “His Bobness” Dylan.

The book’s anecdotal format is hardly original. Witness two earlier titles by British journalist Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret and 150 Glimpses of the Beatles.

One does wonder how Alford settled on the number 53, odd both figuratively and literally. Did he submit 100 snapshots to have his publisher reject 47? Or perhaps they said, “Fifty isn’t enough. We need a chapter consisting of punctuation marks in her lyrics.” (They got it.)

I Dream of Joni is nothing if not exhaustively researched. The author of six previous books, Alford appears to have had ChatGPT-like powers to absorb every newspaper and magazine article that has ever mentioned his subject.

Besides spewing mountains of Mitchell trivia, he covers all the standard territory — her life-altering bout of polio as a child, her famous Laurel Canyon years in Los Angeles, her giving up her daughter for adoption as a baby and their reunion 30-some years later.

He also interviews her biographer David Yaffe (author of 2017’s Reckless Daughter) and rock journalist Ann Powers (author of last year’s Mitchell appreciation Traveling), not to mention a couple of her non-celebrity friends from her Saskatoon girlhood.

A virtue of the book, given Mitchell’s recent performances and all the feting she has received, is bringing her story up to date. She is now 81.

Alford, in his early 60s himself, also deserves credit for his book’s Canadian content. It’s not every Manhattan gay man (he mentions his orientation) who would trek to Saskatoon, Calgary and B.C.’s Sunshine Coast on the trail of his California-based quarry.

Coincidentally, Alford’s is the second highly personal book about Mitchell by an American gay male to be released this past winter.

The other, Song So Wild and Blue, credits its author Paul Lisicky’s ambition to become an artist to his admiration for Mitchell, as prototypical an artist as there ever has been.

It too might be a fanboy book Joni lovers should check out.

Morley Walker is a retired Free Press editor and writer.