Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson in Alberta, Canada. She began playing guitar and singing in clubs in her hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, before busking on the streets of Toronto. After a failed marriage, which gave her the name of Mitchell, she moved to New York and her songwriting abilities were recognized by other performers such as Buffy Sainte-Marie and Judy Collins. Photographed by Jack Robinson on November 20, 1968, she had just released her first album and was about to appear in a concert at Carnegie Hall. In a “People Are Talking About …” feature of Vogue, Mitchell is described “with lake-blue eyes, hair poured like Chablis, and a voice that echoes through invisible hills.” Although she did not appear at the Woodstock festival because of a television commitment, she wrote the song “Woodstock” after watching news coverage, and from what she heard from her then-boyfriend Graham Nash who performed there with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. She said: “The deprivation of not being able to go provided me with an intense angle on Woodstock.”