How Struggling With a Childhood Illness Helped Shape Joni Mitchell’s Songwriting Legacy

In the mid-1950s, Dr. Jonas E. Salk developed the vaccine for a disease that had been causing quite a scare in the United States since 1948. The illness, called polio, only affected about 600,000 kids nationwide during these years. Joni Mitchell, who would go on to be one of the world’s most prolific songwriters, was one of those kids.

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Mitchell, who contracted polio at the age of nine, was quarantined in a hospital for months between the years of 1952 and 1953. During this time, polio caused Joni to lose her ability to walk, which she had to relearn. However, as she explained to Star in 1995, there was a time when hope for recovery seemed very little.

“Basically, what the American Medical Association says is, ‘Lie down and die,’” she explained. The silver lining of contracting the disease, however, as she would later admit, was that it would force Joni to develop “an inner life” and “make an artist” out of her. 

Having polio weakened Joni’s left hand, which made it difficult for her to play guitar. This struggle, however, led Joni to develop her own guitar tunings. Now, these tunings are an essential part of that sound we know and love. 

As fingerstyle master Jon Gomm notes, “She wanted to ‘paint’ with sound, so she started to look at these tunings and experiment with them, moving the strings further apart from each other so that she had a bigger range or compositional matrix of pitches.”

Now, Mitchell’s catalog serves as a window into her brilliant mind, using over 50 unique tuning variations from over the years.

Mitchell Shares How Polio Prepared Her for Future Struggles

In later years, Joni Mitchell would go on to cement her legacy as a songwriter. She won multiple Grammy Awards and the respect of many with projects like Blue. 

Then, about 40 years after contracting polio, the songwriter started to struggle with what’s known as post-polio syndrome. This phenomenon is often characterized by fatigue and muscle atrophy in places where polio was once present. In March of 2015, Mitchell also suffered from a brain aneurysm, which forced her to take a hiatus from music.

In 2021, she would accept the Kennedy Center Honor and speak on how her experience with polio helped her through later trials.

“I always think that polio was a rehearsal for the rest of my life,” she shared. “I’ve had to come back several times from things. And this last one was a real whopper. But, you know, I’m hobbling along, but I’m doing all right.”

This honor recognizes Mitchell for her contributions as a singer/songwriter and her impact on American culture.

Photo by: Dick Darrell/Toronto Star via Getty Images