The Time Jimi Hendrix Recorded a Joni Mitchell Concert

Even rock legends are enamored by their musical heroes. And Jimi Hendrix was no different.

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In 1968, Hendrix sat in the front row of a Joni Mitchell concert to record her performance. But his tapes were stolen and thought to be lost forever. Decades later, they surfaced in a private collection and donated to the Library and Archives Canada.

Mitchell’s 2021 box set, Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 2: The Reprise Years (1968-1971), features the Hendrix recording and much more in the extensive 10-LP collection.

A Hendrix Bootleg

On March 19, 1968, Hendrix arrived at Le Hibou Coffee House in Ottawa, Canada. Mitchell performed two sets that night at the coffee house and Hendrix captured 22 songs.

Cameron Crowe interviewed Mitchell for the set’s liner notes. “They came and told me, ‘Jimi Hendrix is here, and he’s at the front door.’ I went to meet him. He had a large box. He said to me, ‘My name is Jimi Hendrix. I’m on the same label as you. Reprise Records.’ We were both signed about the same time. He said, ‘I’d like to record your show. Do you mind?’ I said, ‘No, not at all.’ There was a large reel-to-reel tape recorder in the box,” she said.

She remembered how Hendrix knelt near the stage, which was only a foot tall. Mitchell said, “All during the show, he kept twisting knobs. He was engineering it, I don’t know what he was controlling, volume?” Though Hendrix captured her show in front of an audience, Mitchell couldn’t help but perform to him during the set.

Four days after Hendrix recorded Mitchell, she released her debut album Song to a Seagull. David Crosby produced Mitchell at Sunset Sound in Hollywood. However, her debut sounds distant, with her performances slightly evaporating into the natural room ambiance of Crosby’s recording.

Front Row

But the Hendrix recording reveals Mitchell, then only 24, without much reverb. It’s not a hi-fi capture, but his proximity gives fans a glimpse of what it must have been like in the front row.

She tells the story of Hendrix fiddling with the knobs like a perfectionist. He wanted to get it right. And did. These recordings also provide a window into Jimi Hendrix the fan.

In his diary, Hendrix described Mitchell as a “fantastic girl with heaven words.”

Peridots and periwinkle blue medallions
Gilded galleons spilled across the ocean floor
Treasure somewhere in the sea and he will find where
Never mind their questions there’s no answer for

Photo by PoPsie Randolph/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images