Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell obviously are widely considered two of the all-time greatest and most influential singer/songwriters. Dylan and Mitchell also have expressed great admiration for each other’s work, although Joni has been quite critical of Bob at times as well.
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In addition, both have been known to be widely unpredictable and opinionated.
In a 2000 interview with Hot Press magazine, Mitchell admitted that she wasn’t impressed with Dylan’s early work, because she felt he was copying Woody Guthrie. The turning point for Joni was when she heard Bob’s 1965 song “Positively Fourth Street.”
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, you can write about anything in songs,” she told Hot Press. “It was like a revelation to me.”
Then, in a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mitchell said, “We are like night and day, [Dylan] and I. Bob is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception.”
Dylan’s Comments About Mitchell
Dylan, meanwhile, admitted in a 1978 interview with New Musical Express that he was inspired by Joni’s 1971 album Blue when he wrote his classic song “Tangled Up in Blue.”
“Blue … affected me,” he said. “I couldn’t get it out of my head. It just stayed in my head.”
Then in a 1987 Rolling Stone interview, Dylan said that Mitchell was “almost like a man,” with regard to how she doesn’t necessarily use her sexuality to gain attention as a performer, unlike, as he apparently felt, many other female music artists did.
He added, “I love Joni … [but she’s] got a strange sense of rhythm that’s all her own, and she lives on that timetable. Joni Mitchell is in her own world all by herself, so she has a right to keep any rhythm she wants.”
Have Dylan and Mitchell Performed Together?
Over the years, Dylan and Mitchell have only occasionally performed onstage together. Joni was a featured performer at some concerts during Dylan’s 1975-1976 Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
Dylan also made a surprise appearance at a Mitchell concert in Austin, Texas, in January 1976. In November ’76, both Bob and Joni performed at The Band’s historic farewell concert, “The Last Waltz,” in San Francisco.
The two also performed together in May 1994 at the Aoniyoshi Festival in Nara, Japan. The show, which was part of the Great Music Experience event organized by UNESCO, featured a finale performance of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released.” Both Joni and Bob took part in the performance.
In 1998, Dylan and Mitchell also hit the stage together when they played a series of joint concerts with Van Morrison.
Dylan and Mitchell Each Have Covered One Song by the Other
It’s clear that Dylan and Mitchell have an appreciation for each other’s songwriting talents. Interestingly, during their long careers, each has only recorded one song written by the other.
In 1973, Dylan released a cover of one of Joni’s signature tunes, “Big Yellow Taxi.” Bob’s breezy rendition of the tune appeared on the compilation album Dylan, which was made up of outtakes from sessions for this 1970 studio albums Self Portrait and New Morning.
Mitchell’s original version appeared on her 1970 studio effort, Ladies of the Canyon.
Joni, meanwhile, recorded a version of Bob’s classic 1965 song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” during the sessions for her 1991 album Night Ride Home. Mitchell’s cover wasn’t released until 2003, though, when it was included as a bonus track on her box set, The Complete Geffen Recordings.
(Photo by Jay Dickman/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images; Photo by Ron Pownall/Getty Images)
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