Legend

Joni Mitchell's songs have soundtracked our lives and her pioneering work changed music forever. Jesca Hoop explores her extraordinary story to reveal the life behind the legend.

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Episodes

6. Both Sides Now

Legend is a new music biography series from BBC Radio 4 exploring the extraordinary life stories of pioneering artists who changed music forever. In the final episode, we hear how Joni comes full circle. She reunites with the daughter she gave up for adoption, retires then returns to music, suffers from and then recovers from a near-fatal brain aneurysm, all those years after contracting and surviving polio. With the love and support of a community of musicians, Joni once again returns to the st...

Dec 07, 2023•29 min

5. Dog Eat Dog

Joni Mitchell’s songs have soundtracked our lives and her pioneering work changed music forever. Jesca Hoop explores her extraordinary story to reveal the life behind the legend. In episode five, we hear how meeting a towering figure of jazz leads to a new collaboration, but Joni's hopes for a hit are unfulfilled. As the 1980s arrive, Joni continues to experiment with new sounds, but discovers the cost of being a middle-aged woman in pop. This is the decade of new politics and new love, hard kno...

Nov 30, 2023•29 min

4. Refuge of the Roads

Joni Mitchell’s songs have soundtracked our lives and her pioneering work changed music forever. Jesca Hoop explores her extraordinary story to reveal the life behind the legend. In episode four we follow Joni from 1974 through to 1978. In 1974 Court and Spark is released to huge acclaim but already Joni is heading in new directions musically. This is the era of The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. Through '74 and '75 she tours extensively and joins Bob Dylan's R...

Nov 23, 2023•32 min

3. Blue

Joni Mitchell’s songs have soundtracked our lives and her pioneering work changed music forever. Jesca Hoop explores her extraordinary story to reveal the life behind the legend. In episode three we follow Joni from 1970 through to 1974 - an incredibly fertile period during which she creates her albums Blue, For the Roses and Court and Spark. A period of romantic highs and lows, heady successes and hermit-like retreats, of psychoanalysis and vulnerability, and of new creative directions. “I’ve a...

Nov 16, 2023•31 min

2. Lady of the Canyon

Joni Mitchell’s songs have soundtracked our lives and her pioneering work changed music forever. Jesca Hoop explores her extraordinary story to reveal the life behind the legend. In episode two we follow Joni from 1964 through to late 1969. Joni makes a 'bad marriage', signs adoption papers, leaves a bad marriage, makes it to Greenwich Village and then to LA's Laurel Canyon. We find out about the inspiration for some of her best known songs, including Little Green and Both Sides Now. In 1968, he...

Nov 09, 2023•31 min

1. Urge for Going

Joni Mitchell’s songs have soundtracked our lives and her pioneering work changed music forever. Jesca Hoop explores her extraordinary story to reveal the life behind the legend. In the first episode, we hear how young Joni loves to watch the trains go by from the window of her house in a Saskatchewan prairie town. Even as a child, there is a desire to see what's around the next bend. She's a tomboy and an athlete, until polio forces her into a period of convalescence; she's no longer picked fir...

Nov 02, 2023•30 min

Introducing Legend: The Joni Mitchell Story

How did the greats become the greats? And what did it cost them to get there? Legend is a musician biography series from BBC Radio 4 exploring the life and music of the pioneering artists who shaped modern music. Series one tells the story of Joni Mitchell and explores her incomparable body of work – from her earliest home recordings to masterpieces like Blue, Court and Spark, and Hejira. It’s a story that takes us from the remote prairie towns of Saskatchewan to the bohemian idyll of Laurel Can...

Oct 26, 2023•3 min

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