Sorry for those of you who get this twice I really shouldn't have had this labeled NJC
From Sundays Montreal Gazette - TV and Radio section: By Peggy Curran THE SAD SIDE OF BEING JONI MITCHELL On the weekend when a generation gathered on a New York farm for three days of peace, love and rock music, a disappointed young singer named Joni mitchell was stranded in a Manhattan hotel. The willowy blonde from Saskatoon was scheduled to make her first television appearance on the Dick Cavett Show (remember him?) that Monday.Her musical mentors-chief among them, a couple of guys named David Crosby and Graham Nash-feared she'd never make it out of the traffic and back to the city for her break-through gig. "The daddies wouldn't let me go," she recalls, with a wry nod to the obedient girl she once was. So Mitchell stayed behind, watched the news reports on television, and wrote Woodstock, the song that became an anthem for the music festival and the era's hippie ethic. Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now and Then, which airs in two parts on CBC's Life & Times beginning this Tuesday, is a revealing portrait of the artist who became one of the most accomplished singer/songwriters and musical stylists of her time. Unlike so many TV biographies with the subject's seal-of-approval, the two-hour film does not gloss over the dark patches in Mitchell's life. Instead, it explores the impact of lonely Prairie winters and childhood illness, an unplanned pregnancy and a disastrous early marriage on Mitchell's evolution as a writer, vocalist and musician. Produced and directed by Stephanie Bennett for Delilah Films, the documentary unveils a woman shaped by her times: the polio scare of the 1950's, the social strictures of the 1960s and the feminist consciousness-raising of the 1970s. Candid conversation with Mitchell is backed up by interviews with many of the people who helped shape her still-soaring career - Crosby, Nash, Tom Rush and Judy Collins, music-industry executive David Geffen and Cameron Crowe, the rock-music critic turned film director. Archival footage traces Mitchell's musical roots from Edith Piaf and juke-box jive to the coffee houses of Toronto, Detroit and Greenwich Village, where she fist began to get noticed, to recognition - as recent as this month's Grammy Awards - for her haunting lyrics and innovative musical techniques. Performances of several of her biggest hits, including Both Sides Now, The Circle Game, Chelsea Morning and Big Yellow Taxi complement Mitchell's reflections on her life and the difficult choices she made, including her reluctant and regretted decision to give up her only daughter for adoption. Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now and Then airs in two parts, Tuesday, March 26 and April 2 on Life & Times (CBMT-6 at 7).
