I actually have that album (on vinyl, yes I'm old) Don't remember my feelings about it from back then, but yes, you have expressed well, how profound and relevant it is.

Please accept my apologies for sharing this story every time I see Joni Mitchell mentioned online.

Way back when, you could sometimes get tickets on the night of a concert by joining a long line at the box office.

A friend and I stood in the long line but our turn at the box office was just too late as the last available tickets had just been sold.

We were all asked to leave the area so the crowd slowly wandered away, but we passed this huge trailer with all kinds of sound equipment and monitors so, of course, we stopped and gathered around the open back of the trailer to see what was going on.

A short while later, we were, once again, asked to move on but before we dispersed, someone came out and said, "The artist said to let them stay."

We were all allowed to watch the entire concert on the monitors and hear it on the incredible sound equipment. Thank you, Joni Mitchell.

I'll add that to my "regrets."

When I was a performer, I used to doing renditions of many of her songs. The open guitar tunings were a revelation, I used to fart around with them for hours on end.

Thanks for the interesting story.

... musicians.

..."Both Sides Now" which wasn't, of course, her song, although for a while I think her version was more popular than Joni's. I did that one in an open tuning more generally known that Joni's tunings, which was convenient for a lot of Dylan songs as well.

I have to say I was never much involved with Leonard Cohen's music. I was a Dave Van Ronk kind of guy though, with smatterings of David Bromberg interpretations, for which I was never really good enough.

I rearranged Ellen McIlwaine's version of "Up from the Skies," and was inspired by one of her records to develop a very complex arrangement of "Ode to Billy Joe" in a minor tuning inspired, but not identical, to Joni's tuning in "Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire."

People liked that "Ode to Billy Joe" arrangement; people often asked me to play it after saying, sometimes, "You know, I never liked that song." I started saying that on stage in the introduction to it. I'd say, "People tell me all the time they never liked this song, but I'm going to play it anyhow."

I haven't picked up the guitars in more than five years. I'm kind of afraid to do it now, because it will hurt to realize what I lost to inattention. They lay around idle. I look at them sometimes and sigh.

I had other things to do.

... I discovered Judy Collins from a woman folk singer I knew, it was probably a year later before I heard Leonard Cohen sing it.