http://jonimitchell.com/chronology/details.cfm?id=1757 - pic at site.
at the event after the Star unveiling in Toronto:
It's time for the evening's first surprise guest: Brent introduces Gordon Lightfoot, who receives a warm welcome from the crowd as he approaches the stage for what sounds to me like a stream-of-consciousness talk about the old days. He thinks back to the Detroit of his 1965 memories, when "Joan and Chuck Mitchell were at the Chess Mate and Gordon Lightfoot was at the Living End which was sort of over on the other side of town, not too far away, and they came in and they brought Tom Rush in with them to the Living End, and invited us back to the apartment, which was situated, say, a couple miles west of the core of the city of Detroit, between a college campus and an art museum, and it was a fifth floor walkup, there was no elevator or anything of that kind and we used to carry the guitars up and down and all that sort of stuff... and she got Tom Rush to play one of her selections -- he played 'Urge For Going,' and I knew right at that instant that I had heard a quality song, and the guitar was then passed to Joni and she gave us a version of what she then called 'Clouds,' which later became 'Both Sides Now'... and I said there's another quality song... I had, made a deal in New York, and Chuck and Joni were searchingand looking for some kind of a way to get these songs onto record, and Chuck was very supportive of Joni's material too, but the, unfortunately, the cookie didn't crumble somewhere along the line, if I may be so crude. Joni was out on her own, back about 1967... from that point on, I can tell you a couple real good memories, the art museum was one of 'em, the artistic climate where she was... used to take us to have brunch at this art museum in Detroit, an experience which I will never forget, I remember being over there one time with Richie Havens when you and Chuck were out of town playing over at Omaha [Does anybody out there know if Joni ever played in Omaha, or did I hear wrong?] and you had loaned me the apartment for four days -- do you remember that? -- I was playing The Living End, and back in those days you know it was like Beatles, Beatles, Beatles."
"Joni and I were survivors of a dying era... tellin' ya something, it was a time when the folk revival took place, starting around 1960, and when the Beatles came out it cooled out considerably right then... we'd always have the Beatles in our faces constantly, there would be a Beatles album. You'd work for another year, you'd have an album all ready to go and there would be another Beatles album. We were label mates at Warner Bros. Reprise and would compare notes, we'd meet fom time to time when Joni came to town..."
Joel Bernstein appears on the screen
Photo: Sal Micciche (original photographer unknown)
Lightfoot went on to say that he thought "Tom Rush's early covers of Joni's songs were fantastic, as were Dave Van Ronk's and Buffy St. Marie's, and several others, people used to come through town and play at the Chess Mate and after that she went to New York and then she went to LA and I didn't see her till Rolling Thunder in 1975 and we got to hang out a bit more then, and I don't think I've seen her since 1976 and I'm real happy to see her tonight."
Gord salutes Joni Mitchell - Oct.2001 - Walk of Fame Star in Toronto
