Legendary singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell has said she is “trying” to quit the music business to help out sufferers of Morgellons disease – an illness she first publicly admitted to having in 2010.
“Two nights ago, I went out for the first time since Dec. 23: I don’t look so bad under incandescent light, but I look scary under daylight,” she said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
“In America, the Morgellons is always diagnosed as “delusion of parasites,” and they send you to a psychiatrist,” she added later. “I’m actually trying to get out of the music business to battle for Morgellons sufferers to receive the credibility that’s owed to them.”
Mitchell has had an illustrious career beginning in the late 1960s folk scene. Her 1971 album Blue is considered to be one of the great masterpieces of folk music.
Throughout her career she has performed with a number of people and became immersed in the Laurel Canyon scene which was taking place in the Hollywood Hills.
During the interview she surprised fans by slagging off Bob Dylan and accusing Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane) and Janis Joplin of sleeping with their whole bands..
“You were born Roberta Joan Anderson, and someone named Bobby Zimmerman became Bob Dylan,” performance artist John Kelly (who is the creator of a Joni Mitchell tribute show and was also being interviewed with the singer).
“Bob is not authentic at all,” Mitchell rebutted. “He’s a plagiarist and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.”
“As for my name, my parents wanted a boy, so they called me Robert John,” she explained. “When I came out a girl, they just added two letter A’s to that. Then I married Chuck Mitchell; I wanted to keep my maiden name – I had a bit of a following as Joni Anderson – but he wouldn’t let me.”
The interview can be read in full here.
John Kelly, who was also in the interview, is the star of Paved Paradise: The Art of Joni Mitchell where he dresses as Mitchell and performs her songs.
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