{"id":403669,"date":"2026-01-10T07:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T07:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/403669\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T07:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T07:05:10","slug":"the-stars-who-inspired-joni-mitchell-to-pose-nude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/403669\/","title":{"rendered":"The stars who inspired Joni Mitchell to pose nude"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Joni<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Tidal)<\/p>\n

Sat 10 January 2026 2:30, UK <\/p>\n

Fresh off the stark, romantic confessionals that haunt 1971\u2019s Blue, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell<\/a> leaned into her cynical side for the follow-up LP For the Roses.<\/p>\n

A fatigue with the music industry was slapped all over its initial front cover. Later used for the billboard poster promotion, Mitchell drew an ink and felt pen, psychedelic doodle of a horse\u2019s backside with roses shoved in its arse and a goldfish bowl for a knee on the right leg, a likely reference to her high school poem \u2018The Fishbowl\u2019 she dreamed up as an exploration of fame and celebrity.<\/p>\n

While nicely anchored to For the Roses\u2019 show business-bashing title track, Mitchell\u2019s Asylum record label wasn\u2019t keen, however, eager for her face to feature somewhere on the cover. In response, Mitchell submitted a nude landscape shot from behind by photographer Joel Bernstein, gazing out across Canada\u2019s Sunshine Coast shoreline in British Columbia near her Halfmoon Bay cottage. Label boss David Geffen still wasn\u2019t convinced, pointing out she was unlikely to appreciate \u201cOnly $4.99\u2033 stickered across her arse.<\/p>\n

Around the time of Mitchell\u2019s fifth album, the sexual revolution that exploded across the counterculture soon became co-opted by the commercial world into the 1970s, Mitchell presaging such a shift with her wry yet natural embrace of nudity away from the leering gaze of male ogling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember when [this sexualisation] was kind of starting,\u201d Mitchell remembered in a 2022 Apple Music interview with Elton John, before citing various photos Linda Ronstadt and Carly Simon had taken part in, revealing a more sexual side than had been seen yet at the time. \u201cI thought, \u2018Oh God, do we gotta do this?\u2019 So I just decided to be naked on my record and get it over with.\u201d<\/p>\n

The photos referenced are, in fact, after For the Roses\u2019 photo shoot. Both handled by Norman Seeff, Ronstadt posed for several images in a more intimate and vulnerable guise before her underwear shoots for Rolling Stone magazine in 1978, and Seeff\u2019s snaps of Simon would adorn the cover of Playing Possum, released in 1975. But while the distances of time may have blurred exact chronologies, Mitchell\u2019s antenna back well over 50 years ago keenly picked up on the shifting sexual mores at play in the business, for good or ill.<\/p>\n

Eventually, a neutral shot of Mitchell fully clothed ahead of British Columbia\u2019s natural beauty was opted for instead, slipping the nude landscape in For the Roses\u2019 gatefold.<\/p>\n

A fairly staid cover considering the inspired illustrations that graced Song to a Seagull or Ladies of the Canyon<\/a>, but For the Roses\u2019 jump into the world of objectified sex was poked fun at in a way completely in keeping with the album\u2019s lambast of music\u2019s pull away from the previous decade\u2019s utopian promise and into the crasser ends of music commercialism.<\/p>\n

As ever during her classic era, Mitchell had struck gold once again, offering the folk music world another much-loved record that\u2019s continued to rank highly among critical and fan rankings, enthralled with For the Roses\u2019 jazzy resistance to the era\u2019s shallow excesses.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Tidal) Sat 10 January 2026 2:30, UK Fresh off the stark, romantic confessionals that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,214316,134,2263,27339],"class_list":{"0":"post-403669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-carly-simon","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-joni-mitchell","13":"tag-linda-ronstadt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}