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Sun 18 October 2026 8:55, UK
Joni Mitchell has never been afraid to speak her mind, a quality that has defined both her outspoken personality and the uncompromising honesty of her music.
Mitchell has never shied away from challenging opinions she disagrees with or criticising figures whom others regard as untouchable. However, her outspoken views are rarely without reason, often stemming from unpleasant personal experiences with the very people she has criticised.
One of these men that Mitchell didn’t view with particular fondness was John Lennon, who, just like Mitchell, was an unflinchingly direct soul. He’d express his emotions with blunt honesty and wear his feelings openly for all to see.
So, when these two formidable forces of nature crossed paths, they were either going to become kindred spirits or adversaries. While some of the strongest friendships can arise from initial hostility, this wasn’t the case for Lennon and Mitchell. Despite their shared passion for music, which had initially brought them together, in Mitchell’s view, their vastly different worlds created a divide too significant for them to bridge.
While they didn’t move in the same circles or spend much time together, Mitchell left their first encounter certain they would never be friends. The meeting came about during Lennon’s ‘Lost Weekend’ in the 1970s, when his life was in freefall. However, the circumstantial behavioural context didn’t mean that Mitchell was prepared to cut him some slack for critiquing her work and offering unsolicited advice.
It was a tumultuous 18-month period in which he and Yoko Ono separated and began having an affair with their assistant, May Pang. He was drinking to excess under the tutelage of Harry Nilsson and abusing drugs, leaving the former Beatle as a shell of his former self. His behaviour towards Mitchell was an indictment of his current state of affairs.
Credit: Far Out / Alamy
In contrast, Mitchell was thriving creatively and in the middle of making her masterpiece, Court and Spark, in the same studio that Lennon was using, which brought them face-to-face. “When I met John Lennon, it was during his lost year in LA y’know, and he came up to me to say, ‘Oh it’s all a product of overeducation, you want a hit, don’t you?’” she later said, in her best Scouse impression.
Mitchell continued, “I was cutting Court and Spark; he was cutting across the hall, so I played him something from Court and Spark. He said, ‘You want a hit, don’t you? Put some fiddles on it! Why do you always let other people have your hits for you, y’know?’”
Lennon’s comment referred to Mitchell allowing Collins to record a version of ‘Be Here Now’ before the original was released. However, unlike Lennon, Mitchell never cared for chasing the next hit and instead preferred to focus on creating her next song.
Years later, during an interview with Maclean’s Magazine in 2014, Mitchell claimed that she believed her middle-class upbringing made Lennon combative towards her. “That’s a class difficulty he had. He’s a working-class lad,” Mitchell explained.
Adding, “I’m sure he had that same fight with George Martin because he was afraid that he was betraying his class. I know I’m going to get into hot water if I get into this but I have controversial opinions about him.”
“I watched this [film], which was a roundup of the best musicians of the 20th century,” Mitchell continued. “As soon as it hit my era, the intelligence of it dropped considerably. When it came to me, this guy folded his arms and crossed his feet and said, ‘I never liked Joni Mitchell—she’s too twee.’ Well, that’s what John Lennon was like. It was that fear working-class people have of middle-class people.”
Growing up in post-war Liverpool gave Lennon an underdog spirit, whereas he believed Mitchell had been handed everything on a silver platter. Yet, he didn’t know her whole story and the pain she suffered that made her the artist she became. Whether it’s her life-threatening battle with polio as a child or being forced to put her baby up for adoption to give it a better life, Mitchell’s life hasn’t been utopian.
On the other hand, Lennon was never given an opportunity to detail his version of events. Considering the amount of substances that he was taking at this time, perhaps that was why he came off as hostile or rude, rather than a desire to start a class war.
