By Gregg Shapiro
At 81 years old, all-around music legend Joni Mitchell may be more popular and famous now than at any
other point in her long and productive career. Feted and honored at multiple music tributes, returning to the stage for limited live performances, showered with glowing praise from a plethora of sources and the subject of an abundance of new books, including “Song So Wild and Blue” (Harper One, 2025) by gay writer Paul Lisicky. Subtitled “A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell,” Lisicky’s memoir interweaves
Mitchell music references and life events with his own experiences, illustrating her impact on his
personal and creative lives. Paul was kind enough to make time for an interview in advance of his book’s
February 2025 publication date.
Gregg Shapiro: Forgive me, Paul, but I want to begin with the most obvious question – your book “Song So Wild and Blue” – arrives a few months after Ann Powers’ book “Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell,” and in the same month as Henry Alford’s “I Dream of Joni.” Would you please say something about the Joni zeitgeist and the proximity of these books?
Paul Lisicky: The concept of the zeitgeist is funny to apply to Joni, in that most of her albums were written against the times, with the exception of “Court and Spark.” Folk music was long out of fashion by the time of her first three albums. “Blue” wasn’t recognized as the masterpiece it is until many years
later, and so many of her albums from “The Hissing of Summer Lawns” onward were met with indifference if not disdain. Throughout the late 1970s into the 1980s, she was thought to be irrelevant. The culture has been late to recognize her accomplishment. I just read that 68 books were published
about Leonard Cohen between 2014 and 2021: 19 in 2014 and 2015 alone, the year of his eightieth birthday. We’re just catching up with Joni. It’s interesting to me that the three books you mention all had to be underway before her 2022 appearance at the Newport Folk Festival. I don’t think anybody
ever expected Joni to perform again after her brain aneurysm in 2015. It’s common knowledge that she had to learn how to walk, talk, and sing again, and her comeback in her early 80s hamagnetic; how many times does an audience get to see a full on resurrection? There are plenty more books to come and the thought of that makes me very happy.
GS: Were you aware of Ann’s andmHenry’s books while writing
yours?
PL: No, not at all. I learned about Ann’s book after I’d turned mine in, the Henry Alford book this past
September. They’re all radically different projects and I was never concerned about overlap. Ann’s is as
much about the complexities of being a music critic as it is a Joni biography. Henry Alford’s is a collection of short essays prompted by 53 photographs of Joni. My book documents Joni’s influence on my creative life, all the ways I’ve internalized the lessons in those songs, from youth till now. It’s also
interested in thinking about her music from the perspective of a gay man, through an LGBTQ+ frame.
That hasn’t been much written about.
GS: In the opening section, “Down To You,” you wrote, “Every writer should begin with another art form – acting painting, sculpture – and use that as a point of comparison or departure.” Did your beginnings as a musician influence that train of thought?
PL: Oh, definitely. My work as a musician informs everything I write, whether it’s the shape of a sentence, a tonal shift, the pacing, the heightening of an image, or a word. A good song penetrates on multiple levels. It does something to our neural circuitry – it changes us. So how to bring that to the page? That’s been the challenge.
GS: In the “Stay In Touch” section, you wrote, “The transition from songwriting to fiction: Deep down under my skin, I knew it wasn’t as far as it seemed.” Does that mean that you feel that your songwriting and performing past prepared you for your life as a writer, one who does readings of his work?
PL: Giving a reading and singing before an audience has always felt like an identical experience to me.
My own lost life comes fully back to me when I’m standing at a microphone, reading from my work. I
think singers get to move their bodies more, but I’m probably doing that in my imagination [laughs]!
GS: Your partner Jude brackets the book, written about extensively in the first and final sections. How does he feel about being in the book?
PL: Jude came into my life just as the book was underway, and it’s as much a love letter to him as it is to Joni. He was by my side through all of it. He listened to me think about it, read early and late drafts, and offered suggestions on both a global and line level. He’s a brilliant reader and editor, has such good instincts about structure and cutting, and challenged me to push the book in more adventurous directions. But as to your question, I think you’d need to ask him.
GS: I love that you love Laura Nyro, too. More than any of the other Laurel Canyon women, I see more connection between Joni and Laura than the rest. Would you agree?
PL: Joni and Laura definitely took direction from each other – they were mutual fans; more collaborative
than competitive. You can hear Laura in the piano songs on “Blue,” especially the title song, as well as in
mid to later songs like “Paprika Plains,” “Last Chance Lost,” “Man from Mars,” and “Strong and Wrong.” And I can feel Joni’s influence all over Laura’s albums from “Smile” through “Mother’s Spiritual.” That shared fascination with unorthodox piano chords, art song, and a classical influence pulled up through the twentieth century into pop music. Not to mention a kind of unrestricted, feral emotion. Somewhere out there is a great photo of the two of them in conversation, cigarettes between their fingers, looking at each other with mischief and interest.
GS: Does your childhood friend Albert, about whom you wrote in the “Sweet Bird” section know he’s in the book?
PL: Albert died back in 1996, alas. If he were still around, I can imagine the two of us talking about that
passage, him saying, “Aww, look at us.” From a distance of decades, it’s clear that all the complexities of our friendship/relationship were brought on by the homophobia of the times and all the ways we’d taken that rebuke into ourselves.
GS: When you write about writing, in the Iowa chapter and the “Black Crow” sections, for example, your teacher voice comes through. Would you consider parts of “Songs So Wild and Blue” to be a cautionary tale for young writers?
PL: I hadn’t thought of it in that way, but that makes sense. My greater hope is that those sections inspire younger writers when it comes to the hard work of shaping a vision, a sound, a voice. That never
happens in isolation, but in conversation with other voices, in community. As to the challenges of
cultivating an audience? I think a number of my students are already pretty savvy about a lot
of that after having grown up with the thorns of social media.
GS: While I was reading your book, the latest book in the 33 1/3 series – Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love” – was delivered. Joni’s “Court and Spark” is #40 of 188 titles. If you could write about a Joni album for the series, which would it be?
PL: I know I’m cheating, but it would be a toss-up between “For the Roses” and “Hejira.” But to be
honest, I’ve been listening a lot to the later albums and I think I might learn more from getting deep into “Night Ride Home” or “Turbulent Indigo.”
GS: Have you seen the Kathy Bates interview in which she talks about her friendship with Joni?
PL: I first knew of that story through Taylor Goldsmith, but it was great to hear the story in Kathy Bates’ own voice. In short, Kathy Bates handed Joni her old guitar at one of the Joni Jams at her house. Joni started retuning it, and that was the mythic moment in which Joni came back to
performing her songs. The hilarious thing – and this I hadn’t heard before – is that Kathy Bates now wants her old guitar back [laughs]. Not sure if Joni has any idea!
GS: At the time this interview is taking place, the movie A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan is getting a lot of attention. Who do you think would be the perfect actor to play young Joni in a biopic?
PL: Ah, great question! It’s already known that Meryl Streep is set to play the older Joni in the Cameron
Crowe-directed movie coming out later this year. But the younger Joni has to be an unknown, and I’m
betting the role might be careerdefining.
GS: Have you started thinking about or writing your next book?
PL: Yes, I’m always working on something. I’ve been writing it since fall 2023 and it keeps changing shape as books do along the way.