Joni Mitchell picks her favourite Greenwich Village artists

I’m talking about The Beatles playing inside the damp walls of Liverpool’s Cavern Club, or maybe The Clash in The 100 Club in 1970s London. But perhaps some of the most iconic of all, across the entire world and its rich musical history, are the string of gigs that happened in New York’s Greenwich Village in the mid-1960s. 

Nestled in a pocket of Manhattan’s Lower West Side was one of the most era-defining movements of history. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez led this new pioneering movement, inside the walls of Gerde’s Folk City and Cafe Wha?, which represented more than just bricks and mortar. These were, and still are, cultural institutions whose creative impact still ripples through the waves of contemporary music. 

It has inspired a host of iconic artists to pick up a guitar and begin writing their own songs, and there are perhaps none quite as important as Joni Mitchell. As she beat an artistic path from Canada, down to the southern parts of America in the 1960s, she would have done so with the work of Dylan, Pete Seeger and even her future partner, Leonard Cohen, ringing in her ear. 

But it was Dylan, who arguably inspired her most from that movement. His music helped forge a path for musicians like Mitchell to follow, where a myriad of lyrical ideas were given license to exist on the palette of conventional pop music, to allow the deeply literary mind of Mitchell to flourish in this new world of sentient songwriting.

“‘Positively 4th St.’ that had the most influence on me,” Mitchell explained. “I remember thinking as I heard it for the first time, ‘I guess we can write about anything now—any feeling.’ As I reviewed it for this collection, though, I found it a little too grumpy for my current state of mind and so I chose this one.”

But, alongside Dylan’s genius was Buffy Sainte-Marie, whose more considered approach to songwriting struck a chord with Mitchell.

“Her songs were so smart, so well-crafted, and her performances were stunning. She was different from the stereotypical music industry old boys’ club,” Mitchell explained, adding, “Buffy really helped me at the beginning: before I was well-known, she performed songs I wrote, bringing them to a wider audience, and she played my tape for anyone who would listen.”

There was something more tangible about Sainte-Marie’s presence that felt attainable for a young Mitchell, and ultimately it helped strengthen her desire to be a strong female voice in this otherwise masculine space. The Greenwich Village scene often leaves Sainte-Marie’s name in the shadows when discussing its cultural importance, but Mitchell refuses to let it happen, as she continuously attributes her own greatness back to her.

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