Young Joni Mitchell Performs a Hit-Filled Concert in London (1970)

It’s hard to imag­ine the young lady seen per­form­ing her own songs on the BBC in the video above twerk­ing or even tweet­ing, for that mat­ter. The utter­ly unadorned qual­i­ty of this per­for­mance suits the now-leg­endary puri­ty of her youth­ful voice.

Woe, the dele­te­ri­ous effects of her long­time cig­a­rette habit.

Now, back to 1970, when just shy of 27, Joni Mitchell played a hit-filled set to a British stu­dio audi­ence, despite a “lit­tle Lon­don flu” she alludes to more than once.

If it seemed unpre­ten­tious at the time, it’s even more so now, nary a laser beam or back up dancer in sight. No cos­tume changes. Bare­ly any make­up. Just Joni, her gui­tar, her piano, and a nifty cus­tom dul­cimer made by “a dyna­mite girl who lives in Cal­i­for­nia.”

Pass­ing the time as she tunes this last instru­ment, she men­tions that the upcom­ing song, “Cal­i­for­nia,”con­cerns an adven­ture to which she’d recent­ly treat­ed her­self. She’d writ­ten it before her return, as a sort of post­card home. Mean­ing that that park bench in Paris, France was bare­ly cold! This is way more excit­ing to me than a bevy of hair exten­sions, served with a prac­ticed snarl and a side of auto tune.

A girl­ish gig­gle and dig­ni­fied bow seal the deal. Classy!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Clas­sic Per­for­mances of Joni Mitchel­l’s “Both Sides Now” & “The Cir­cle Game” (1968)

The Music, Art, and Life of Joni Mitchell Pre­sent­ed in a Superb 2003 Doc­u­men­tary

James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell, Live and Togeth­er (1970)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday