Joni Mitchell has made her voice heard in the upcoming US election, responding: “Fuck Donald Trump!” to an audience member who yelled an insult about the Republican presidential candidate.
“I love that song,” Mitchell continued – presumably a reference to the 2016 YG song FDT.
Performing her first headline concert in Los Angeles in 24 years on Saturday, Mitchell, 80, said: “Everybody get out and vote. This is an important one. I wish I could vote – I’m Canadian. I’m one of those lousy immigrants.”
Mitchell’s comments came after she performed the political title track of her 1985 album Dog Eat Dog for the first time since its year of release. In the song she sings of: “Holy hope in the hands of / Snakebite evangelists and racketeers / And big wig financiers.” After the latter line, she ad libbed “like Donald Trump.”
At the self-styled “Joni Jam”, across two nights at the Hollywood Bowl, Mitchell performed with musicians including Brandi Carlile, Wendy & Lisa, Allison Russell, Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Marcus Mumford, Annie Lennox – on Ladies of the Canyon – Jacob Collier and Jon Batiste.
She also gave newer songs their live debut, with If I Had a Heart, from 2007’s Shine, and The Sire of Sorrow, from 1994’s Turbulent Indigo: the former castigates “Holy war / Genocide / Suicide”, while the latter speaks of losing “all taste for life”.
The concerts come two years after Mitchell’s surprise appearance at the 2022 Newport folk festival – her return to live performance after experiencing a brain aneurysm in 2015 that left her unable to speak or walk.
She also covered Elton John’s I’m Still Standing – but remained seated throughout the concert, and changed a line accordingly: “I’m still sitting after all this time,” she sang.
Mitchell’s last original album was Shine; she is in the midst of an archival reissues project highlighting remastered and unreleased material, the last of which was The Asylum Albums (1976-1980), released in June.