Joni Mitchell: I was what was known as a "late Dylan fan". At one time I was almost anti-Dylan, and I made a lot of enemies going around saying it... I thought he was putting me on, I couldn't accept him. It's a trait of mine. I used to be more outspoken; now I'm more noncommittal until I really figure out what they are saying. The thing was I shared no experience with Dylan at that time, so the thing was, I thought that a lot of his stuff. . . the things I thought were ambiguous and were not written honestly, I find out now were just the things I had no idea of at the time. So as I experience some of his experiences, or bring some of my experiences to his music. . . it's like I always thought Shakespeare was really wordy and weird, right until I went to Stratford and saw a man who recited Shakespeare like it was really 20th century. It lost all that super-drama stuff that really turned me off, and it flowed like 20th century English, and I understood it. So it's the same thing with Dylan; now every time I listen to him, the things that I thought were just words for word's sake make sense to me.
by Sankey Phillips and Dave Wilson
ZigZag (Magazine)
February 1977
Photo By Joel Bernstein