Against this backdrop, Mitchell decided to head for Europe, where she travelled around Greece, Spain and France. Her intense love affair with Graham Nash, which had coincided with an accelerated spurt of productivity from both parties, was nearing its end, resulting in a series of petty squabbles. There were major upheavals in Mitchell’s private life, too. Not for nothing did David Geffen once tell her: “You’re the only star I ever met that wanted to be ordinary.” Mitchell came to despise show business, declaring fame “a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name”. Now that the “black limousine” and “velvet curtain calls” of “For Free” had narrowed into the reality of her own life, she needed to regain her peripheral vision, restore a degree of clarity. In many ways, it signalled the start of Mitchell’s conflicted relationship between art and celebrity. I like to live, be on the streets, to be in a crowd…” “A certain amount of success cuts you off in a lot of ways. “I was being isolated, starting to feel like a bird in a gilded cage,” she explained to Rolling Stone’s Larry LeBlanc. Having finished Ladies Of The Canyon in 1970, she vowed to take a year off, ostensibly to recharge her jaded batteries, but also to escape what she felt was an increasing sense of claustrophobia. Clouds had gone gold and brought with it a level of popular appeal that took away some of her everyday liberties. Commercial success didn’t sit easy with Joni Mitchell.
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