I've seen a lot here about Joni's relationship with JT, but not much about her fling with Jackson Browne. Maybe I've just missed it. Here's a bit I stumbled on today that I found interesting, since we were playing the "who's it about" game with Trouble Child...its an excerpt from "Jackson Browne - The Story of a Hold Out" by Rich Wiseman, this is from Chapter 5"
"About the time Browne was forging his partnership with Lindley, a relationship of a different kind was coming to a reportedly painful close for him: his romance with Joni Mitchell. Browne had not been publicly forthcoming on details of his relationship with Mitchell when they were doing well together (Meltzer claims that Browne requested that he not mention Mitchell by name in his article, even though, Meltzer asserts, "he spoke about Joni...the way he spoke about Nico: 'Lucky me. I've got another wonderful, beautiful, creative person. I can't believe it"'). When their relationship was on the skids he was tight-lipped even with old friend Steve Noonan. Explains Noonan, who had kept in periodic contact with Browne despite the fact that he had married and moved up north near Santa Cruz in 1970: "I remember saying to Jackson, 'Gee, tell me about Joni Mitchell,' and him saying, 'I don't want to talk about it."' Pamela Polland, in touch with both Browne and Mitchell at the time, describes the relationship as seemingly ideal for Jackson but, in fact, ultimately overwhelming: "With Joni it was again the thing where she embodied all the things that he was in the process of developing. He was also in the process of developing them, but she was ahead of him. She'd certainly been involved in the music business longer. She had a more deep-rooted awareness of the business...a popularity that couldn't be denied, that is attractive in itself; and a strong devotion to her own artistry. And I think that he---whether it be conscious or subconscious---felt that there would be a lot of mutual creativity that they could do. "Unfortunately it became conflicting. And then, beyond the conflict, the even more unfortunate thing is that it became too heavy for Jackson to be with someone who was so much more prolific than he. She was creative in so many ways, and it came out of her so easily, that to face his own struggle with his craft, his own slowness with his craft---to have those two mirrored against each other---I think was very painful for him." Like Jackson, Mitchell has never commented on their relationship in an interview. In her songwriting of that period, however, she may have had her say. In "Lesson in Survival," on her For the Roses LP released in the fall of 1972, she tells her "sweet tumbleweed" how the close scrutiny from his friends crimps her free-spirited style, how she yearns for quiet, flowing times together with him. Her anxiety over their relationship, meanwhile, reveals itself during a visit with a friend, when she turns, suddenly, into "heavy company." When he heard the song guitarist Albert Lee couldn't help but flash back to the time he'd used that particular term with them...and Joni Mitchell's reaction: "She giggled and said, 'Oh, that's a good line!"' Further, Lee comments, "I just got the impression from that song that she was writing about their visit to my house...[and that] she was talking about her relationship with him." Bob NP: Patrick Simmons, "If You Want A Little Love"
