This month's Uncut (Take 58, March 2002) magazine has a big article on CSNY in it. I haven't had a chance to read it all yet, but flicking through, I noticed there's a sub-article on Joni:
LADIES OF THE CANYON - CSNY AND CUPID'S ARROW "We've cancelled a lot of studio time because of women troubles," said Graham Nash. "Women are the most important thing in the world, next to music." For the world's hardest-lovin' supergroup, it was sometimes a tough price to pay. Uncut checks out two marrow-thrilling chanteuses... Joni Mitchell Dumped by The Byrds in 1967, David Crosby set sail in his beloved 60ft schooner, The Mayan, for Coconut Grove, Florida to revisit the scenes of his folkie days. One night, he stepped into the Gaslight South coffee house. "When I walked into that coffee house in Florida, man," Crosby tells Uncut, "Joni was singing one of those songs, you know, like 'Michael From The Mountains', 'Both Sides Now', one of those songs. And it just slapped me up against the back wall. I didn't even try to take a seat, I just leaned back against the wall and looked at her. I'd never heard anybody that good, playing tunings like that. I didn't know anybody who could write songs that well or sing like that and I immediately had a crush on her as well. She's still probably the best singer/songwriter in the world. She's as a good a poet as Dylan is, and 10 times the musician he'll ever be. Far more sophisticated than Dylan." Crosby brought her back to Los Angeles with him, producing her debut LP, Song To A Seagull, and they became lovers. When Graham Nash was taken ill at Crosby's house, Joni took him home for some TLC and romance blossomed. Crosby, a subscriber to the hippy ethic of 'non-ownership', poured his love into his other squeeze, Christine Hinton. Nash and Mitchell's love nest at the foot of Lookout Mountain in Laurel Canyon was immortalised in the former's "Our House" (the theme for Halifax's TV ads). In turn, Joni wrote the Nash-bound love ditty, "Willy", in 1969. Although inspired by Christine Hinton, Crosby admitted that his "Guinnevere" was partly for Joni. He later described life with her as "like falling into a cement mixer. She's a very turbulent girl."
