The shocking reason Joni Mitchell and Neil Young were banned from this music festival-Brooke Ivey Johnson-Entertainment – Metro

Joni Mitchell said she and Neil Young were banned from Mariposa music festival (Picture: United Artists/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)

An artist is rarely punished for having too many fans, but that’s precisely what happened to Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. 

Both artists are among the greatest singer-songwriters of all time and have drawn enormous crowds throughout their long careers, which ultimately kept them from playing one iconic festival.

Mitchell, 80, has received eleven Grammy awards since the 1960s and is often credited with redefining the folk genre, opening it up to mainstream fans – but one Mariposa Folk Festival missed out on the opportunity to be a bigger part of her legendary rise to fame. 

In the mid-1960s, Mitchell had already cemented herself as a fixture of the folk circuit in her home country of Canada, despite not having yet released an album. 

She landed her first big gig at the festival in 1965 – two years before her eponymous album earned her a legion of fans. 

The festival was founded in 1961 in Orillia, Ontario and focuses on Canadian artists and folk culture. The inaugural event featured all Canadian performers, a legacy the festival has tried to stay true to over the years.

Mitchell said the festival ‘resented our success’ (Picture: Getty Images)

While it seems intuitive that booking Joni Mitchell before she was one of the biggest names in music would be something any festival would tout at every opportunity, Mariposa took a surprising stance on Mitchell after her debut appearance there. 

Mitchell said the festival turned on her in the following years, ‘banning’ her and Neil Young, now 78. 

In a news conference via the Calgary Herald Mitchell said that the Mariposa organisers ‘copped an attitude.’

Mitchell often had a fraught relationship with her homeland of Canada throughout her career (Picture: Dick Barnatt/Redferns)

‘They didn’t want anybody with too much drawing power at a certain point,’ she continued, ‘And Neil and I got banned.’

In the years that followed her initial appearance at Mariposa, Mitchell played three Newport Folk Festival slots in as many years and went on to make some of the most beloved folk albums of all time, including Blue, an album widely considered one of the best of all time. 

Young and Mitchell are considered among the most iconic folk musicians of all time(Picture: Lester Cohen/WireImage)

Never intending to abandon Canada for the folk circuits of America, Mitchell largely shied away from Canadian festivals thanks to her negative experience with Mariposa. Some fans have speculated that the festival turned its back on her because she wasn’t ‘Canadian enough.’

The festival begrudgingly had her back in 1969, but Mitchell never felt welcome there, nor did Young, who played at the festival in 1972. 

‘They resented our success,’ Mitchell said. 

It wasn’t the only encounter with Canadian resentment Mitchell experienced in her career, with fans from her home country often making their belief that she had sold out to American audiences clear. 

Mariposa Folk Festival is an iconic staple of Canadian folk music culture (Picture: Getty Images)

She imitated the kind of Canadians who often approached her with critical comments to the Calgary Herald: ‘”What side of the border didja write that song on, eh?” I say, “Well, did you like it?” You know, Bryan Adams called me up a while back. The heat was on him with this Canadian content thing, and he was being persecuted for recording elsewhere.’

“He called me for assistance, and I couldn’t think of anything to say at the time. I came up with an analogy later on. What if the Dutch went through the Van Gogh museum and said, “Oh, we can’t hang that here because he painted it in (France)?”’

Mitchell shied away from Canadian festivals after her experience with Mariposa (Picture: Tony Russell/Redferns)

Indeed, Mitchell often had a fraught relationship with her home country and even her hometown of Saskatoon.

Saskatoon Star Phoenix reporter John Gormley once put it well, saying that the town and Mitchell were ‘star-crossed lovers, each wanting to do the right thing, reaching out but saying the wrong thing, second guessing, keeping track of slights and eventually no one can remember how things got so screwed up.’

While it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact moment this friction began, it’s not a stretch to speculate it may have begun when Mariposa first turned its back on Mitchell and made her feel unwelcome in the music scene of her own country.

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