After this memorable evening, I went back of course to applaud Joni Mitchell at the Casino de Paris for her second Parisian date. This time seated upstairs in the middle of the balcony, much further from the stage. In terms of the artist's performance, the concert was as dazzling as the previous one, and I particularly remember A Case Of You (Blue, 1971) performed by Joni Mitchell without her band, alone with a dulcimer on her knees. I have kept in mind this iconic image of Joni Mitchell, lost on a stage completely plunged in darkness, except for a circle of light that enveloped her silhouette, accompanying herself with her instrument and offering a poignant version of her celebrated composition. A great moment of a quite rare emotion. For the anecdote, in the interval between the two Parisian concerts, I had the surprise to receive a phone call from the French journalist Jacques Vassal, a great specialist in Pop and Folk music who at the time officiated -among other publications- for the French Music Magazine Rock n’ Folk. Jacques Vassal was one of the rare few who wrote with talent on Joni Michell’ work, and I archived most of his articles dealing with her. Because in the early 1980s, articles about Joni Mitchell in the French press were rare, insofar as the Canadian musician has never been really popular to the French mainstream audience -even in the Seventies… - a tendency which unfortunately worsened when the tasteless gravediggers of the Seventies -a.k.a. the disastrous Eighties- accelerated the premature retirement of the Seventies' pop stars.
Joni Mitchell was not the only one to be ignored by the French public. Paris remained the only city where someone like Elton John, simultaneously with his sensational debut across the Channel and the Atlantic, was greeted for his first appearance on a French stage by whistles and tomatoes when he opened for Sergio Mendez in 1970, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. I also remember an anecdote from the Eighties : I was attending a party with friends, and as we talked about music, I mentioned enthusiastically Joni Mitchell's upcoming concerts in Paris.