David Crosby On Dating Joni Mitchell And Publicly Breaking Off With Him

He’s “Grateful” For The Time He Spent With Her

It was in 1967 when David Crosby first saw Joni Mitchell, as she was performing at a club in Coconut Grove, Florida. He brought her to Los Angeles and essentially helped kick off her music career, and he even helped produce her debut album. Of course it wasn’t long before they began dating and she was propelled to superstardom. (bromebirdcare.com)

In a recent appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Crosby talked about dating her and how she dumped him.

“In all fairness, Joni was so talented that I think it would have happened anyway,” he declared.

Asked how it was like dating someone as talented as Mitchell, Crosby said: “Do I think it’s hard? Listen, imagine if you wrote a song—a really good song—and you sang it to her when she came home, and then she sang you three better songs she wrote last night.”

And maybe it came as no surprise that she wrote him a breakup song titled “That Song About the Midway” and performed it in front of him and their friends at Peter Tork’s house.

“She said ‘I’ve got a new song,’” he recalled. “She sits down to sing it and it was plainly a goodbye to me—and then she sang it again.”

She sang it twice just in case he didn’t get it the first time.