Poet, composer, painter - Joni Mitchell started out 37 years ago as a high soprano with an acoustic guitar. But, as she would be the first to tell you, she is no folksinger. A complex songwriter and imaginative guitarist, she has produced an infuential, remarkable body of work that includes 21 albums, among them collaborations with Wayne Shorter and Charles Mingus; she has also had a retrospective of her paintings in her native Saskatoon, won five Grammy awards, and received a 1997 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that she refused to attend. A chain-smoker who rails at the dimished standards of today's pop culture, Mitchell is a wicked mimic and says that reading Nietzsche makes her smile. Her next project: two albums of her own songs with a symphony orchestra. At our cover shoot, when a nearly breathless Maxwell told her how much her music meant to his life, she stared at him for a minute, smiled, and said "Well then, give me a hug."

The Boston Globe later commented on this photograph:

It's always peculiar to see a dozen or so musicians from different eras and genres, most of them cover-worthy by themselves, all gathered together for the fold-out front of Vanity Fair's Music Issue. The star wattage is blinding, the posing is painfully precise, and you can't help but wonder about the long day of the shoot, with Beck mingling with Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott while David Bowie makes sure the pancake reaches the bottom of his cleavage. You just know the chain-smoking Joni Mitchell flicked an ash or two at Jewel, one of the sort of early-Joni imitators whom she has so openly scorned. And standing on the sidelines would be Emmylou Harris, with her cowpoke jeans and her fabulous gray mane.