11 ms·

Joni Mitchell learned to play guitar again after a 2015 brain aneurysm

189 points by revorad 4y ago

mahathu 4y ago
Fascinating story. Pat Martino is another (jazz) guitarist who relearned to play after a brain injury
- rtsil 4y ago
  Joni Mitchell's story and Pat Martino's story are remarkably similar (brain aneurysm). The question is, did they regain access to the part of their brain that allowed them to play guitar, or did they really re-learn? In Martino's case, after his full amnesia, he was able to retrieve his unique playing style, but was that because he learned by listening to his recordings (just like Joni did), or because the style never left him but was somehow locked?
  - seanhunter 4y ago
    My understanding is Martino had to learn by listening to his old records
  - OJFord 4y ago
    Kind of interesting to imagine the motivation for the former, it's surely different to that which achieved it in the first place: 'I want to be who I was' or something, rather than 'this expresses who I am' or 'I like this sound' or whatever.
  - biggieshellz 4y ago
    Part of it was from listening to his own recordings, part of it was from discovering it inside his brain again. As Pat's aneurysm grew over time, it's likely that his brain had already somewhat remodeled to accommodate it. IIRC, in a TV show about it, they talked with one of his friends/students whom he would play guitar duos with. His friend was playing for Pat after the aneurysm (Pat wasn't back to playing yet) and the guy hit a wrong chord and Pat suddenly said "No, D minor 9th" and grabbed the guitar and played the right chord. Pat also tells a similar story about meeting Joe Pesci backstage and knowing him only from movies until Joe tells him, "I can tell you what you used to drink at Smalls' Paradise in the '60s". Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niUwDegpYyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niUwDegpYyo
- paradygm 4y ago
  ‘Martino Unstrung’ is a documentary about him and talks a lot about what he was like leading up to and after the aneurysm was discovered. A great look into one of the giants of jazz guitar but also fascinating to learn the things he could remember and what he couldn’t, personality changes, etc.
- analog31 4y ago
  A couple more examples are Oscar Peterson and Rashaan Roland Kirk.
  - JJMcJ 4y ago
    Judith Durham, Australian singer and songwriter famous with The Seekers in the 1960s but active ever since, had a stroke. Afterwards she could still sing but had lost the ability to write songs.
    - worker_person 4y ago
      Agraphia is an impairment or loss of a previous ability to write. I can read fine. I can type fine. Drawing is mostly fine. Physical writing is total gibberish. Think severe alzheimer level.
      - JJMcJ 4y ago
        For Judith Durham, I don't know if the problem is the physical writing of the songs, or the ability to compose a song. Sources aren't clear on that.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    Oscar had a stroke, which he didn't really recover from -- he just played mostly one-armed. I just saw this incredible video [1] last week about him and "the greatest solo ever recorded." [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj93v9j2A4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj93v9j2A4A
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Great video. Note the signature on that guitar by the way (2:49).
  - nereye 4y ago
    One more: Edwyn Collins, from Wikipedia: In February 2005, Collins was hospitalised after two cerebral haemorrhages which resulted in aphasia, and he needed months to recover. He resumed his musical career in 2007. A documentary film on his recovery, The Possibilities Are Endless, was released in 2014.
- stevenjgarner 4y ago
  Neil Young too was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm in March 2005, while working on the Prairie Wind album in Nashville [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Young#Health_condition_and_new_material_(2000s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Young#Health_condition_an...
- barrenko 4y ago
  Not sure if I remember the documentary correctly, but didn't he re-learn to play with a different hand orientation, e.g. right then left hand?
- agumonkey 4y ago
  There are odd videos of him in his early public reappearance after his illness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NotxdCS9xm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NotxdCS9xm0 (odd in the sense of semi private recordings)
coldcode 4y ago
As a guitar player I can't even imagine relearning a lifetime of experience from scratch again, much less learning to walk and do ordinary things you take for granted. Brains are amazingly plastic, but usually not at age 75. It take incredible will power to get back to this point. Without video it might have been impossible to recreate her unusual technique.
- fezfight 4y ago
  Will power comes from the brain, too. We are lucky that wasn't the part that she needed to relearn.
- worker_person 4y ago
  It's not fun. I had a small stroke while in a music lesson. Instructor was very confused as to why I suddenly couldn't play or follow any instructions. Programming has been this weird mix where I would see a simple problem. Say a fibonacci sequence. Something I could do in my sleep. I would look at it. Understand that I can solve this in seconds. Then it would take me a week to muddle through it, badly. So I know how to program just fine, but I somehow I can't actually do it. So it's been relearning things I think I know how to do. The saving grace is people would often ask how to approach a difficult problem and I could still quickly figure out what the issue is, and what approach to take to resolve it. So I was very helpful to others, but I couldn't do the work I suggested. Weird stuff.
  - ryanianian 4y ago
    Glad you are able to see the bright side. Are you employed as a developer? I'm curious how disability policies or laws etc might impact you.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - klenwell 4y ago
    Reminds me of this story from This American Life that they replayed recently about a retired physicist diagnosed with Alzheimer's who loses the ability to read a clock: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/583/itll-make-sense-when-youre-older/act-four-11 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/583/itll-make-sense-when-yo... What is interesting is he is able to analyze why he has difficulty reading a clock. (As he explains, it's a surprisingly difficult problem.) Fascinating and a bit heartbreaking. I'm happy to hear you're coping and recovering. Best of luck!
dukeofdoom 4y ago
what are the odds of surviving a brain aneurysm
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  With prompt treatment, somewhere around 50%. A really bad one can kill someone in minutes. Untreated, like you're alone and nobody finds you for days, much much less, and the recovery of functioning less likely. Depends on how much bleeding and where.
  - Volundr 4y ago
    Yeah I'd bet the specifics play in heavily. Anecdotally when I was in high school my girlfriend had a siezure from a ruptured aneurysm while we were watching her little brother. I don't remember how long it took her to regain consciousness on her own, but I remember her being fairly lucid talking to the paramedics, wanting to know what happened so not long. Didn't suffer any long term effects. I have to assume luck of the draw plays in heavily.
    - JJMcJ 4y ago
      Very much a matter of luck and details. What part of the brain is injured, how bad the bleed is, how quickly it can be treated, how good the treatment is. Anything from dead within a few minutes to no effects at all, with great variation in lost or reduced function in between.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    > With prompt treatment, somewhere around 50%. A really bad one can kill someone in minutes. I'm very far from expert in this and don't work in the field, but I think this thread is talking about ruptured aneurysms. Unruptured ones do considerably better with coiling, flow diverting stents or clips. The first link from 2014 has a 15-16% mortality rate at 7 years for treated aneurysms. Treatment has got better in the 15 years since those people were operated on. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24724850/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24724850/ https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.STR.29.8.1531 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.STR.29.8.153... https://www.bafound.org/about-brain-aneurysms/brain-aneurysm-basics/brain-aneurysm-statistics-and-facts/ https://www.bafound.org/about-brain-aneurysms/brain-aneurysm...
marcodiego 4y ago
There's a very interesting Brazilian case: Herbert Vianna, singer of the band "Paralamas do Sucesso" crashed his ultra-light aircraft and had some brain damage. He can't walk anymore, after the accident he couldn't speak Portuguese but could speak English. He had to relearn who he was and quickly came become to the successful artist he always was. He even recovered hos political views.
bredren 4y ago
Jerry Garcia had a similar situation iirc.
- ilamont 4y ago
  Yes. https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/jerry-garcia-grateful-dead-12-15-1986/ https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/jerry-garcia-grateful-dead...
maukdaddy 4y ago
Original article is here: https://www.npr.org/2022/07/26/1113608539/joni-mitchell-newport-folk-festival-aneurysm https://www.npr.org/2022/07/26/1113608539/joni-mitchell-newp...
- dang 4y ago
  Also https://www.guitarworld.com/news/joni-mitchell-relearned-guitar-online-videos https://www.guitarworld.com/news/joni-mitchell-relearned-gui....
ComputerCat 4y ago
Wow, what an incredible story! I can't imagine having to relearn simple tasks and skills honed over a lifetime.
zw123456 4y ago
I know this gets said a lot. But this is another example why I keep coming back to HN, I love all the tech talk for sure, but every once in a while, something sweet and inspirational like this gets slipped in and sometimes is just what I needed at the end of a long week.
- barrenko 4y ago
  For similar tales in other "discipline" try Meru documentary as well.
- jseutter 4y ago
  I tend to experience this as well. For some reason HN on the weekends has way more interesting and varied topics. The weekday crowd either comes here for more mundane topics, or marketers flood the submission queue, I can't tell which. But I love opening up HN on Saturday mornings and finding some strange retro computing topic. A similar phenomenon also happens if you open up HN before the east coast of north america wakes up on a weekday. The topics tend to be more varied.
  - BoxOfRain 4y ago
    >A similar phenomenon also happens if you open up HN before the east coast of north america wakes up on a weekday. The topics tend to be more varied. I live in the UK and I definitely find HN more interesting in the morning than the afternoon. It's as much a morning ritual as coffee at this point.
CWuestefeld 4y ago
Dave Mustaine (Megadeth) writes about a kinda similar experience. He fell asleep with his arm hanging over the back of a chair. This pinched a nerve and caused permanent damage, such that he was no longer able to play. IIRC, he needed surgery to get any muscular control at all, and then needed to relearn to play. Mustaine's damage was probably less profound, but I think the fine control needed for the kind of thing he does is rather more extreme than Mitchell's. ETA: here's a lousy article on it, from a music industry rag. He talks about it in much more detail in his autobiography. Below is a quote from https://blabbermouth.net/news/megadeth-s-dave-mustaine-how-i-injured-my-arm https://blabbermouth.net/news/megadeth-s-dave-mustaine-how-i... On January 7th, 2002, while at the [drug rehab] hospital, I sat on a chair which I hung my arm over the back of. The hard edge along the top of the seat back cut off the circulation to my radial ulnar nerve. After approximately two hours I woke up and my left hand was numb. I went to the nurse's station and they said it was the hair-tie I had on my wrist. I wish. I had to go into town to see a specialist and he said that I would be lucky if I ever gained even 80% of the use of my arm again. This was unacceptable for me, so I left the rehab, against medical advice and when home to Scottsdale, Az. to get my arm checked out by a city doctor. My Dr. Rahj Singh, a expert in nerve damage, spinal damage, etc. said that I may get 100% use of my arm, but that I would never play the same. He then prescribed the braces you see [here]: Photo#1, Photo#2, Photo#3. I then proceeded to Nathan Koch for physical therapy for 4 months of sessions, three times a week, 1-1.5 hours a day. After I finally got my feeling back in my hand, I realized that I could not even hold a feather in that hand and started a grueling 1-year weight-training program. 13 months after I hurt myself, a personal assistant that had worked for me died in hospice of drug damage, and I was asked to play. It was the first time I had held a guitar since November 17, 2001. Since then, I have completely healed and started taking lessons intermittently to re-learn my trade. After an additional 5 months I decided that I was going to play again, but that is another story.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Unklejoe 4y ago
  Wow. I had no idea that was something that could happen. I would have expected you to wake up before damaging yourself like that - sort of like falling asleep in the bath tub.
labrador 4y ago
Joni Mitchell is a treasure. I have a thought exercise I sometimes use for popular musicians: "Will they still be popular 100 or 200 years from now, like Mozart or Bach are today?" Pink Floyd: yes, Joni Mitchell: yes. My love of Joni's music goes back to high school in America, but as a working class young man the 70's it was best to keep it a quiet if you didn't want people to think you were gay. Tough guys listened to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, then the Sex Pistols.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wyclif 4y ago
  I love her best albums, like Blue and Hejira. Sadly, I don't listen to her much anymore since I listen to all my music on Spotify and she pulled all her albums from the platform, because Joe Rogan (or something). Disappointing.
  - labrador 4y ago
    I don't use Spotify. I use YouTube on the desktop with ad blockers. YouTube is doing something amazing which is auto uploading music from all over the world in partnership with aggregators. For example: Самолёт - Джуна https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgeZtWT2gz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgeZtWT2gz8 Provided to YouTube by National Digital Aggregator LLC Самолёт · Джуна 2,220 views ℗ 2020 Released on: 2017-04-14 Auto-generated by YouTube. It's fair to say I've discovered more new music this year than all previous years of my life. It's strange to think I live in a world where I could listen to music for the rest of my life and never listen to the same song twice
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  I hope she's still popular. She's a genuine genius, the music is astounding, and as a personality she's a force of nature. But I have a theory that you're not destined for immortality until at least three generations love your work. Pink Floyd and maybe Kate Bush seem to be there, but I'm not sure Joni is yet.
xsmasher 4y ago
Before the aneurysm Joni Mitchell used alternate guitar tunings because they were much easier on her left hand, which was weakened by childhood polio. Neil Young also contracted polio as a child; so did Robert Anton Wilson. We're not that far removed from a generation that was ravaged by the disease, which was then nearly eradicated by the vaccine. https://kawarthanow.com/2020/04/15/covid-19-pandemic-reminds-older-canadians-of-polio-which-almost-claimed-neil-youngs-life-in-1951-in-omemee/ https://kawarthanow.com/2020/04/15/covid-19-pandemic-reminds...
pgodzin 4y ago
Watching the video of her singing Both Sides Now at the Newport Folk Festival last week was really moving: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxiluPSmAF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxiluPSmAF8
cmckn 4y ago
Joni Mitchell's music is precious to me. There is something about her lyrics--poetic but folksy--that is so disarming and enchanting. Her songs always catch you off-guard. A friend introduced me to her album "Hejira" years ago, and it's given me so much comfort in dark times, and so much joy in light times. She's a once-in-a-generation kind of artist, just consistently brilliant. Some entrypoints, if I may (and please reply with your favorites): - Refuge of the roads - Hejira - Blue motel room - Hejira - You turn me on, I'm a radio - For the roses - Edith and the kingpin - The hissing of summer lawns
- lenocinor 4y ago
  I’m a big fan of the title track for Hejira too. Great album!
- malauxyeux 4y ago
  Not to take the easy way out, but everything on "Hits" is good.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  Both Sides Now was her best. That song gets sweeter and sweeter as I age.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

189 points by revorad 4y ago

mahathu 4y ago

Fascinating story. Pat Martino is another (jazz) guitarist who relearned to play after a brain injury

rtsil 4y ago
Joni Mitchell's story and Pat Martino's story are remarkably similar (brain aneurysm). The question is, did they regain access to the part of their brain that allowed them to play guitar, or did they really re-learn? In Martino's case, after his full amnesia, he was able to retrieve his unique playing style, but was that because he learned by listening to his recordings (just like Joni did), or because the style never left him but was somehow locked?
- seanhunter 4y ago
  My understanding is Martino had to learn by listening to his old records
- OJFord 4y ago
  Kind of interesting to imagine the motivation for the former, it's surely different to that which achieved it in the first place: 'I want to be who I was' or something, rather than 'this expresses who I am' or 'I like this sound' or whatever.
- biggieshellz 4y ago
  Part of it was from listening to his own recordings, part of it was from discovering it inside his brain again. As Pat's aneurysm grew over time, it's likely that his brain had already somewhat remodeled to accommodate it. IIRC, in a TV show about it, they talked with one of his friends/students whom he would play guitar duos with. His friend was playing for Pat after the aneurysm (Pat wasn't back to playing yet) and the guy hit a wrong chord and Pat suddenly said "No, D minor 9th" and grabbed the guitar and played the right chord. Pat also tells a similar story about meeting Joe Pesci backstage and knowing him only from movies until Joe tells him, "I can tell you what you used to drink at Smalls' Paradise in the '60s". Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niUwDegpYyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niUwDegpYyo
paradygm 4y ago
‘Martino Unstrung’ is a documentary about him and talks a lot about what he was like leading up to and after the aneurysm was discovered. A great look into one of the giants of jazz guitar but also fascinating to learn the things he could remember and what he couldn’t, personality changes, etc.
analog31 4y ago
A couple more examples are Oscar Peterson and Rashaan Roland Kirk.
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  Judith Durham, Australian singer and songwriter famous with The Seekers in the 1960s but active ever since, had a stroke. Afterwards she could still sing but had lost the ability to write songs.
  - worker_person 4y ago
    Agraphia is an impairment or loss of a previous ability to write. I can read fine. I can type fine. Drawing is mostly fine. Physical writing is total gibberish. Think severe alzheimer level.
    - JJMcJ 4y ago
      For Judith Durham, I don't know if the problem is the physical writing of the songs, or the ability to compose a song. Sources aren't clear on that.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Oscar had a stroke, which he didn't really recover from -- he just played mostly one-armed. I just saw this incredible video [1] last week about him and "the greatest solo ever recorded." [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj93v9j2A4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj93v9j2A4A
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Great video. Note the signature on that guitar by the way (2:49).
- nereye 4y ago
  One more: Edwyn Collins, from Wikipedia: In February 2005, Collins was hospitalised after two cerebral haemorrhages which resulted in aphasia, and he needed months to recover. He resumed his musical career in 2007. A documentary film on his recovery, The Possibilities Are Endless, was released in 2014.
stevenjgarner 4y ago
Neil Young too was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm in March 2005, while working on the Prairie Wind album in Nashville [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Young#Health_condition_and_new_material_(2000s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Young#Health_condition_an...
barrenko 4y ago
Not sure if I remember the documentary correctly, but didn't he re-learn to play with a different hand orientation, e.g. right then left hand?
agumonkey 4y ago
There are odd videos of him in his early public reappearance after his illness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NotxdCS9xm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NotxdCS9xm0 (odd in the sense of semi private recordings)

coldcode 4y ago

As a guitar player I can't even imagine relearning a lifetime of experience from scratch again, much less learning to walk and do ordinary things you take for granted. Brains are amazingly plastic, but usually not at age 75. It take incredible will power to get back to this point. Without video it might have been impossible to recreate her unusual technique.

fezfight 4y ago
Will power comes from the brain, too. We are lucky that wasn't the part that she needed to relearn.
worker_person 4y ago
It's not fun. I had a small stroke while in a music lesson. Instructor was very confused as to why I suddenly couldn't play or follow any instructions. Programming has been this weird mix where I would see a simple problem. Say a fibonacci sequence. Something I could do in my sleep. I would look at it. Understand that I can solve this in seconds. Then it would take me a week to muddle through it, badly. So I know how to program just fine, but I somehow I can't actually do it. So it's been relearning things I think I know how to do. The saving grace is people would often ask how to approach a difficult problem and I could still quickly figure out what the issue is, and what approach to take to resolve it. So I was very helpful to others, but I couldn't do the work I suggested. Weird stuff.
- ryanianian 4y ago
  Glad you are able to see the bright side. Are you employed as a developer? I'm curious how disability policies or laws etc might impact you.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- klenwell 4y ago
  Reminds me of this story from This American Life that they replayed recently about a retired physicist diagnosed with Alzheimer's who loses the ability to read a clock: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/583/itll-make-sense-when-youre-older/act-four-11 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/583/itll-make-sense-when-yo... What is interesting is he is able to analyze why he has difficulty reading a clock. (As he explains, it's a surprisingly difficult problem.) Fascinating and a bit heartbreaking. I'm happy to hear you're coping and recovering. Best of luck!

dukeofdoom 4y ago

what are the odds of surviving a brain aneurysm

JJMcJ 4y ago
With prompt treatment, somewhere around 50%. A really bad one can kill someone in minutes. Untreated, like you're alone and nobody finds you for days, much much less, and the recovery of functioning less likely. Depends on how much bleeding and where.
- Volundr 4y ago
  Yeah I'd bet the specifics play in heavily. Anecdotally when I was in high school my girlfriend had a siezure from a ruptured aneurysm while we were watching her little brother. I don't remember how long it took her to regain consciousness on her own, but I remember her being fairly lucid talking to the paramedics, wanting to know what happened so not long. Didn't suffer any long term effects. I have to assume luck of the draw plays in heavily.
  - JJMcJ 4y ago
    Very much a matter of luck and details. What part of the brain is injured, how bad the bleed is, how quickly it can be treated, how good the treatment is. Anything from dead within a few minutes to no effects at all, with great variation in lost or reduced function in between.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  > With prompt treatment, somewhere around 50%. A really bad one can kill someone in minutes. I'm very far from expert in this and don't work in the field, but I think this thread is talking about ruptured aneurysms. Unruptured ones do considerably better with coiling, flow diverting stents or clips. The first link from 2014 has a 15-16% mortality rate at 7 years for treated aneurysms. Treatment has got better in the 15 years since those people were operated on. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24724850/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24724850/ https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.STR.29.8.1531 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.STR.29.8.153... https://www.bafound.org/about-brain-aneurysms/brain-aneurysm-basics/brain-aneurysm-statistics-and-facts/ https://www.bafound.org/about-brain-aneurysms/brain-aneurysm...

marcodiego 4y ago

There's a very interesting Brazilian case: Herbert Vianna, singer of the band "Paralamas do Sucesso" crashed his ultra-light aircraft and had some brain damage. He can't walk anymore, after the accident he couldn't speak Portuguese but could speak English. He had to relearn who he was and quickly came become to the successful artist he always was. He even recovered hos political views.

bredren 4y ago

Jerry Garcia had a similar situation iirc.

ilamont 4y ago
Yes. https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/jerry-garcia-grateful-dead-12-15-1986/ https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/jerry-garcia-grateful-dead...

maukdaddy 4y ago

Original article is here: https://www.npr.org/2022/07/26/1113608539/joni-mitchell-newport-folk-festival-aneurysm https://www.npr.org/2022/07/26/1113608539/joni-mitchell-newp...

dang 4y ago
Also https://www.guitarworld.com/news/joni-mitchell-relearned-guitar-online-videos https://www.guitarworld.com/news/joni-mitchell-relearned-gui....

ComputerCat 4y ago

Wow, what an incredible story! I can't imagine having to relearn simple tasks and skills honed over a lifetime.

zw123456 4y ago

I know this gets said a lot. But this is another example why I keep coming back to HN, I love all the tech talk for sure, but every once in a while, something sweet and inspirational like this gets slipped in and sometimes is just what I needed at the end of a long week.

barrenko 4y ago
For similar tales in other "discipline" try Meru documentary as well.
jseutter 4y ago
I tend to experience this as well. For some reason HN on the weekends has way more interesting and varied topics. The weekday crowd either comes here for more mundane topics, or marketers flood the submission queue, I can't tell which. But I love opening up HN on Saturday mornings and finding some strange retro computing topic. A similar phenomenon also happens if you open up HN before the east coast of north america wakes up on a weekday. The topics tend to be more varied.
- BoxOfRain 4y ago
  >A similar phenomenon also happens if you open up HN before the east coast of north america wakes up on a weekday. The topics tend to be more varied. I live in the UK and I definitely find HN more interesting in the morning than the afternoon. It's as much a morning ritual as coffee at this point.

CWuestefeld 4y ago

Dave Mustaine (Megadeth) writes about a kinda similar experience. He fell asleep with his arm hanging over the back of a chair. This pinched a nerve and caused permanent damage, such that he was no longer able to play. IIRC, he needed surgery to get any muscular control at all, and then needed to relearn to play. Mustaine's damage was probably less profound, but I think the fine control needed for the kind of thing he does is rather more extreme than Mitchell's. ETA: here's a lousy article on it, from a music industry rag. He talks about it in much more detail in his autobiography. Below is a quote from https://blabbermouth.net/news/megadeth-s-dave-mustaine-how-i-injured-my-arm https://blabbermouth.net/news/megadeth-s-dave-mustaine-how-i... On January 7th, 2002, while at the [drug rehab] hospital, I sat on a chair which I hung my arm over the back of. The hard edge along the top of the seat back cut off the circulation to my radial ulnar nerve. After approximately two hours I woke up and my left hand was numb. I went to the nurse's station and they said it was the hair-tie I had on my wrist. I wish. I had to go into town to see a specialist and he said that I would be lucky if I ever gained even 80% of the use of my arm again. This was unacceptable for me, so I left the rehab, against medical advice and when home to Scottsdale, Az. to get my arm checked out by a city doctor. My Dr. Rahj Singh, a expert in nerve damage, spinal damage, etc. said that I may get 100% use of my arm, but that I would never play the same. He then prescribed the braces you see [here]: Photo#1, Photo#2, Photo#3. I then proceeded to Nathan Koch for physical therapy for 4 months of sessions, three times a week, 1-1.5 hours a day. After I finally got my feeling back in my hand, I realized that I could not even hold a feather in that hand and started a grueling 1-year weight-training program. 13 months after I hurt myself, a personal assistant that had worked for me died in hospice of drug damage, and I was asked to play. It was the first time I had held a guitar since November 17, 2001. Since then, I have completely healed and started taking lessons intermittently to re-learn my trade. After an additional 5 months I decided that I was going to play again, but that is another story.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Unklejoe 4y ago
Wow. I had no idea that was something that could happen. I would have expected you to wake up before damaging yourself like that - sort of like falling asleep in the bath tub.

labrador 4y ago

Joni Mitchell is a treasure. I have a thought exercise I sometimes use for popular musicians: "Will they still be popular 100 or 200 years from now, like Mozart or Bach are today?" Pink Floyd: yes, Joni Mitchell: yes. My love of Joni's music goes back to high school in America, but as a working class young man the 70's it was best to keep it a quiet if you didn't want people to think you were gay. Tough guys listened to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, then the Sex Pistols.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wyclif 4y ago
I love her best albums, like Blue and Hejira. Sadly, I don't listen to her much anymore since I listen to all my music on Spotify and she pulled all her albums from the platform, because Joe Rogan (or something). Disappointing.
- labrador 4y ago
  I don't use Spotify. I use YouTube on the desktop with ad blockers. YouTube is doing something amazing which is auto uploading music from all over the world in partnership with aggregators. For example: Самолёт - Джуна https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgeZtWT2gz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgeZtWT2gz8 Provided to YouTube by National Digital Aggregator LLC Самолёт · Джуна 2,220 views ℗ 2020 Released on: 2017-04-14 Auto-generated by YouTube. It's fair to say I've discovered more new music this year than all previous years of my life. It's strange to think I live in a world where I could listen to music for the rest of my life and never listen to the same song twice
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
I hope she's still popular. She's a genuine genius, the music is astounding, and as a personality she's a force of nature. But I have a theory that you're not destined for immortality until at least three generations love your work. Pink Floyd and maybe Kate Bush seem to be there, but I'm not sure Joni is yet.

xsmasher 4y ago

Before the aneurysm Joni Mitchell used alternate guitar tunings because they were much easier on her left hand, which was weakened by childhood polio. Neil Young also contracted polio as a child; so did Robert Anton Wilson. We're not that far removed from a generation that was ravaged by the disease, which was then nearly eradicated by the vaccine. https://kawarthanow.com/2020/04/15/covid-19-pandemic-reminds-older-canadians-of-polio-which-almost-claimed-neil-youngs-life-in-1951-in-omemee/ https://kawarthanow.com/2020/04/15/covid-19-pandemic-reminds...

pgodzin 4y ago

Watching the video of her singing Both Sides Now at the Newport Folk Festival last week was really moving: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxiluPSmAF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxiluPSmAF8

cmckn 4y ago

Joni Mitchell's music is precious to me. There is something about her lyrics--poetic but folksy--that is so disarming and enchanting. Her songs always catch you off-guard. A friend introduced me to her album "Hejira" years ago, and it's given me so much comfort in dark times, and so much joy in light times. She's a once-in-a-generation kind of artist, just consistently brilliant. Some entrypoints, if I may (and please reply with your favorites): - Refuge of the roads - Hejira - Blue motel room - Hejira - You turn me on, I'm a radio - For the roses - Edith and the kingpin - The hissing of summer lawns

lenocinor 4y ago
I’m a big fan of the title track for Hejira too. Great album!
malauxyeux 4y ago
Not to take the easy way out, but everything on "Hits" is good.
missedthecue 4y ago
Both Sides Now was her best. That song gets sweeter and sweeter as I age.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]