David Crosby: Joni Mitchell Had Aneurysm, Cannot Speak
Photo by Maury Phillips/WireImage
by Andy Greene
David Crosby has revealed that Joni Mitchell suffered from an aneurysm when she was hospitalized in late May. “Nobody found her for a while,” he told the Huffington Post. “She took a terrible hit. To my knowledge she is not speaking yet…She’s going to have to struggle back from it the way you struggle back from a traumatic brain injury…She’s a tough girl, and very smart. So, how much she’s going to come back and when, I don’t know and I’m not going to guess.”
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There has been little information about Mitchell’s condition since she entered a Los Angeles hospital on May 26th. TMZ reported that she was in intensive care and had undergone a surgical procedure, but a spokesperson said she was “awake and in good spirits.” Days later, her camp released an official statement: “Joni remains under observation in the hospital and is resting comfortably. We are encouraged by her progress and she continues to improve and get stronger each day.”
Mitchell hasn’t released an album of new material since 2007’s Shine and hasn’t toured since the late 1990s. She claims to suffer from a rare condition called Morgellons disease. “Morgellons is constantly morphing,” she told the Daily Mail. “There are times when it’s directly attacking the nervous system, as if you’re being bitten by fleas and lice. It’s all in the tissue and it’s not a hallucination. It was eating me alive, sucking the juices out. I’ve been sick all my life.” (A study by the CDC found that Morgellons may be a mental disorder and not a physical condition.)
Crosby has been close to Mitchell since the 1960s. “I love her,” he told the Huffington Post. “She’s probably the best of us - probably the greatest living singer-songwriter.”
Crosby also doubled down on negative comments he made about Kanye West. "It all stands on what you produce; what you actually put down,“ Crosby said. "Kanye West can’t write, sing or play. So I have trouble with him as anything but a poser. Produce? That means he sits in a chair while the engineer does the work. He’s a poser! And I’m not backing off it.”