Joni Mitchell never made it to Woodstock.
She did not share breakfast in bed with 400,000 people.
She did not eat the brown acid.
She did not play the biggest jamboree of all-time.

Seems odd then, that Mitchell would go on to write the most enduring tribute to what took place there. Perhaps she was the only person capable of remembering what it actually felt like to be at Woodstock. Perhaps absence made her heart grow fonder.

Perhaps.

But the more likely explanation is that Mitchell can paint a picture with words in ways that no other artist can. She can punctuate thoughts with unrivalled subtlety; the notes falling from her lips like warm drops of silk onto the page.

It's that rare grasp of humanity that makes Mitchell such an integral piece of our folk-rock tradition. She's permanently fractured, fiercely independent; seemingly unaware of her own celebrity. And even though both artists would shrug off the comparison, Joni Mitchell is a lot like Chan Marshall - the enigmatic, self-styled singer/songwriter better known as Cat Power.

Both women have struggled to maintain the balance between private artist and public performer. Mitchell walked offstage at the Atlantic City Pop Festival in 1969 when the audience refused to settle down. A year later she made a controversial plea at The Isle of Wight for fans to show more respect to the artists onstage.

In 1999, Chan Marshall turned her back to a packed house during a set at the Bowery Ballroom. Last year she cancelled her entire U.S. tour, citing health concerns.

Joni Mitchell found solace in her paintings. Chan Marshall found solace in sobriety.

While Marshall is still in the early stages of a career that could conceivably span decades, Mitchell no longer tours in support of her records (She is, however, putting the finishing touches on a new LP. This despite the fact that she called the music industry a "cesspool" as recently as 2002, adding that she'd "like to remember what it was [she] ever liked about music" in the first place).

Mitchell's disdain for the media is well-documented, as is Marshall's.

Mitchell carefully chooses the interviews she grants. Marshall, on the other hand, is a master of misdirection, continually throwing interviewers off-course with asides about horses, or pizza, or mosquito bites for that matter.

Joni Mitchell's early work is guided by a deep social conscience, her lyrics wrought with sensitivity, anchored by cast-iron hooks. Marshall is more abstract, disappearing down dark lyrical passages, both ethereal and obscure.

Mitchell thrives on alternative tunings. Marshall thrives on alternative arrangements. Mitchell evades the spotlight, opting instead to record entire albums worth of jazz-fusion. Marshall charges and retreats like the tide. This fall she plans to follow-up The Greatest - her most commercially viable album to date - with her second disc of covers.

Perhaps it's the tug-of-war between making music for public consumption and writing songs for self-expression that fuels balladeers like Joni Mitchell and Chan Marshall. Perhaps that's why so many brilliant artists seem ill-at-ease inside their own skin. Perhaps that's why we relate to them - a sense that we're all dysfunctional in our own way, that we struggle to maintain a public image in the face of overwhelming insecurity, that simplicity is all we yearn for, even though our lives are so full of contradiction.

Perhaps it scares artists like Joni Mitchell and Chan Marshall to realize so many of us are as fucked up as they are.

Joni Mitchell is an icon almost in spite of herself. She's still relevant, despite the fact that other artists from her era have faded. But none of that seems to matter much to Mitchell, anymore than album sales or public image do. What matters to Mitchell is her enduring ability to paint a picture with words.

On quiet days when the world outside maintains its distance, it's entirely possible that Mitchell recaptures the passion that brought those early songs to life. And on those days, it's also entirely possible that Mitchell remembers what it was she loved about music in the first place.

Perhaps.

And perhaps when she hears an artist like Chan Marshall, she puts her personal prejudice about the music business aside, and realizes that there are still artists out there who can make murals out of music.