Last month, The New York Times ran an interview with Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner that so damningly revealed sexist and racist prejudices in his thinking that he was swiftly removed from the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which he co-founded in 1983. In the interview, Wenner shared his opinion that Joni Mitchell was "not a philosopher of rock'n'roll," hence her exclusion - and that of any women musicians or artists of color - from his new book of interviews with famous white men. The irony is that Joni Mitchell not only wrote peerless critiques of rock'n'roll - exposing the myths of "the star maker machinery behind the popular song" on "Free Man in Paris," the sex-drugs-ego desperation of male rock stars on "Woman of Heart and Mind," and plenty of others - but also gave some of the greatest Rolling Stone interviews of all time.

Much has been said about the Wenner book fiasco. The discourse helps contextualize another occasion: the 25th anniversary of the release of "Lead Balloon," the fierce rock song Mitchell wrote in 1998 about an infamous confrontation with Wenner. "'Kiss my ass!' I said/And I threw my drink/It came a-trickling/Down his business suit," Mitchell sang on the atmospheric Taming the Tiger, her third record of the '90s following Night Ride Home and Turbulent Indigo, both widely received then as her best since the '70s. "Must be the Irish blood/Fight before you think/Turn it down/You can't cowtow/You can't undo it/It's his town/And that went down/Like a lead balloon."

The incident allegedly occurred at an awards ceremony, though the details have mostly evaded the historical record. Mitchell had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, but she didn't attend that ceremony. Still, the long-vexed relationship between Mitchell and Rolling Stone, hinging on Wenner's flagrant misogyny, has been well documented.

In 1971, Mitchell released her homesick Blue classic, "California," where she sang of "lots of pretty people" in Los Angeles "reading Rolling Stone, reading Vogue," and, as author Joe Hagan put it in his Wenner biography Sticky Fingers, her references "[were] telling, capturing the glint of celebrity and self-regard that now animated the youth culture." It wasn't long after, in February 1972, that the magazine published a chart mapping a web of men Mitchell had supposedly slept with. Under the auspices of "Hollywood's Hot 100," the tabloid-fodder graphic included Mitchell's name at the center of a lipstick stain, with arrows pointing towards the names of David Crosby, James Taylor, and Graham Nash - labeling her "Queen of El Lay." The magazine correspondent who drew up the chart, Jerry Hopkins, claimed to have done it as a joke; Wenner insisted on publishing it. At the end of the year, Rolling Stone showed that its unapologetic sexism wasn't an isolated oversight when it named Mitchell "Old Lady of the Year."

Mitchell didn't speak to Rolling Stone for seven years after that. In May 1978, she attended a Rolling Stone vs. Eagles baseball game standoff, and told one L.A. newspaper, "I'm here as an enemy of Rolling Stone. I have a personal grudge against mister Jann Wenner. He's very irresponsible. He doesn't even read his own rag, so why should anybody else? I'm so happy they lost."

In the interim, a crew of early women staffers had helped professionalize Rolling Stone through the mid-'70s, after senior editor and feminist Marianne Partridge brought six women to the masthead as copy editors and fact-checkers. But when Mitchell finally broke her silence from the magazine, in 1979 - to promote her collaboration with Charles Mingus - it was because she trusted 22-year-old journalist Cameron Crowe, who she sought out for the interview. In their sprawling discussion, Mitchell ruminated on her relationship to the marketplace of rock and pop, offering an enduring roadmap for art-making. "You can stay the same and protect the formula that gave you your initial success. They're going to crucify you for staying the same," she said. "If you change, they're going to crucify you for changing. But staying the same is boring. And change is interesting. So of the two options, I'd rather be crucified for changing."

Crowe left for Hollywood not long after, and Joni's truce with the mag was short-lived - by December 1983, Rolling Stone included her on a list of "the most overrated people in America" alongside Gloria Steinem, Andy Warhol, and others. But she granted the publication an interview upon Taming the Tiger's release and remained no less quotable or irreverent, particularly when discussing her eschewal of outside producers and extraneous collaborators. "Music is like sex," Mitchell told Rolling Stone. "It's difficult to give instruction to a man."