Brandi Carlile: 'Joni Mitchell is wild. She'll drink you under the table'
5 hours ago Share Save Mark Savage Music correspondent Share Save
Getty Images Carlile was a key part of Joni Mitchell's rehabilitation, sitting with her as she relearned the lyrics to her songs after a brain haemorrhage
When Brandi Carlile was 12 years old, living in a mobile home in an isolated community 50 miles outside Seattle, she begged her parents for a piano. She'd fallen in love with her mum's Elton John albums and wanted to play along. But when she broke her tiny Casio keyboard out of its Toys R Us box, she had to face an uncomfortable reality. "I was just nowhere near talented enough," she laughs. Instead, she put on Bruce Springsteen's Streets Of Philadelphia, dialled up the keyboard's "synth strings" setting, and pressed down two keys. "You just hold them, all the way through the verse," she recalls. "Anyone can do it, but that's the foundation of my career." Fast forward 32 years and Elton John is one of her best friends.
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