Joni Mitchell in Intensive Care After Being Found Unconscious in Her Bel Air Home

Famed singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell remains hospitalized in intensive care today after being found unconscious at her home Tuesday night.

The 71-year-old Mitchell was in a Los Angeles hospital undergoing tests, “but is awake and in good spirits,” according to a tweet on her Twitter account posted at 10 p.m.

Mitchell, winner of eight Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, was found unconscious at home, but regained consciousness in an ambulance en route to a hospital, according to her website.

The Los Angeles Fire Department was called to an address in the 600 block of Funchal Road in Bel-Air around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times reported. Mitchell is a long-time Bel Air resident.

There was no immediate report on the ailment that put Mitchell in the hospital. She has identified herself as a sufferer of Morgellons disease, which the medical community generally holds to be a delusional fear of disease- causing agents, including parasites.

Born in Fort Mcleod, Alberta, on Nov.7, 1943, Mitchell was self-taught on guitar even though a childhood bout of polio left her with a weakened left hand.

Mitchell enjoyed a golden run of commercial and critical success in the 1960s and 1970s, with four top-10 albums in three years. Songwriter Jewel, in an appreciation published in Rolling Stone, described Mitchell as “a bigger icon than she is a star.”

The artists Mitchell influenced and collaborated with represent a who’s who of composition in folk, rock and jazz -- from the jazz giant Charles Mingus, to Elvis Costello, Costello’s wife and Mitchell’s fellow Canadian Diana Krall, to Willie Nelson, Tom Petty, Cassandra Wilson and Neil Diamond, among others.

Pop singer Taylor Swift was to have played Mitchell in a biopic, but Mitchell said in a 2012 interview that she would have no part of it.

“I said to the producer, ‘All you’ve got is a girl with high cheekbones.’ It’s just a lot of gossip. You don’t have the great scenes.”

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• City News Service
• Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons