Joni Mitchell

Three lines in brown felt tip on a single sheet from an artist sketchpad, (14 x 11 ins.; 275 x 350 mm.); small light stain in upper margin, not affecting manuscript text.

This lot was removed from a black leather artists notepad, circa 1967-1969, Joni Mitchell was using while living in Woodstock, New York.

Hilburn, Robert "Both Sides, Later". Los Angeles Times  (December 8, 1996).

small light stain in upper margin, not affecting manuscript text.
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"they paved paradise and put up a parking lot" mitchell composes the iconic chorus for big yellow taxi with a substantial lyric variant from the recorded song

Big Yelow Taxi was a key song on Mitchell's seminal third album, Ladies from the Canyon. Released in 1970, her lyrics of development encroaching on nature coincided perfectly  with the nascent enviromental movement.  Unfortunately her inspiration came from a disturbing sight  witnessed firsthand during her first trip to Hawaii:

"... I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart . . . this blight on paradise. That's when I sat down and wrote the song. When it first came out, it was a regional hit in Hawaii because people there realized their paradise was being chewed up. It took 20 years for that song to sink in to people most other places in the country. That is a powerful little song because there have been cases in a couple of cities of parking lots being torn up and turned into parks because of it." (see Hilburn).

In the present draft, Mitchell is still working out the iconic imagery. As recorded, her lyric reads on the second chorus:

"They paved paradise 
And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
Then they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em"

In the present draft, Mitchell originally writes a shorter line "...for a parking lot" before crossing it through and changing it to "and they put in a parking lot," more familiar to the song as released. But the next line is considerably changed. Her early version here reads:

"They paved paradise and they put in a parking lot / They kept a few trees and they put 'em in a big museum/ People came from all the grey earth to see 'em"

Originally released in July 1970 as a 7-inch single prior to its album release, "Big Yellow Taxi" was appropriatly a regional hit in Hawaii (where the "museum" she refers to is most likely the Forster Botanical Museum, a repository for endangered flora). The single charted in the UK, her native Canada, and the US (but was a bigger seller when a live version was released in 1975).

Along with "Woodstock"  Big Yellow Taxi" is Mitchell's best known song with over 300 cover versions recorded including Bob Dylan, Cher (!) and Sly and Robbie.