Joni Mitchell poses at the opening night of the new musical “Almost Famous” at The Old Globe Theatre on September 27, 2019 in San Diego, California. ; Kilauren Gibb.Photo:Bruce Glikas/WireImage ; Erin Combs/Toronto Star/Getty
Bruce Glikas/WireImage ; Erin Combs/Toronto Star/Getty
Joni Mitchellis one of themost influential singer-songwritersin modern musical history. But behind all of her fame and success, Mitchell was hiding a private loss: the separation from her daughter, Kilauren Gibb.
“The main thing at the time was to conceal it,” Mitchell told theLos Angeles Timesof her pregnancy in 1997. At the time, she was living in Toronto. “The scandal was so intense. A daughter could do nothing more disgraceful. It ruined you in a social sense. You have no idea what the stigma was. It was like you murdered somebody.”
“It left a hole in me that I didn’t fill until the day I saw her again,” Mitchell told PEOPLE of the adoption in 2000.
Mitchell kept that secret to herself until 1993, when a college roommate sold the story to a British tabloid, according toThe New York Times. The singer felt betrayed — but the story brought visibility to Mitchell’s search for her long-lost daughter. Gibb, who had also been searching for her birth parents, eventually put together that the details of their lives, as much as she knew them, matched up.
In 1997, Mitchell and Gibb were reunited after more than 30 years of separation and have had a relationship ever since. “It’s kind of crazy,” Gibb toldThe Toronto Starin 1997. “We met, and it clicked. It was like we never separated.”
Read on to learn about Joni Mitchell’s daughter, Kilauren Gibb.
Mitchell gave birth to her daughter in 1965
Joni Mitchell, January 8, 1968.Doug Griffin/Toronto Star via Getty Images
Mitchell gave birth to Gibb — then named Kelly Dale Anderson — in a Toronto hospital on Feb. 19, 1965. According to theLos Angeles Times, she stayed in the hospital for 10 days due to birth complications.
“I gambled,” Mitchell recalled. “I took what was behind the curtains. I gambled that the people who came forward to take this child wanted this child and felt like there was a hole in their life without this child.”
Gibb was adopted at 8 months old
Mitchell wrote songs about her daughter
Joni Mitchell outside The Revolution club in London on September 18, 1968.Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty
Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty
On her fourth album,Blue,Mitchell included a song called “Little Green,” about the daughter she named Kelly — as in Kelly Green. In the lyrics, she described a “child with a child” who had to make an impossible decision.
“So you sign all the papers in the family name,” Mitchell sang. “You’re sad and you’re sorry, but you’re not ashamed.”
In 2000, Mitchell told PEOPLE she wrote the track “as a message in a bottle [to Gibb].” Once she reunited with Gibb, the singer recalled her daughter telling her, “God, it’s so cryptic, Joan. I never would have known it was for me.”
Gibb started looking for her birth parents as a teenager
When she was young, Gibb recalled toThe Toronto Starin 1997, she started putting the pieces together that something was missing from her early childhood. “I would look at our family’s album, and realize that there were no pictures of me before the age of 8 months,” she said. “My mother tried to explain it away - I was a second child, and you don’t take as many pictures of them. Or the camera wasn’t handy at the time. But I always wondered.”
Mitchell and Gibb reunited with the help of a fan
Joni Mitchell performing on stage at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, May 6, 1995.David Redfern/Redferns
David Redfern/Redferns
In 1996, Mitchell toldThe New York Timesthat she wanted to find her daughter, especially since the story was officially out in the open. “The good news is that I’m clean now, and I have no skeletons,'' she said. ‘‘But I worry, because there are a lot of things she should know, her genetic background, what diseases she’s prone to. It would be nice if she could meet her grandparents while they’re still alive."
In response, fan Wally Breese created a website to help filter people with a genuine chance of being Mitchell’s daughter from the hordes of people claiming to be her. Improbably, it worked.
A friend was looking at the site and suggested Gibb get in touch because of the similarities in their appearances and because some of the details lined up between Mitchell’s story and what Gibb knew about birth parents.
“The more I read, the more I realized how alike we were,” Gibb toldThe Toronto Starin 1997. “She was a singer, I was into music. She was an artist. I painted. We both enjoyed the same things.” Enough information matched that Breese referred Gibb to Mitchell’s manager, and they connected from there.
“My purpose has always been to pay Joni back for all the music she’s given the world,” Breese toldWiredin 1997. “But this is more than I could have hoped for.”
Gibb felt “complete” after reconnecting with Mitchell
Kilauren Gibb and her son Marlin.Erin Combs/Toronto Star/Getty
Erin Combs/Toronto Star/Getty
After such a long search, Mitchell and Gibb first spoke on the phone, and then Gibb flew to her mother’s Los Angeles home with her then-3-year-old son Marlin to meet her as an adult. (Gibb later had a daughter, Daisy.)
“It was wonderful,” she toldThe TorontoStar. “It was a great relief to me in every way. It made me feel whole. It made me feel complete."
But Gibb was very happy to grow up with her family. “She asked me how my childhood was, and I was honestly able to tell her that it was fabulous,” she described. “It was a great childhood, probably the best. I think now, that I could have been raised in California, and been a Bel Air brat. I’m really happy that I got my family to raise me, in down-to-earth style. I’ll always be grateful for that.”
Gibb met her biological father after meeting Mitchell
MacMath later toldTIMEthat it was a reunion he had long been hoping for. “I was always sort of looking for her on the street, even though I didn’t know it,” he said. “To have a grown daughter and grandson appear out of nowhere is absolutely amazing.”
Mitchell and Gibb have a lot in common
Joni Mitchell performs at the “Stormy Weather 2002” concert at the Wiltern Theatre on November 13, 2002 in Los Angeles, California.Robert Mora/Getty
Robert Mora/Getty
source: people.com
