John Guerin and Joni Mitchell began a romance during the making of Court And Spark.
Joni was only half out of her depression when they met, and John's down-to-earth (and hell-raising) quality seemed to pull her the rest of the way out.
As she later put it in Refuge Of The Roads (one of her favorite of her own songs), he was the "friend of spirit" who "mirrored me back, simplified."
He, too, saw their fit that way; "Joan's a very complicated person and I'm a pretty straightahead guy.
I think she lightened up a lot with me" - even though, as she put it in the song, their "perfection would always be denied."
Says a close friend, "It was a turbulent, highly sexually charged relationship; they broke up six or seven times" over five years.
John Guerin would be one of the great loves of her life. He was that rare lover "who she never said anything bad about," says another friend.
"She was crazy about John."
One of their first breakups occurred just after Court And Spark was finished.
John was unfaithful, which she would document in Hejira's Blue Motel Room.
She paid him back by having a six-week liaison with session guitarist (and sometime Leon Russell bandmate) Wayne Perkins, a handsome half-Cherokee Alabaman.