The story of Steve Jobs it not only gathers professional achievements with Apple as the main triumph. Its origins are touching, since was given up for adoption as a baby, and he was always aware of it. In fact, one song in particular made him cry: Little Green, by Joni Mitchell.
Jobs recognized it in an email written to himself, and that we can read in the book Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words. About him we spoke recently in Fayer Wayer, and you can download it here for free.
“Little Green made me cry every time I heard it. Maybe it’s because I’m adopted, but this song moves me like few others,” he said in the email, dated 2003.
“After realizing what this song was about, I cry every time I hear it. She (Joni Mitchell) wrote it when she was young, and it remains one of the best of her many great songs.”
In accordance with The Telegraph, Steve Jobs regularly emailed himself as a way to organize his thoughts. These have been published in the aforementioned book.
The origins of Steve Jobs and the lines crossed with the Joni Mitchell song
Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian immigrant named Abdulfattah Jandali, and of Joanne Carole Schieble, of German and Swiss descent. They were both young college students when the little boy was born. Abdul Lateef, and they decided to give him up for adoption to a middle-class couple, Paul Jobs and Clara Hagopian.
As an adult, Steve Jobs would see his biological mother again, but not his father.
Joni Mitchell wrote Little Green, a song dedicated to her daughter Kelly Dale Anderson. When Mitchell was 23 he gave her up for adoption, due to the economic difficulties he was going through. The song was written in 1966, and was released on their 1971 album Blue.
“Born with the Moon in Cancer / choose a name for her that she will respond to / call her Green and the winters won’t be able to fade her / call her Green for the children who made her / call her Green, be a gypsy dancer…”, is part of the lyrics of the song.
Kelly Dale Anderson didn’t find out she was adopted until she was 27 years old. I would only meet Joni Mitchell in 1997, four years after hearing the news.