Joni Mitchell Renaissance Womans-Child

Rip It Up, Issue 208, 1 December 1994, Page 18

Joni Mitchell Renaissance Womans-Child

Singer. Songwriter. Guitarist. Artist. Photographer. Joni Mitchell really is a renaissance woman for our age, and her artistry remains undiminished into her 50s. Her commercial success and importance may have waned, but her commitment and passion haven’t. The strong positive response to her new album Turbulent Indigo, and the frequent citing of her work and approach as inspirational for a new generation of musicians, indicates we may be in for something of a Joni Mitchell revival. No bad thing! After a long break from live performance, 1994 saw Mitchell make tentative steps back in that direction. She played the Edmonton Folk Festival and a couple of months later was in Toronto for an ‘intimate and interactive’ appearance live on a music television network. That’s when I took (with relish) the chance for a chat. Not surprisingly, Joni proved eloquent and strongly opinionated. I saw your live performance on Much Music. Was that a pleasant experience? "I really enjoyed that. I was taken with three kids who were out front when we came out. One boy with blonde dreadlocks and two girls. They made the newspapers as the ‘windowkids’ (watching from outside the studio).” Was it a thrill to connect with a new, young audience?

“Whenever you cross any kind of line, if an animal likes you, when anything of difference connects, I find it exciting because people are so ready to click out. Yes, ideally I’d like to see a multi-racial, all ages audience. "A song on Turbulent Indigo, ‘Borderlines’, covers a huge topic, one I gave a lot of thought. Basically, whenever you form an opinion, you draw a line between you and someone else. I would think young people would enjoy good music. I remember in the [6os] coffeehouses; there were young fans. Dylan was a fan of yVoody Guthrie. There has always been a tradition of admiring accomplished older artists, so to speak. I don’t feel old. I don’t feel a barrier. My friends always say: ‘Joan, when I’m in your company, I always feel like a child among adults.’ I mean, my knees still tremble if I’m in a good mood. I’ll get an energetic desire to skip, or hop, or wriggle my hips, the way young children do when they walk. I haven’t completely lost that and that’s good [giggles].” Are you pleased with the response to Turbulent Indigo? “It’s very strong this time, and I’m surprised.

I think it means people are listening again. Generally, in the past 15 years, all my projects that have, for lack of a better, term, had deep thought to them were viewed negatively. We seemed to go through a fluffy headed decade, in the 80s, where nobody' wanted to look ; at anything seriously sociologically. I think that’s changed. If you’d asked me, this one would have been iffy, relative to the response for so many years [for] Night Ride, [which] was lighter, it had more levity, and people liked that. This one is a little heavier. I thought: ‘Ohmigod, they’re going to think this is morbid.' But the times are so difficult for so many people. I think the masses tend to be somewhat sober, or they wouldn’t be able. to enjoy a project like this one.”

Do you strive for balance between personal and issue orientated songs? “No, it just comes out. When I have 10 songs, I go into the studio. They’re usually written over a period of two or three years. Hejira was primarily written from driving from New York cross-country along the Gulf, so it had lots of travelling imagery and the kind of reflections that come from a person driving alone. As a result people have told me they’ve enjoyed it while driving from Toronto to LA. One young musician told me he had to pull over to the side of the road in the desert because he was crying over one song. Whether it’s laughing or crying, if there’s any kind of emotional movement, I’m very pleased." It seems you now deliver a new album every three years. Is that your preferred pace? “It shows how things have changed. I used to put out an album a year. It’d take two years to record, and it’d be an eight track board. And I never had a producer, so I never had to secondguess anyone. I’d just be: ‘ls the performance right?' I never needed a committee to debate it. The moment we hit the 80s, technology expanded, and we’d be dealing with 24 or 36 tracks and 200 different types of echo. To me, that was the boys’ territory. There was a certain sound I’ve always liked, and it wasn’t in vogue for a long time, even in the 70s when I began to work with a band. Everyone always likes to be hip together, but to me, hip was never hip. It’s always a herd consciousness, everyone agrees on hip.” Are you a perfectionist in the studio? “No, I don’t think so. I’ve seen singers get up to take 42, punching in two words. I’m not that fussy. I’ll do four or five takes. I am fussy about

time and feeling. This layering method used in the studio is tedious and expensive, whereas playing live you have to make it feel good. Recording, I’ll try something new, and if it doesn’t work, just take it off. I need to feel an addition is enhancing, not just arbitrary. “I’m rediscovering live performance. I always loved club work, it was the big stages I had a problem with. You lose intimacy there. Also,' the concert audience can be just too critical, whereas in the clubs, if you screw up, they love it! It’s fun. To err is human, to. forgive divine. If people forgive,. the heart opens up and a wonderful night is had by all. The concert stage is unforgiving. It’s like the Olympics or an exam. You can’t dare be less than a nine.” .

Another singer/songwriter still producing valid work is Neil Young, who is also Canadian. Do you feel a common sensibility/identity with him? “I think it’s more that Neil and I both had polio, in the same year, in our backs and legs. When a child is faced with a killing disease like that, you become survivors and outsiders. You recognise you are mortal, and children don’t generally have that experience. You become little old people in a certain way. People say when you reach 50 you enter your no bullshit period. Well, when you’ve had polio at nine, you start early!” Can we expect a CD box set covering your career?

“In my contract, I have to put one together, so that’ll be in the next couple of years. I see it as a necessary evil. I prefer not to disturb the album form, I don’t like the idea of a Readers Digest thing. I’ve managed to fight off the greatest hits thing throughout my career because of that. The pieces selected from the work are generally the more general admission ones, not necessarily the most creative. A greatest hits record would not be where the innovation or the best poetry would lie. It may be musically nice, but giddy in terms of the lyric. We’re also preparing to do an album of my songs by an international cast. Mostly by people we know have done my songs in performance, and that’ll be really interesting.” Do you enjoy collaborating with other musicians? (Seal appears on Turbulent Indigo.) “Yes, it's like casting, and you have your choice of all the musicians in the world. For instance, Billy Idol has the best voice I could think of to play the bully on ‘Dancing Clown’.” Is painting still a passion for you?

“Yes it is. I have an exhibition coming up in Italy, maybe Florence, which is intimidating. Coals to Newcastle! I’ve exhibited in Tokyo, Edinburgh and London, and one in Milan will include photographs. There’ll be some kind of launch party in LA for the work that’s on the new album’s cover. In all, I did nearly 40 paintings for it. I paint as much as a lot of my fulltime painter friends do.” Does it inspire your music?

“You can see a correlation. When the music gets jazzy, the painting gets abstract. When it was minimal, in the early period, I was drawing. Then, as I’d add an overdub, I’d add colour. In writing songs, the text requires a lot of soulscraping. Playing the guitar can be soothing and romantic, like petting a cat, but the lyric writing is more like cleaning the kitty litter, it's painful. And painting is like child’s play. Truth and beauty are the goals of all of it.” Back in 1982, you told Rolling Stone you didn’t like the idea of making pop music at age 45. At 51, are you now reconciled to it? “You have to understand part of the reason I have the sleeve painting of myself with my ear cut off. I’m not complaining, but I have been undervalued. That’s the way the system works. For many years, a lot of my best projects have been dismissed, and for funny reasons. Some themes were ahead of their time, and people weren’t ready to look at them, or the music was out of sync with current trends. I took so much flak. It’s like the nice, cute kid coming home from school and he’s been bullied, and you ask why people could be so blind and cruel. I felt: ‘Here’s this beautiful music and some standard setting writing in the history of pop,’ and I don’t recall a good reaction to it. Basically, I'd fallen out of favour, primarily because in America the world of pop is afraid of jazz. What I was doing wasn’t jazz, but it was jazzy, and that was bad enough. The powers that be, the corporates, lumped me in as an also-ran and that was frustrating. “The art was not affected by that — that’s a pure impulse — but when the executives reject it, so do the outlets. Then you’re in the position of having created something beautiful and not being able to tell anybody. You can’t get your videos on TV, or records on the radio. Because it’s a youth cult anyway, they begin to blame your chronological years.” There’s nothing ‘also-ran’ about Joni Mitchell and her art. Long may she blaze.

KERRY DOOLE