Joni Mitchell

by Iain Blair
Chicago Tribune
December 1, 1985

Joni Mitchell is in quite a feisty mood these days, though you probably wouldn't guess it at first.

Sitting in her manager's office on a cool California afternoon with the sun shining in her hair, the famous songstress is hooting with laughter as she recounts her involvement with Northern Lights For Africa, the Canadian version of Band Aid that teamed her with the likes of Bryan Adams, Neil Young and Oscar Peterson.

"I know it sounds ridiculous, but I was literally starving when we did the session 'cuz my yoga teacher--this is all California nonsense," she giggles, "had sent me to a psychic dietitian who, while rubbing her chin and swinging her arm around in a circle, had diagnosed a lot of food allergies. The result was, predictably, that I was hardly allowed to eat anything, so by the time I arrived with an apple and a rice patty, my poor stomach was making all these strange noises. Then we get in the studio, and the engineer says he can't record 'cuz he's picking up some weird rumbling sound coming from my direction....

"Of course, I was way too thin then, and it was all pretty ironic considering the subject matter," she adds, laughing again. Today, the singer has regained a lot of those lost pounds, and while she'll never be exactly beefy, Mitchell looks in no danger of fading away anymore. Quite the contrary in fact, for this normally reclusive artist is also eager to talk--on just about any topic, and particularly her new album, "Dog Eat Dog."

For anyone at all familiar with Mitchell's work over the past 15 years or so, from her early folk days through her collaboration with jazz great Charlie Mingus, this 14th album might come as quite a surprise. For one thing, its tone is angry and overtly political, a far cry from her last album, 1982's ultra-romantic "Wild Things Run Fast." For another, it's full of high-tech sounds and textures, courtesy of a computerized synthesizer, and features contributions from such an unlikely source as British electro-popster Thomas Dolby.

"Yes, well, it's certainly not what most people expect from me, and it's definitely totally different from anything I've ever done before," concedes Mitchell. "It was also the hardest record I've ever made, for a number of reasons--there's a lot of blood on those tracks. I mean, these are dangerous times, and I suddenly felt a sense of responsibility to speak up now or forever hold my peace.

"Yes, it's outspoken and political, and no, I've never been particularly political before, or thought it was that important. I suppose traditionally, musicians have always been politically very naive--look at what happened with events like the Bangladesh and No-Nukes concerts. The funds from both never got to the source. But we're learning--Live Aid and the other benefits were far better organized, and right now we need to take a stand and fight over issues that are threatening not only our freedom in this country but the entire world."

When asked to expand on the subject, Mitchell doesn't pull any punches. "I'm talking about everything from the insane arms race to the current attempts to censor lyrics by various extreme right-wingers," she says. "Basically, I feel that a lot of strides were made in this country during the '60s--equal rights, feminism, freedom of speech, etc.--but under Reagan's new conservatism, much of that's being eroded and undone. For instance, I think all these censorship attempts are really dangerous.

"I hate to see the country backsliding into extremism, and that's exactly what's happening today, sadly. Sure, this album has a lot of 'adult language' in it--there's a 'fuck' here and a 'pissed off' there--but then, that's the way we talk. Why can't songs be reflective of our everyday culture?

"The rock 'n' roll lyric issue is just the tip of the iceberg," continues Mitchell. "Look at the church and state issue," (referred to in no uncertain terms in a track called "Tax Free," which also features Rod Steiger as a flamboyant Moral Majority-styled evangelist advocating the invasion of Cuba. Sample lyric: "You get witch-hunts and wars/when church and state hold hands/Fuck it! Tonight I'm going dancing/with the drag queens and punks/Big beat deliver me from this sanctimonious skunk.")

"The church is very aligned with the right wing today, and Russia and Communists are the enemy 'cuz it plays into their Armageddon prophecies," she says. "And now they have access through the media to a lot of public brainwashing, and that's very dangerous, 'cuz if you can't criticize the president without being branded a Commie, you're on the verge of witch-hunting. They haven't gained quite enough power for persecuting yet, but they're playing with the idea, and there's a lotta pushing and testing ... it's all pretty scary to me."

Mitchell's jaundiced view of the current state of affairs is explored further in songs such as the title cut ("The dove is in the dungeon/and the white-washed hawks pedal hate and call it love") and "The Three Great Stimulants"--not sex, drugs and rock and roll, but "artifice, brutality and innocence."

"Innocence has always been a stimulant, especially when a culture is entering a decadent period," she comments. "You get kiddie-porn, the cult of the youth, an obsession with youth in fact, and stuff like face lifts --yechhh!" Mitchell wrinkles up her own 42-year-old natural features in disgust.

Other songs such as "Ethiopia" and "Fiction" also address Mitchell's newly voiced public concerns, but her gloomy assessment is also tempered by such old-style personal autobiography as the appealing "Good Friends" (an uptempo duet with Michael McDonald) and the self-described "happy, Hollywood ending" of "Lucky Girl,' which unashamedly crows over her happy marriage to her bassist and co-producer Larry Klein.

The questions of producer credit turns out to be a slight thorn in the singer's side, and different tracks list different combinations of Mitchell, Klein, Dolby and Mike Shipley (who also engineered). "If I'd had my way, there'd be no producer listed at all," sighs Mitchell, who goes on to admit that there was "a definite clash of temperament" with Dolby over the project.

"I'm basically unproducable, and used to letting my albums take their own eccentric course for better or worse, making my own mistakes," she explains. "But this time, in order to make the technological leap, I needed assistance, and that's why Thomas was called in--more as a technical assistant and player, though he'd opted for the position of producer earlier.

"Well, I'm very fond of him, but man!" She pauses carefully, as if reliving the frustration. "He was very quiet--and stubborn--and when we disagreed, we'd have these discussions and he'd say, 'Well, I'm not getting anything out of these adult talks, Joan,' and then I'd say, 'Well, then, neither am I,' and we'd be stalemated. The problem was that in all my records, the structure of any song is usually laid down by acoustic guitar or piano first, and then I bring in other players and just give them the freedom to blow and counter-melody against that. Sometimes I edit them, sometimes I just take their parts and move 'em around. So basically, I gather all this material and then collage it in afterwards. The advantage is that it keeps spirits up in the studio and saves me from having to give a lot of verbal instruction.

"That's the way I'm used to working, so when Thomas came in and immediately started building and building tracks, it just drove me crazy," says the singer. "I'd say, 'You know why you were hired, to set up sounds on the Fairlight computer, so please get off the keyboards and let me play.' Sometimes it would just fall on deaf ears, and we never used those tracks 'cuz I just can't work that way, and I couldn't give over that much territory. I felt very mixed up about it, I must confess. On one level, I thought perhaps I'm not being very cooperative about it, but on the other, I thought, 'No, this is composition, and if my structure is radically altered at the beginning, I don't want to be interior-decorated out of my own music.' I've always had the luxury of making my own mistakes, and that's something important to protect."

Happily, according to Mitchell, all such "creative differences" were largely patched up and didn't adversely affect the end result, which, she emphasizes, is "something I'm really pleased with. Of course, there's already some things I'd do differently today, but then that's always the case and the nature of the beast. Thomas and I worked out a lot of the bugs, and I think it's a good record for it and everything that's on it is something I like--it definitely expresses my music."

"Dog Eat Dog" once again showcases Mitchell's talent for painting and design in the record sleeve, a talent--and passion--that not so long ago threatened to retire her completely from the music scene, she now admits.

"You know, when I came to signing my current record deal, I almost quit then--I mean, I'd been at it since the mid-'60s, and I suddenly felt it was time to stop and just pursue my painting, which was going quite well." (Mitchell exhibited her large, impressionistic canvases twice last year at Manhattan's Kamikaze Gallery with considerable success.) Fortunately for her fans, the singer decided to keep writing and recording, but it wasn't easy, she says.

"Painting's become a bigger and bigger part of my life, especially over the past five years, and when we had to tour in '83, they actually had to threaten me to put my paints away and go into rehearsals. I'd much rather have stayed home and continued painting, although once I got into it and then out on the road again it was okay.

"But the moment I got back home again, I went straight into the thick of the pigments again," she laughs. "In fact, I've painted more in the last three years than in my entire life--and I've been painting all my life. People don't know it, obviously, but I only became interested in music much later.

"I've also been very busy just living for the past three years or so," she adds with a smile. "People tend to say, 'Oh, you've been laying low--we haven't seen your photo in the papers much,' etc., but the thing is, to be a writer, you need to be slightly invisible, and you need to live and go where ordinary people are. To be 'A Star' means that no longer are you the watcher --you're the watched, and when you're being watched it's very hard to create. I'm more of a watcher."

Meanwhile, Mitchell is gearing up to become the watched once again when she embarks on a six-month tour starting early next year--"if they can drag me away from my easel," she laughs.