(From The Talk of the Town)
One recent evening, Joni Mitchell, whose autobiographical lyrics and
jazz-inflected acoustic guitar are largely responsible for folk music's
staying power, celebrated her fifty-second birthday with what she called
"an informal open rehearsal" at Fez, the downtown watering hole. Mitchell's
appearance was not announced in the press. Ten hours before she had decided
to perform, after a twelve-year absence from touring and just an hour after
she informed Ellen Cavolina, who books the acts at Fez, of her decision ("I
played for a group of seventy-year old intellectuals at the Waldorf-Astoria
last night; tonight I want to do something different," she said), word of
Mitchell's impromptu concert spread throughout Manhattan. "When I heard she
was performing, my whole BODY filled up with this...Joni feeling,"
Katherine Dieckmann, a VILLAGE VOICE writer, said as she waited in line. "I
almost passed out. Joni's been incredible for thirty years."
Of some two hundred fans who gathered in the dark, cavernous space where
Mitchell was to perform, many were women, including the novelist Susan
Minot; the Pretenders' lead singer, Chrissie Hynde; Carly Simon; and
Natalie Merchant. Hynde, who was sitting in a banquette, raised her hands
in the air as Mitchell made her way to the stage. "Let it out, Joni!" she
shouted. Mitchell smiled, strapped a green guitar across her chest, and
bowed.
She looked like any number of her photographs: long blond hair with bangs,
long pallid face, equine mouth. On a stand to Mitchell's right, there was a
vase filled with sunflowers, which evoked van Gogh, one of Mitchell's
favorite painters; in fact, the cover of her latest album, "Turbulent
Indigo," executed in oil, is a self-portrait with a bandaged ear. "I have
this little house in Canada," she told the audience, rubbing her right hand
against her black-jeaned thigh. "And there's this man who looks after my
land. He's a melody man. He hums all the time, like my grandmother did. He
thinks Frank Sinatra is an amateur. He said to me, 'Joni, I know you're not
sad like you are in your songs all the time. Write me something
different,'" Mitchell smiled her muted Stan Laurel-like smile. "I sat on a
rock and tried to tune my guitar to the sound of squawking birds near the
sea. I tried to write a happy song, but it didn't turn out that way."
Mitchell then began to sing "The Magdalene Laundries," which is about
discrimination against single women in Ireland in the early part of this
century.
During certain songs, Mitchell rocked her hips back and forth, in a
modified version of the Elvis swivel. Between songs, the only sound besides
Mitchell's voice and the audience's applause was Chrissie Hynde
intermittently shouting, "Let it out, Joni!" When Carly Simon, who was
seated in the booth beside Hynde's, asked her to stop, Hynde held Simon
tightly around the neck, pointed to Mitchell, and stage-whispered, "That's
a REAL singer up there."
"Why don't you have another drink, Chrissie?" a male member of the audience
yelled to Hynde after Mitchell completed "Turbulent Indigo" and moments
before Simon picked up her coat and left. Hynde ignored everyone except
Joni Mitchell. She cheered, "Happy birthday, Joni!" Mitchell looked out
into the audience and bowed again. The audience began singing "Happy
Birthday." Looking pleased and slightly embarrassed, Mitchell said, "The
one good thing about this birthday thing is that I don't have to say that
I'm fifty-one and a half anymore." She paused and strummed a few chords on
her guitar. "Maybe I've made it."
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Added to Library on January 9, 2000. (10703)
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