Joni Mitchell was at the end of a gruelling tour, not of concerts but interviews. For the last five months she had been touring the world doing little but face a continuous stream of reporters who asked the same questions in different accents.

Auckland was to be her last stop before returning home to California. However no sooner had she arrived here than Mitchell was struck down by a particularly evil flu, a flu of influenza contracted in Australia. After five days in bed the day I roused themselves for this interview, Mitchell, looking pale, tired and interview of the day, of the tour, fell to flip it up.

In such circumstances it would be understandable were Mitchell to be a less-than-enthusiastic subject. In fact she proved the opposite. Over the course of two hours and fortified by several cigarettes and constant cups of coffee, Mitchell faced a wide range of subjects by no means confined to her music. She spoke about figures as diverse as Idi Amin, Margaret Thatcher, "He's senile." He's an idiot." She quoted Nietzsche and the I Ching. She pondered the nature of the media, the intrusive and printing press and the witch trials, and she speculated on conspiratorial and under-developed terrorism and US foreign policy in Latin America.

Laughter

Yet despite the apparent seriousness of much of what she said, it was constantly punctuated by generous and often self-deprecating laughter. She mimicked the voices of Margaret and Butch (the American producer from French TV producers to Japanese journalists. She even vocalized instrumental solos, including a badly programmed Fairlight synthesizer and a famous session drummer who shall be nameless.

"I'm taunting on you," she grinned at one point during a friends against journalists. "I'm just giving you the journalist's point of view and you're getting it. I knew I'd do this. I get mean on coffee you know. I'm a happy drunk but a mean coffee drunk."

Equally as fascinating as her steady flow of ideas was Joni Mitchell's face. When frowning it became all bones and hollows and those famous cheekbones. At such times she looked ravaged but strangely handsome, capable and wise, very much the sophisticated survivor. But in mid-sentence, yet when she laughed, the years fell away and the mischievous, chapeau atop long blonde foliage haircut (hat itself the free-thought troubadour of the 1960s) made her look almost girlish. There Mitchell may not concede much strong alterations in her looks but she does admit to some changes with time. "My face began to change when I really began to think. My eyes got more intelligent. My eyes were much more attractive to men when they were soft and insipid and stupid looking."

Her smiles are quite enchanting, and not merely to this (admittedly predisposed) reporter. Even Rip Torn, the American character, was charmed as was an initially uninterested senior photographer from a daily paper. He'd just stopped by to get a couple of shots before going on to cover a race meeting. He'd never heard Mitchell's music, required still not knowing who this strong, fascinating woman really was. Finally, having finished his allotted task, he offered profuse thanks and ventured to suggest that "Miss Mitchell, you really should smile more often." She gave a slow, down and a "What, with these teeth?" smile. Then the smile.  

Chalk Marks

Of course, one reason behind Mitchell's intense concentration during this interview is Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm. But her 20th album, Chalk Mark has served to mark her 20th year as a recording artist. Appropriately enough, Chalk Mark has no inclination for bombast on such an extensive journey.

"I felt empty. I had put all my energy into making the record. It took me two and a half years and I thought it was a lot of work and I was very proud of it. But the initial feedback I got on it was terrible. Nobody could really get it. It was like I had said something other than what it was. It was depressing. And in that state, I was expected to go on this interview tour. Now I'm completely down and isolated. But as it began to sink in, as I would have it, those things that are empty do fill up. So it's been good for me on this trip in certain ways. Whether it will make a dent in my art I don't know."

What has proved instructive for Mitchell about this tour was gathering the perspectives of journalists. She found that the ideas which followed her around was that she no longer writes intimately.

"When I first started out in the early 1960s it's true. Listening to the early work again I realize that some of it is extremely internal. But because I no longer have a particularly insular place anymore doesn't mean that what I'm writing now is not intimate or less valid. It's almost like people fearlessly say 'and forever' to the this tainting Ophelia. But Ophelia doesn't last forever. So I probably wouldn't still be there.

"Nonetheless I've had a request to write more love songs, preferably of the suffering variety. In Japan they were relentless. They wanted to hear up in my falsetto. She laughs and takes another sip of coffee. "Perhaps people miss me. To get these kind of tears you have some lonely days. They have an appetite for conflict only of a romantic nature, when there are so many other kinds."

And it's conflict of the social and political kind that has taken an increasingly large concern on Mitchell's last two albums. While concerns such as environmental pollution have appeared in her work for several early days one thinks of "Big Yellow Taxi" and 'Banquet' — the recent songs are far more angry and direct.

Urgency

"Perhaps it's the urgency I felt regarding the topics on the last two albums. I just found the 80s in America to be such an alarming time. the collapse of the dream for many — the small businessman, the farmer. We were watching capitalism turn into a casino as the high-roller business school wizards took over."

She now considers some of the songs on 1985's Dog Eat Dog as almost prophetic: "The writing on the wall. When I wrote about some of those things people didn't care for it. Dog Eat Dog came out before the Iran/Contra scam and before the fall of the TV evangelists. My function has always been I'm both sensitive enough and tough enough to not just be geared towards popularity. I'm geared to telling it like I see it. In the early days, when I was expressing my internal feelings, others weren't doing that. Then once I started expressing how I saw America crumbling, others didn't want that.

Mitchell has also experienced the sharper edges of 80s capitalism at first hand. "I've just had two of the roughest years of my life with people trying to make a quick buck out of me. My housekeeper sued me. The State of California beat on me for money and I sued them. (I won but they might contest it.) I was ripped off by a bank It woke me up. I used to teel my terrain was matters of the spirit and that they didn't go together with politics.

Yet she bristles at the suggestion that in turning from matters of the heart to political concerns her songwriting may become less universal, more limited in audience identification. 'The Beat of Black Wings' is a song about war, period. Regionalism is not in that song, it's in the journalism that accompanies it. People read the journalism and decide that's what the song is about and don't hear the song itself anymore. The songs will hold up. You've got preachers in this culture have you not? Check them out against 'Tax Free'. You've got greedy businessmen don't you, your own dark little entrepreneurs? Check them out against 'Dog Eat Dog.

Ripening

If sections of Mitchell's audience are surprised by the turn her recent work has taken from the lyrical subject matter to her increasing anger, she says, "Well, the artist usually has no choice but to risk their audience. The audience is free to not have to do it anyway. The masses prefer to have their baby food. But people don't know that. They keep tampering. But I'm better than ever. I can sing better, I can play better. So should be. You know rock and roll is a youth music and I'm not a rocker and roller. I'm a musician. I'm in my ripening. And that's the being soft with, and if I'm in my decline."

Such a powerful and independent stance has stood her in good stead ever since she first took over her own business affairs. From the outset Mitchell acted as her own agent and manager, negotiating her own publishing rights. "I'm an independent capitalist by the time I was 21. I always knew that the artist was at an end. Every record contract offered to me was a form of indentured servitude and I realized people had got me cornered and I was just a little pawn in their game. Although I came after them (was still a girl artist) I could see what they were up to."

She credits David Crosby (producer of her first album) as having instilled in her the understanding with hearing the "essential uniqueness" of her voice and "dropping it like a bomb into the current thing." Moreover the fact that Crosby was broke at the time and the budget pleased the company, "with the result that I've been in control of my own budget ever since. And even though the last couple of times they took it off me it didn't last for long. They took a long time, and with 48 singles they took a long time. So you know, in spite of the fact that I'm not a platinum selling artist and they've marginalized me around, they still haven't sent a guy in a suit to breathe down my neck."

Baby Ego

"As far as Mitchell one definitely imagines any 70-year-old man would have his work cut out to try to impress me," she says wryly. "The woman's ego is by her own definition, a baby ego. She shrugs. "It's an oxymoron, synonymous. You've got to have a big ego to be a performer. To a certain extent. But the loudness. There's nothing more disgusting to me than the huge hum of the drum. Brash, young artists were outrageous egoists. Looking at some of the young women on the charts, I'm not unattractive to me."

She describes her friendship with the late Jaco Pastorius in these terms. Speaking fondly of his bass-playing genius while also describing him as "a full tilt braggart. He was the only other person I ever met who though Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra was funny. He was wonderful company to me. He was unbelievably arrogant in a way that to me was amusing, but to most other people on the scene was too much."

Mitchell then grins as she recalls her involvement in two famous all-star gatherings: Bob Dylan's 1976 Rolling Thunder roadshow and, the same year, the Band's farewell concert the Last Waltz. "Both were supposedly egoless events," she says and rolls her eyes. "I mean can you imagine? A real bushy line-up in each one. You should have seen all these people busting a gusset to be egoless. I would rather we'd all been flying a banner 'We're all huge ego-maniacs here.' It might have brought on some genuine modesty." She laughs and reaches for the coffee.

Surprisingly enough, the idea of indulging one's ego in an autobiography does not appeal, despite the fact that so many of her contemporaries are currently doing just that. "Autobiography is one of the most boring writing forms there is in that it's just a series of self-congratulatory statements. It has little to do with reality. The short story is a better form. You can be more honest in a short story. There are only a few figures I would feel the necessity to tell in an autobiographical way because they involve famous and charismatic people. For instance my visit to [American painter] Georgia O'Keefe or my time spent with [jazz legend] Charles Mingus. But as regards my romantic relationships with men, they would be so much more real written in a fictional way."

Of course many fans suspect she has already done this extensively through her songwriting. "It's a game I often played, guessing which of Mitchell's past lovers, many of them famous in their own right, have occasioned which songs. Such speculations, especially when they appear in print, always leave her feeling that they've got it all wrong. Misconceptions are rampant. But the gossip is so titillating and people get a rush off it. But it is such a cheap thrill. It's so disappointing for me. Either you can relate to my songs by saying that's what she went through, which keeps it at a nice distance. Or you can relate it to what you've been through, which is so much richer. A beauty, if I may say, of my work is that it has given people an option. If you can't relate to it yourself you can always pin it on me."

Intoxicating

During the course of our time together Mitchell twice sang, accompanying herself beautifully on a Martin acoustic guitar. Her singing voice is every bit as rich as it appears on record, the maturing years having added a deeper and fullness. "(The intoxicating effect on this reporter of a private performance from one of his long-time idols would not be under-estimated.)" Number one from the new album sounded quite different, though nonetheless strong with its complex arrangement pared down to its structure. The other song was "Fourth of July Night Ride Home," a short but very attractive new composition written just prior to this tour.

"There's nothing like a new song," she says, but acknowledges that such joys don't necessarily come easily. "Like any professional writer there are days when you sit down and pen nothing. You scribble a lot of words but there's nothing retrievable. And there are always songs which still have to be finished at recording time. Every writer knows this process. It's agony. Sometimes if I get bogged down I mentally take the song into random mode. When rationality fails I go for the irrational. The irrational frequently conjures up a better possibility. It will obliterate any old noise; it's completely blind and intuitive. For people who've never worked with me before it's the most frightening aspect of my process. They think Joni's lost her marbles."

To illustrate she details how 'Lucky Girl' from Dog Eat Dog was written, with her working in the studio to the accompaniment of screeching distortions from a malfunctioning Fairlight programme. However at the opposite end of her writing process are those occasional songs which "seem to come out of nowhere; they come mysteriously. Take 'Dancing Clown' for instance. I set myself an exercise when I was in New York four years ago that I would write a song. In New York the street is very colourful and just walking out your door something is bound to happen. But I'd been there two weeks, and although it was eventful it was mostly things I'd described in one way or another before.

"My neighbour and I liked to play the last few races on the off-track betting just a few streets away. The horses' names were so rich with these strange juxtapositions of nouns and adjectives. I took the racing sheet home with me and made a column of descriptive phrases and a column of surnames. Out of this came 'Dancing Clown,' which is just loaded with horses' names from the New York circuit." A chuckle and another sip of coffee. "I told Dylan about it because he really liked the song and he said, 'Aw, I had that idea years ago but I thought it was a dumb idea'."

Soliloquy

Mitchell admits that she is no longer as prolific as she once was but argues that the reason is due to her more exacting standards now. "If I was to write simple three-chord songs they could come much more quickly, but because I demand of myself a certain amount of musical growth, doing something I haven't done before, hoping for something fresh, I ended up with melodies that are soliloquy-like. It becomes harder to set lyrics to them. The other reason I'm not as prolific is that the production is so much more expansive now. The last two and a half years it took to make this album were not idly spent. They were part of my ongoing education with music. I'm learning to be an orchestrator. I'm still in school. I always will be."

As a result of such education she looks back on her earlier work with an increasingly critical eye. "I wish I knew then what I know now because it makes me want to go back and re-do some of them. Some songs are stronger than the performances. For instance 'Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire' [from 1972's For the Roses]. It's nicely presented but the bite of the language isn't brought out. I could sing it now with more coarseness and bring the theatre out more."

She concedes that such self-criticism will probably always be with her. "When Charles Mingus was dying he was pissed off with his own music. It's that divine dissatisfaction that it could always be perfect. I'll probably be like that with mine."

Portrait

An idea she has been mulling over while on tour has been to compile a retrospective selection of her work as a portrait of her artistic development. As she discusses the project and possible tracks from the 15 albums are suggested, the inclusion of 'Both Sides Now' inevitably rates a mention. For not only was that her first widely known song (largely through the many cover versions) but each of its verses describes a subsequent stage of aging, resignation and (possibly) disillusionment.

"You know," she says, "there's an old TV clip of me singing that from 1969. I'm wearing a long red velvet dress which I've still got and can still get into. I've an idea to recut that clip with me re-doing the final verse now." For a moment Joni Mitchell pauses, and then adds with a smile, "I think the comparison would be interesting."