For Herbie, Joni's lyrics came first

by Doug Fischer
Ottawa Citizen
June 22, 2008

Jazz giant Hancock pays tribute to Mitchell's poetic words in Confederation Park tonight

Herbie Hancock never listened much to lyrics. He began playing piano when he was seven, and during the next 61 years became one of the world's most expressive and influential musicians and composers, an innovator in jazz, funk and R&B.

But even when interpreting iconic standards from the American Songbook, such as The Man I Love from his 1998 Grammy-winning album Gershwin's World, Mr. Hancock didn't take notice of the words.

Until he began to explore the music of his old friend Joni Mitchell.

"I knew she was loved as a poet but I had never delved into that part of her work," Mr. Hancock told the Citizen last week. "Now I can see she's a poet before she's a songwriter and a musician, and that it's the words that drive her melodies."

Mr. Hancock made the discovery while working on River: The Joni Letters, his compelling excursion through Ms. Mitchell's rich catalogue of songs. The album surprised everyone, Mr. Hancock included, when it won this year's Best Album Grammy, the first jazz recording to take the big prize since 1964.

The pianist had worked on three of the Canadian singer-songwriter's albums going back to 1979, and she'd sung on one of his. But until he had to actually choose the songs -- and singers -- for a project dedicated to her work, he did what many jazz instrumentalists do: he paid attention to melody, harmony, texture and structure and ignored the rest.

"For most of us, even when the lyrics are in English they might as well be in Polish," Mr. Hancock says, only half-jokingly. "River made me see that music can actually grow out of lyrics, and I was determined to do everything I could to ensure Joni's words motivated everything else."

Mr. Hancock performs music from River tonight when his stellar group featuring saxophonist Chris Potter, guitarist Lionel Loueke, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Vinnie Colaiuta headlines the Ottawa International Jazz Festival in Confederation Park. To handle Ms. Mitchell's all-important words, the band will also be accompanied by two young singers, Sonya Kitchell and Amy Keys.

Roughly half the concert will feature Ms. Mitchell's music and songs from Mr. Hancock's previous album, Possibilities, he says. The rest will be a sort of greatest hits package that is likely to include tunes such as Watermelon Man, Chameleon, Maiden Voyage and Rockit, taken from different parts of his varied career.

Not only has working with Ms. Mitchell's songs changed the way Mr. Hancock approaches songs -- "I now know to ask about the lyrics and add them to my palette" -- it has boosted his admiration for a woman he's considered a friend for nearly 30 years.

"She is a true renaissance person," he says. "She writes great poetry and songs, she is an accomplished musician and arranger, she paints, she directs films, she even wrote the music for a ballet. Who else does all of that?"

For River, Mr. Hancock and producer Larry Klein, who was once married to Ms. Mitchell, selected songs that accentuate familiar Ms. Mitchell themes: restlessness, loneliness, loss and doomed love. But looking back over her 40 years of songwriting, Mr. Hancock was most impressed by her progression from the purely personal to the political.

"Her writing is still very personal but she is at the point in her life, and so am I, where she has things to say about the state of the world," he says. "She has concerns about war, about the environment, about poverty and greed. And she is not afraid to stand up for her beliefs."

In an interview with the Citizen in 2006, Ms. Mitchell offered similar praise for Mr. Hancock. The two musicians are both Buddhists, and while that has naturally drawn them together, Ms. Mitchell said what really attracts her to the pianist is his willingness to take chances.

"When we met, we had the same problem but from two different directions," she said. "People said I was going too far into jazz and he was going too far into pop with his Headhunters thing. They accused him of commercialism and me of snubbing my nose at my fans."

They got together when bassist Jaco Pastorius phoned Mr. Hancock from the studio where Ms. Mitchell was recording Mingus, the 1979 album on which she wrote lyrics to tunes composed for her by legendary bassist Charles Mingus shortly before his death from Lou Gehrig's disease.

"I said, 'Joni Mitchell is doing a record about Charlie Mingus? Whoa, what's that gonna be about?'" Mr. Hancock recalls. "I never expected that she would even know who he was because his music was so different than the material I had heard her do."

But, in fact, Ms. Mitchell had been fascinated by jazz and world music for years, and had used horn sections -- and pseudo-jazz arrangements -- on several of her albums starting with the Hissing of Summer Lawns in 1975. Even so, Mingus represented a sharp departure.

And Mr. Hancock was surprised and impressed. For the session, Ms. Mitchell had called together saxophonist Wayne Shorter, a long-time Hancock collaborator, drummer Peter Erskine, conga player Don Alias, Pastorius and, as the key piece, Mr. Hancock. "I could see why she wanted us," Mr. Hancock recalls. "We were all exploratory musicians and she wanted us to play with the kind of freedom we were accustomed to. She had no fears at all."

The two have remained close friends since. When Ms. Mitchell was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters' Hall of Fame in Toronto in early 2007, Mr. Hancock travelled from Los Angeles to present the prize. That's when the pianist told her he was already deep into an album of her music.

"I didn't ask her permission to do the record, you know?" he laughs. "Who knows, she might have wanted to take control." v In fact, says Mr. Hancock, he and Mr. Klein were keeping Ms. Mitchell in mind every step of the way. They wanted to stay away from the usual tribute album with a hodge-podge of guests, and put together a collection that reflected Mr. Hancock's personal view of Ms. Mitchell's music. And they decided not to use traditional jazz vocalists, but singers able to approach jazz from their own roots in the blues, R&B and pop.

Mr. Hancock says Tina Turner's rawness was a natural choice for the crass celebrity sentiments of Edith and the Kingpin, just as Norah Jones' husky sweetness was a good fit for the longing and love of Court and Spark.

"Larry told me Joni was a fan of Tina and Norah, so that made those choices even easier," he says. "And Corinne Bailey Rae (who sings River) and Luciana Souza (Amelia) are both big fans of Joni."

The decision to use Leonard Cohen to close the album with a gravel-and-cigarettes recitation of The Jungle Line, a surreal trip into the jazz underworld, was pure theatre.

"I like to have something on every album that no one expects," he says. "It think it works pretty well."

After some convincing, Mr. Hancock says Ms. Mitchell agreed to appear on the album, surprising him with her choice, Tea Leaf Prophecy, a song about the Second World War courtship of her parents.

He was also amazed by the difference between the new version and the original, which appeared on Mitchell's 1988 album, Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm. "It shows just how great she is as a jazz singer," he says. "Her phrasing, her choice of notes, improvisational choices she makes. She's a true explorer."

Herbie Hancock plays on the main stage at Confederation Park tonight at 8:30 p.m. The Alexis Baro Sextet opens the show at 6:30 p.m.