Lady of the Canyon

by Kristine McKenna
Spin
May 1988

She was born in Ft. MacLeod, Alberta, Canada, on November 7, 1943. She had no brothers or sisters and was afflicted with a series of illnesses, which made for an isolated and lonely childhood. Her debut album, Song to a Seagull, was released in 1968; three albums later she released the record the critics still rave about, Blue, and in 1974 came her commercial blockbuster, Court and Spark. Her music moved in an increasingly experimental direction with the eight albums that followed, none of which were as enthusiastically received as Joni's "Raised on Robbery" phase. Six years ago she married jazz musician Larry Klein, with whom she coproduced her last album and her new one, Chalk Marks in a Rain Storm. They live in Malibu. Joni thinks of herself as a visual artist first and a musician second, and a good amount of her time is given over to painting. She's something of a clothes horse; the day we talk, she's swathed in layers of fabric of varying textures and shades of rust and gray. She's wearing a bowler hat and has her hair in braids and she looks cute. She arrives hungry and sends out for a tuna sandwich and chain smokes. She's forthcoming and unpretentious; but she's not the sort to kiss and tell and doesn't name-drop. She laughs a lot and speaks of her husband often, with respect- and affection. The lady of the canyon with the beautifully broken heart appears to have found her refuge.

Are there themes you were preoccupied with in your early work that no longer seem so compelling to you ?

I certainly don't have the attitude, "Oh, I know all about that," because you never know all about anything. In your forties, your life becomes epic and things you experienced in your twenties come around again but the nuances are different. I can't think of any theme that's expired for me except the search for love because I'm happily married now.

Your husband Larry Klein coproduced your last album, Dog Eat Dog. Since you hired him again I assume that you enjoy collaborating.

With the making of Dog Eat Dog, I was pressured for the first time in my career to make some kind of change. My manager at that time - I've since switched management - almost insisted that I be produced. I felt they were trying to laminate me to someone who was popular at the time and I found that insulting. I don't want to be interior decorated out of my music - I'm a composer, not a pop star who can be decorated into fashion. So we argued and argued and producers were paraded through, but my husband and I remained convinced we could do the job with the assistance of a good engineer and a keyboard man who could set up sounds for us. The keyboardist we chose was Thomas Dolby - and it was not a successful collaboration. Thomas accepted the job fully aware that he was to set up sounds then relinquish the keyboards to me, and though he said that would be pleasure, in the end he couldn't handle it.

Making that album was like being in a band because there were three heads - my husband, Thomas Dolby, and the engineer Mike Shipley - none of whom agreed with my approach to the studio. I feel that when you enter the studio you must allow an idea - even ideas that initially appear to be bad - to run until you recognize that it either succeeds or fails. You can't kill it off before you've even begun because that's the only way you discover anything. Anyhow, working with them I had critics around at the beginning of an idea for the first time in my career and that was very difficult for me.

What was the central idea you had when you went into the studio to make this record?

I don't work that way. I discover what I'm up to in the process of doing it and never know where I'm headed when I begin. To watch me work you'd be apt to think I don't know what I'm doing - and in a way I don't, but that's part of the process. Not knowing is an open-minded state that allows things to come to you.

How would you describe the mood of the record?

It's an emotionally complex record and how dark you find it probably depends on what you bring to it when you hear it. For me, it's neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but rather, is a series of characters commenting on different times. The female narrator in "The Tea Leaf Prophecy" comments on life in the Forties, after the bombing of Hiroshima. The central character in "The Beating of Black Wings" is a kid who's been to Vietnam and he talks about war. "Dancing Clown" is a couple of guys standing on a corner watching a beautiful girl go by.

How did you go about selecting the guest players on the album?

Some of the recording was done at Peter Gabriel's studio, which I'd borrowed because it happened to be near a studio where my husband was working. Peter dropped by one day so i put him to work. My husband was working with Ben Orr, who has a rich baritone that he rarely uses, so l put him to work. Basically I make use of what's at hand; James Taylor and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young were around when I was making my earlier records and I put them to work. What I did do on this record that I'd never done before was seek out singers I didn't know personally, because I thought they were suited to the song - Billy Idol and Willie Nelson fall into this category. I saw Billy at the Grammys a few years ago and thought he was a great rock 'n' roll singer, so l called him and he came down the next night. He was a delight to work with. I've always loved Willie Nelson's voice and met him at Farm Aid but I didn't really know him when I invited him to sing on the album. Tom Petty sings a very small part, which l offered him with an apology because it is such a small part. But he came in and sang it and was great about it. Prince had been inviting me to attend a lot of things and wrote a song for me called "(You Are) My Emotional Pump." I didn't cut it but I like his music and think he's the greatest performer I've ever seen. His timing is amazing. Anyhow, I met Wendy & Lisa through Prince. We'd seen each other socially - at dinners and so forth— and wound up working at the same studio. With Wendy & Lisa it was a case of meeting by the coffee machine and saying hey, how'd you like to sing some backgrounds?

The song "Number One" is a reflection on fame and the roller coaster of success and failure. How do you feel about the way your career has unfolded? You were very high profile for a few years, then you seemed to intentionally step out of the spotlight. It's widely assumed that one of the reasons you moved into jazz was to escape the pop rat race.

I moved into jazz because pop musicians didn't have the harmonic sophistication my music requires. They couldn't understand what they described as "Joni's weird chords," and it's true that my sense of harmony is somewhat unusual. Chaka Khan once told me my chords were like questions, and in fact, I've always thought of them as chords of inquiry. My emotional life is quite complex, and I try to reflect that in my music. For instance, a minor chord is pure tragedy; in order to infuse it with a thread of optimism you add an odd string to the chord to carry the voice of hope. Then perhaps you add a dissonant because in the stressful society we live in dissonance is aggressing against us at every moment. So, there's an inquiry to the chords comparable to the unresolved quality of much poetry.

The song "The Reoccurring Dream" makes the point that material things are ultimately without value, and throughout your career your music has stressed the importance of spirituality over worldly goods. And yet, I've got the impression that you live in a world of luxury and beautiful things.

Yes, this is a great paradox. When I first got the money to acquire things, I firmly believed that luxury arrives as a guest and then becomes the master and I think there is an element of truth to that. In the madness of both sides of my family was manifesting itself in me - we have a tendency to give up on people and become anti-social hermits. Anyhow, I spent a summer up there living in an older fisherman's shack with plastic in the windows, bats hanging from the roof, and no electricity or running water, and I got so l could walk through the bushes at night without any fear. I wasn't afraid of the wilderness the way I was of cities. Last year my husband and I went up there with fourteen years having elapsed since that earlier summer and I found I couldn't swim in the ocean. It was so full of life and little things crawling around. We were planning to stay just two weeks but I told him I couldn't leave until I got over my fear. I was turning into a hothouse plant and losing my earthiness! So I stayed and scrubbed my copper pots squatting in the sun and got on friendly terms with nature again. We get into our vacuumed boxes and forget what it's like to lie down in dirt - that it's quite lovely.

You once commented that the three great stimulants are artifice, brutality, and innocence. Can you elaborate on that?

That's an idea I borrowed from Nietzsche but I agree with it. I rarely wear flamboyant makeup but whenever I do, I have to peel people off me - people who are responding to the seduction of artifice. Face paint, hiking up the skirt - these are flags of artifice. As for brutality, this culture is terrified of sex and thrives on decapitation. We're a culture of adrenaline addicts and need ever larger do of horror to get off, so movies like Halloween make millions. And innocence? A businessman wakes up in his mid 40s, jaded and thick-skinned from battling for financial opportunity, and yearns for what he has lost - his innocence. One of the recognizable characteristics of a culture in decline is the seduction of innocence.

But wouldn't you agree that to yearn for innocence is to have it in a sense?

If you want it in yourself, perhaps that's true. If want it in your bed that's something else entirely.

I get the impression you lead an extremely private life.

I do lead a private life and enjoy being able to move about with a degree of anonymity. The more high profile you are, the more lunatics you attract. Just having my house mentioned in connection with a recent storm in Malibu created problems. As soon as your name's on the news they come out of woodwork. So no, I'm not out pounding the pavement. I'm a loner by nature and the kind of attention the Beatles received would be a nightmare for me. I never courted that kind of fame because I’m a back bush Canadian. I come from small towns and was raised to believe that if you stick your head above ground, it'll probably get knocked off.

Speaking of high profile versus low profile, I assume you'll be touring.

There's some pressure being put on me to tour, but my last few performing experiences have been unpleasant. I was doing benefits and I get eaten alive at benefits. At the Amnesty Benefit I was asked to go on at the last minute, so we rehearsed backstage with borrowed equipment and went on and did three songs, for which I received my annual Worst Of award from Rolling Stone - for years Rolling Stone has been giving me a Worst Of something-or-other award every year. Anyway, people were throwing things at me at the Amnesty Benefit then I did the Leonard Peltier Benefit where I was playing to Willie Nelson's audience. Every knows that audience comes to party, and I don't do well in that setting because my music is fragile requires a more thoughtful setting. I don't make good-time boogie in the sun stuff and my music doesn't work in daylight. My audience is relatively small and when I do benefits I'm sandwiched between acts whose audiences are much bigger, so when I go on, they use the time to talk. It's left me feeling a bit shy about performing.

It sounds quite discouraging. How does this affect your life on a daily basis? What's a typical day like for you?

There is no typical day. I may paint everyday for a month, then not pick up a brush for weeks. Unfortunately, I'm not at all a creature of habit—I just of fall out of bed and into life.

What was the last album you bought?

Jimmy Cliff's The Bongo Man Has Come. I love title track. I spend a lot of time in the Caribbean - at least I used to. That area of the map always tries kill me! When I go there I invariably come home on a stretcher with some weird ailment or another. Anyhow, I listen to reggae when I go there.

What are your thoughts on the popular music scene right now?

All I can talk about are the things that I miss in popular music right now. We're living in an era of specialization created by middle men, and I wish I could turn on the radio and hear an old Miles Davis cut followed by Edith Piaf then Chuck Berry then Mozart. No matter what station you turn on, you hear the first song and know that if you listen for six hours you'll only hear more of that one song.

Is there a slot for you in that scheme of things? What are your hopes for this record?

No, I don't fit in anywhere and I don't dare indulge in hope for this record. They hated my last two albums and ate me alive on the Mingus record. The Hissing of Summer Lawns was named the worst album of 1975 by Rolling Stone. My album of 13 years ago, Court and Spark, was probably the last time there was a consensus of good feeling, but I couldn't handle all the attention that record generated around me. And of course, after that, it was time for me to pay, because once you've had your glory they're out to get you. I'd like people to hear this record, but I seem to be out of synch with the times in this decade. Am I early or am I late? I don't know. In 1983, I released Wild Things Run Fast, which was an album of love songs celebrating my marriage. It came out during the most anti-romantic period in pop music I can remember, ever. This was right when videos were first happening and the videos were not very tender - lots of women in spike heels grinding mens' hands into the ground. The general response to my record was 'yuuck, love songs.' From that we segued into a period of rah-rah Reaganism, at which time I released Dog Eat Dog, which espouses an almost evangelical humanism. At that time people didn't seem to want to think about the things we were bringing down on ourselves, and though Time magazine eventually did in-depth discussions of almost every issue the album raised, people seemed to think I was immature to have this point of view when the album came out. Obviously, these things are frustrating to me, but I've come to accept that I must write what I feel when I feel it and can't make my life unravel in a particular way. I can only do what is given me.