New Joni Interview and Great News!

[sparky]

I about crapped my Calvins when I read the part I bolded.
This makes my year, and maybe my decade.

----------------------------------------------------


The trouble she's seen

Doug Fischer talks to Joni Mitchell about her seminal album, Hejira

Doug Fischer, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Sunday, October 08, 2006

Whenever Joni Mitchell had trouble sorting out her life, she took to the road. But in early 1976, with a turbulent love affair on the rocks and too many drugs in her body, she hit the highway almost with a vengeance.

"I was getting away from a romance, I was getting away from the craziness and I was searching for something to make sense of everything," she says. "The road became a metaphor for my life."

And it inspired the album many of her fans and music critics consider her masterpiece.

Released 30 years ago this week, the nine songs on Hejira form the remarkable personal journal of a nomadic, romantic dreamer whose aural notebook is filled with the stories of doomed love, late night roadhouse dance floors, wedding gown fantasies, lost chances and a deep yearning to escape and start over.

Mitchell is not convinced Hejira is the best of the 22 albums that made her among the most influential singer-songwriters, male or female, of the past 40 years. She won't attach that label to any of her albums.

The songs on Hejira: Dissecting the moodiest music of Joni Mitchell

'Hejira could only have come from me'

But she concedes Hejira is probably her one album that could not have been made by anyone else.

"I suppose a lot of people could have written a lot of my other songs, but I feel the songs on Hejira could only have come from me," she said an interview with the Citizen.

The stories they tell are so vivid, their observations so naked and the landscapes so haunting that Kris Kristofferson famously urged her in a letter to be "more self-protective ... to save something of yourself from public view."

But Mitchell says self-confession, no matter how risky and revealing, was essential to her writing during that era.

"My songs have always been more autobiographical than most people's," she says. "It pushes you toward honesty. I was just returning to normal from the extremities of a very abnormal mindset when I wrote most of the songs (on Hejira).

"When life gets interesting I get very alert, and life was very interesting. I think that took the writing to another level."

Mitchell talked about the album by phone from her home in Los Angeles, where she revealed she's recording her first collection of new songs in nearly a decade. More wary of public scrutiny these days, the Canadian singer agreed to a Citizen request to discuss Hejira because, she said, the album recalls an "interesting transitional" time in her life and her career.

Musically, Hejira certainly marked a departure from the two jazz-tinged but radio-friendly albums that preceded it. Gone were the hummable melodies, conventional formats and jaunty horn sections she used as Top 40 flirtations on 1974's Court and Spark and '75's The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

In their place, Mitchell offered seductively sparse rhythms, lush swirling guitars and the brilliant spark of Jaco Pastorius's fretless bass to create an unceasing musical motion that is as mesmerizing as the highways she travels in her songs.

The album is also a departure lyrically. Using the music's structural looseness to her advantage, Mitchell gives her words a simple directness and poetic polish seldom seen in her music before and rarely found again.

"To me, the whole Hejira album is really inspired," Mitchell says. "There is a rootlessness to it, for sure, but also discovery along the road."

Despite good reviews, Hejira did not sell as briskly as the more accessible albums Mitchell released during the first half of the 1970s. Although exact numbers are hard to get, there are indications sales of Hejira are stronger today than ever.

Voting on jonimitchell.com, an excellent fan-driven website, ranks Hejira as Mitchell's most popular album. A critics' poll done in the late 1990s placed the album in a first-place tie with the Blue, a moody collection of love songs she recorded in 1971.

Mitchell says Hejira's songs were written during or after three journeys she took in late 1975 and the first half of 1976.

The first was a concert tour cancelled amid turmoil after six weeks in February 1976 when Mitchell and her drummer boyfriend John Guerin ended their on-again, off-again relationship, this time seemingly for good.

Soon after, Mitchell signed on with Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review, a ragged, drug-soaked circus that also variously included Joan Baez, Mick Ronson, Roger McGuinn, Ronee Blakely, Allan Ginsburg and members of the Band. She soon became a frequent cocaine user.

"I realized you couldn't stay on that thing straight -- you'd be the only one," she explains. "It was just insane." Looking back, she says, the drugs had both "great and disastrous" effects: "I had terrible insomnia but I wrote a lot of epic poems," including Song for Sharon, for many the masterpiece around which Hejira orbits.

In danger of losing her equilibrium, Mitchell fled for home in Los Angeles. She was only back a few days when two friends, one of them a former lover from Australia, showed up at her door proposing they drive across the country to New England.

Mitchell eventually dropped them in Maine before heading alone down the coast to Florida, around the Gulf of Mexico and across the southwest back to California.

"I was driving without a driver's licence," she remembers. "I had to stay behind truckers because they signal you when cops are ahead. I had to drive in daylight hours only to stay out of harm's way."

In the South, where hard rock and country music dominated the airwaves, Mitchell was a virtual unknown. "It was a relief. I was able, like The Prince and the Pauper, to escape my fame under a false name and fall in with people and enjoy ordinary civilian status."

The cross-country sojourn resulted in six of the songs on Hejira, which Mitchell says was originally called Travelling -- "that wouldn't have been very memorable," she jokes.

While looking through a dictionary, Mitchell came across the word "hejira," an Islamic term for exodus or breaking with the past. It became a song title -- and against the will of her record company, which wanted something less cryptic -- the name of the album.

"I'd been struggling with a title for the song," she says. "The idea of departure with honour captured the feeling I was after very well."

[ragandbone]

Wow! Wow!
I am thrilled! I don't think any artist has affected me more than Joni. The first song I ever sang in public was one of hers.
Thanks for posting the interview,
Hejira is one of my favorite albums, and I haven't heard her speak much about it. "Amelia" shows up on almost all of my road trip mix cds.

This really belongs in the thread about the Morrison Hotel gallery show in LA, but Henry Diltz (I believe he started the gallery) has taken some of the most beautiful photos of Joni. Here is one:
http://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com/...lJoni-dulcimer

[The Tower]

Well, hell.

Of course, Hejira was her masterpiece. She was truly wandering. Every song is its own being- I don't know how else to describe it.

Sparky, please tell me she's releasing another album.

Of course she was "just insane"- this was her "COKE" album. She has alluded to it many, many times. However, she was at a "different" creative period during this time- versus Blue, Ladies of the Canyon, and For The Roses. Those albums were all distinct impressions that were far and away different from Hejira.

I think her vomitorium was Hissing of the Summer Lawns. After Court and Spark, there was no other path for her to use.

Joni is a turn-on, that's all there is to it.

Oh, and by the way- if you happen to see and or notice- Mondo Drippo Chucko I miss you-

"I've got a blue motel room
With a blue bedspread
I've got the blues inside and outside my head
Will you still love me
When I get back to town"

P.S.- I'm sorry Eliza that I didn't make it to Berkeley. We could have sung "Cactus Tree", "Laughing" and "The Last Time I Saw Richard" all night long.....

[ragandbone]

Originally Posted by The Tower

P.S.- I'm sorry Eliza that I didn't make it to Berkeley. We could have sung "Cactus Tree", "Laughing" and "The Last Time I Saw Richard" all night long.....

"All good dreamers pass this way some day"
I miss my "dark cafe days" I don't get to hang out much.

Yeah, I could sing Joni all night long. I tried to get the band to do 'Amelia" but I don't think we could get the mood right. Somehow, instruments on that song (well, the whole album, really) really evoke the sound of being on the highway: doppler effect, wind, and the imagined sound of wires dipping and rising to meet the telephone poles.

[sparky]

Originally Posted by ragandbone

"All good dreamers pass this way some day"
I miss my "dark cafe days" I don't get to hang out much.

Yeah, I could sing Joni all night long. I tried to get the band to do 'Amelia" but I don't think we could get the mood right. Somehow, instruments on that song (well, the whole album, really) really evoke the sound of being on the highway: doppler effect, wind, and the imagined sound of wires dipping and rising to meet the telephone poles.

What kills me are the bass lines. The meandering, ever present sliding fretless bass lines of Jaco Pastorius. They never seem to end. When I listen to that record, and to almost all of "Night Ride Home"(my favorite Joni record), the bass lines are like ocean waves...receding, surging, thrumming endlessly like the sea. Utterly hypnotic. No one has ever duplicated it. Well, except Larry Klein, who channeled Pasotirus on "Night Ride Home." I don't know how he mastered that style. It is like magic. Nothing sounds like it.

Of course I discovered, and became enamored of Joni far after my Stevie years started. And now, she has overtaken her as the one artist who seems
the most indefinable and utterly unique and compelling artists ever. I heard her earlier, but didn't get her. I didn't know as much about music then and my ear wasn't as developed. Frankly, neither was my life or the range of emotions I could feel. There is simply so much going on - in an orchestral sense. Joni can just play the guitar and sing, and it sounds like 50 things are happening at once. She doesn't need a producer and a band. That's how complex and layered the structures are. I f*cking adore her.

[sparky]

Originally Posted by The Tower

Well, hell.

Of course, Hejira was her masterpiece. She was truly wandering. Every song is its own being- I don't know how else to describe it.

Sparky, please tell me she's releasing another album.

That article certainly implies it. It's the first I have heard of her even writing. The last interview I read was the fantastic Hilburn piece in the LA Times (An Artist, Happy In Exile) where she said she was done with music forever. I am glad she is just as full of **** as Stevie about such things.

Of course she was "just insane"- this was her "COKE" album. She has alluded to it many, many times. However, she was at a "different" creative period during this time- versus Blue, Ladies of the Canyon, and For The Roses. Those albums were all distinct impressions that were far and away different from Hejira.

I think her vomitorium was Hissing of the Summer Lawns. After Court and Spark, there was no other path for her to use.

How can you call anything that contained "Sweet Bird" a vomitorium ? It is one of my favorite songs, by anyone, ever.

Joni is a turn-on, that's all there is to it.

I am hoping against hope that she does release a record and does at least one show. One the greatest regrets of my entire life is not seeing her on the "Both Sides Now" tour with the orchestra. I only have ever seen her at the Stormy Weather shows.

Alas, I was not a full convert yet. What a fool I was. If I ever get to see a full length show, I will weep. I will weep with joy and relief.

[markolas]

I heard about this, and was really shocked. I really thought she was done. Dunno how I feel about another "protest" album, but maybe this won't just be a retread of Dog Eat Dog. Any album that has Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Brian Blade (and JONI!) can't be too bad.

[markolas]

Originally Posted by sparky

What kills me are the bass lines. The meandering, ever present sliding fretless bass lines of Jaco Pastorius. They never seem to end. When I listen to that record, and to almost all of "Night Ride Home"(my favorite Joni record), the bass lines are like ocean waves...receding, surging, thrumming endlessly like the sea. Utterly hypnotic. No one has ever duplicated it. Well, except Larry Klein, who channeled Pasotirus on "Night Ride Home." I don't know how he mastered that style. It is like magic. Nothing sounds like it.

Jaco Pastorius was a genius. I bought his first solo album and albums with Weather Report after I had all the Mitchell albums he played on, because I couldn't get enough of his bass playing.

[cliffdweller]

Originally Posted by ragandbone

"Amelia" shows up on almost all of my road trip mix cds.

God how I love that song.

I'm glad to hear that Joni's recording a new album, I just hope it's rawer than the last studio albums she's put out. Dare I say that Hejira is her last true masterpiece? What an amazing album that is.

[cliffdweller]

Originally Posted by The Tower

I think her vomitorium was Hissing of the Summer Lawns

Nah. Her vomitorium was that decade called "The 80's." Blech.

The 70's were aaaaalright for Joni, including Hissing. It's a great little hodgepodge of interesting songs imo .

[BlackWidow]

That is fantastic news..thanks for posting!

[JazmenFlowers]

I could have sworn I saw her somewhere like a few months ago saying she was done. well, in any event, good for her. maybe she changed or mind or just doesn't give 2 squirts of duck**** (as Diss used to say) and decided to do it anyway.

[rbs3676]

I adore Joni Mitchell. HEJIRA is constantly at the top of my favorite releases of all time. The entire album - from start to finish - is a journey through lush landscapes. Absolutely gorgeous.
When I was in the 10th grade, I was failing school, was constantly in trouble at home, was in love with a boy who didn't want anything more to do with me and I was, by all counts, miserable. HEJIRA was my escape...my window out of my little world that seemed so troubled. I would stare at the graphics, wishing I was ice skating with Joni...wishing I was anywhere but in Texas. HEJIRA made my troubles disappear.

"In a highway service station
Over the month of June
Was a photograph of the earth
Taken coming back from the moon
And you couldn't see a city
On that marbled bowling ball
Or a forest or a highway
Or me here least of all..."

She's truly the most gifted songwriter of our time. To think that she wont REALLY be retired makes my heart smile.

And Sparky, you and I need to talk about NIGHT RIDE HOME...it's a gem.

rbs

[The Tower]

Originally Posted by cliffdweller

Nah. Her vomitorium was that decade called "The 80's." Blech.

The 70's were aaaaalright for Joni, including Hissing. It's a great little hodgepodge of interesting songs imo .

Originally Posted by sparky

How can you call anything that contained "Sweet Bird" a vomitorium ? It is one of my favorite songs, by anyone, ever.

I'm sorry- I didn't quite express myself correctly. When I said that "Hissing" was Joni's vomitorium, I meant that she was purging herself of her past- it was the turning point for her. All her previous albums led themselves in a straight line (in terms of song stylistics and growth structure) and ended up at "Court and Spark". "Hissing" was a transitory, chrysalis-like album. Right after it was the butterfly that is Hejira.

And, yes, Cliffy- Joni's nadir was Wild Things Run Fast and Dog Eat Dog (and parts of Chalk Mark {"Dancing Clown }). Blech is right.

I am hoping against hope that she does release a record and does at least one show.

I really doubt she would do a show- it would great though, don't get me wrong.

One the greatest regrets of my entire life is not seeing her on the "Both Sides Now" tour with the orchestra. I only have ever seen her at the Stormy Weather shows.

That show at the Greek in L.A. was magic. It was such a beautiful night. I freaked out when she pulled out "Judgement of the Moon and Stars". I also went to her show at Royce Hall when she toured with Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. She stole the show away from those guys- both Dylan and Van Morrison seemed tired. Joni was masterful, singing "Just Like This Train", "Amelia", "Hejira", and many other great cuts.

Alas, I was not a full convert yet. What a fool I was. If I ever get to see a full length show, I will weep. I will weep with joy and relief.

Sorry you missed those shows, Sparky. They were both fantastic.

[The Tower]

Originally Posted by rbs3676

"In a highway service station
Over the month of June
Was a photograph of the earth
Taken coming back from the moon
And you couldn't see a city
On that marbled bowling ball
Or a forest or a highway
Or me here least of all..."

"Refuge of the Roads" !!! One of my favorite songs, ever.

And Sparky, you and I need to talk about NIGHT RIDE HOME...it's a gem.

Don't even get me started about "Passion Play" and "Two Grey Rooms"- and, of course, the title track... JOY!!