On this day in 1974: Joni Mitchell released Court and Spark

Originally published in 2000:

Joni Mitchell may never have made another LP as raw and revealing as Blue, but subsequent albums such as Court And Spark, The Hissing Of Summer Lawns and Hejira were no less masterful – even if Rolling Stone did infamously label Summer Lawns as the 'worst album of the year'. Rock icons such as Madonna, Annie Lennox and Prince obviously disagree; they've since cited the same album as a seminal influence on their work.

"I was really happy when I read that Prince, in particular, said Hissing was his favourite album," says Joni. "Of all my albums, that one really was very much beaten up in public! It also seems to have been a turning point for some of my fans. If only because that was when I changed the I of albums like Blue to you. But that was just a dramatical device. No different than, say, my splitting the narrator of 'Both Sides Now' into two. And the point is that I was still drawing a lot of those characters off myself. So I don t see this great, big divide others see between the albums before The Hissing Of The Summer Lawns and those that came after."

Indeed, the major difference between Joni's albums from Court And Spark onwards, is her move back to her jazz roots, a change of course which not only alienated some fans but also antagonised critics, some of whom argued that her jazz melodies were weaker than those of her earlier songs.

Credit: Joel Bernstein

"I think that around the time of Hejira I let the writer, the poet, take precedence over the singer," she suggests. "But my feeling is that a lot of those songs were, in fact, superior to the earlier stuff. Yet they were jazz melodies! Conversational improvisation around a given melody. But as such, it wasn't always necessary to state the melody. And, often, I didn't.

"When I first made the move into folk rock there were certain rock musicians, on sessions, who said they couldn't actually play my music. Because it was so weird , harmonically. And I did always play my own strange chords. Even back in the coffee houses. They certainly weren't the kind of chords people were used to hearing in folk music! My music also had these eccentric little rhythm changes. And unorthodox time signatures. So finally, one bass player said, 'Joni, you should be playing with jazz musicians'.

"That's when I started playing with the LA Express. Yet that doesn't mean I was playing jazz chords. I wasn't. I remember when Wayne Shorter started recording with me and he said what are these chords? They're not piano chords or guitar chords? And they're not. They're Joni Mitchell chords! They're chords that just feel right for me. I play in open tuning so they seem quite simple and sound quite natural to me but when you try to write them down, in standard tunings, they become like the most complex chords ever composed!"

'The Jungle Line' from The Hissing of The Summer Lawns, for example, features Joni playing a moog synthesiser and experimenting with droning chord structures that float over a rhythm track sampled from the warrior drums of Burundi. Meaning that Joni Mitchell was tapping into World Music more than a decade before Paul Simon's Graceland. And likewise, anticipating, by more than twenty years, the drum 'n' bass sound of the '90s. Adding to this musical sophistication on 'The Jungle Line' is the fact that Joni juxtaposes all these African sounds with a lyric that satirises the Hollywood aristocracy. And that's just one track from a still staggeringly magnificent album! So how does she set about composing? What is Joni Mitchell's modus operandum?

"The music comes first and provides the rhyme form. But I don't work from an iambic pentameter mentality. If you write like that it's Dylan, a folk style structure; not my style at all," she says.

Maybe not. But Dylan has been described as a sound-painter by Robbie Robertson, who once told this writer that when he and Bob worked together circa '66, Dylan, would have the poetry of it worked out in his head, say something like 'just imagine this cat who is very Elizabethan, with garters and a long shepherd's horn and he's coming over the hill in the morning, with the sun behind him. That's the sound I want.' So does Joni who has remained a dedicated painter, exhibited her paintings and even won a Grammy for her artwork on the album Turbulent Indigo see songs such as, say, the highly visual 'Car On A Hill' and 'Harlem In Havana' primarily as sound-paintings?

"I wouldn't have thought that's how Dylan works but you did say, there, that he had the poetry worked out in advance, right? Whereas in my case, as I say, the music comes first," she responds. "But, definitely, songs like those two you mention, are very much influenced by painting. In 'Car On A Hill', for example, I had Tom (Scott) play the horn like the sound of passing cars. Because I really am a pictorial thinker. This is what separates me from pop musicians, makes me more of a classical musician or a painterly musician, like Debussy, whose work I love. His music is so impressionistic. And I do try to capture sound in that way.

"Like I remember Joe Sample (pianist) was working on 'Trouble Child' and I said 'you're just playing notes, can you play more like a wave, arcing back in on itself to illustrate the line breaking like the waves on Malibu'. And Wayne Shorter has even played the sound of high heels clicking on stones for me. Which is what I asked him to do. He takes to this kind of instruction like a champ, knows exactly what to do. And he plays off a lyric, in terms of onomatopoeic instrumentation. But then I love Wayne's work anyway. To me, he's even better than John Coltrane."

Throughout this interview I have deliberately focused on Joni Mitchell's songs and albums as opposed to simply her lyrics. But is she bothered by the fact that, at least since the time of Blue, her music has rarely been the focus of public or critical attention?

"Yes and no," she replies. "All of a sudden things are being noticed. I am being recognised as a guitar player. And, you're right, I never did receive praise for my piano playing. As for producing the records, the only time I really let anyone else take control was for my first album. And, like I ve always said, that still sounds, to me, like it was recorded in a bell jar! So since then, I've never let the compositions get away from me in the studio.

"There was one time, when Thomas Dolby was given the assignment to work with me on Dog Eat Dog but let's just say we had different perspectives on how my music should sound and I had to fight real hard to ensure that I got what I wanted. But on other albums like Wild Things Run Fast and Taming The Tiger, I'm the producer, I'm in control. Either that or I work with Larry (Klein) which is great, because even though we're no longer husband and wife, we still have this great ability to relate to each other. A kind of shorthand language when it comes to conveying our ideas, musically."

This mixing of the personal and professional goes back to Joni's debut album which was produced by David Crosby, who was also her lover at the time. The fact that, more recently, Crosby has said she is 'about as modest as Mussolini', would suggest that these days he sees the woman in quite a different light. Journalist Nick Kent also once described Mitchell as unbelievably snobbish , saying she'd walk into a room and if she needed something she'd get some other rock star to ask a mere mortal to get her a drink. Maybe that's how she was during the '70s. But having watched Joni socialise backstage in Madison Square Gardens in 1998, with her current beau, Donald, I must admit that I saw not the slightest evidence of this tendency.

Speaking of Joni's lovers actually, she doesn't. Certainly not since Rolling Stone labelled her 'Queen of El Lay', a not-so-subtle reference to Mitchell's legendary romances with Crosby, James Taylor and Graham Nash. Prior to all that, following a whirlwind 36-hour courtship, in her late teens, Joni had married cabaret singer Charles Chuck Mitchell, who later left her for what Joni derides as the straight life in 'The Last Time I Saw Richard', a song that is, actually, addressed to Chuck Mitchell. Even so, during the mid '70s she herself settled into what biographer Brian Hinton describes as her longest period of domesticity – the ten years she was married to bass player and record producer Larry Klein.

Indeed, speaking of this art versus domesticity dilemma, Joni did once say "I feel like I'm married to this guy called Art. I'm responsible to my art above everything else. My family consists of pieces of work that go out into the world. Instead of hanging around for nineteen years, they leave the nest early."

Even so, it's hard to believe that the fiercely independent Joni Mitchell is the kind of romantic who, in the relatively recent 'Man From Mars', would sing to an ex-lover: "I fall apart/Every time I think of you/Swallowed by the dark/There is no centre to my life now."

"That song was written for the movie Grace Of My Heart to suit a very specific dramatic situation and character," Joni explains. "But you're right. I am at a stage in my life, now, where I know I'm not going to fall apart or lose my centre if a lover leaves. In fact, when I was asked to write that song, the only way I could relate to what the woman in that film might feel is by thinking of how horrible it would be if my cat drowned! And I could do that because at one point, one of my cats got lost and I was in distress."

That must have made Donald, Joni's boyfriend, feel really secure!

"What I'm saying is no reflection on Donald and I!" Joni responds, laughing. "It's just that the cats actually live with me, here in this house, whereas Donald and I live thousands of miles apart and only come together every few months. That's what makes it seem so new and exciting every time. It's like meeting each other all over again."

Sounds like the perfect recipe for romance.

"It is, isn t it?" says Joni. "But do I still see myself as a romantic? I'd say I'm more of an idealist, a trait that doesn't, necessarily, cancel out cynicism. In fact, I remember my dad and I were watching a news report of Clinton arriving in Canada and he (Clinton) made some comment about how much he'd always loved my music. I said 'he wouldn't say that if he was addressing a crowd in America, he's just pandering to a Canadian audience'. And my dad told me to stop being so cynical! But after all the Monica Lewinsky stuff came out, he said 'maybe you were right about Clinton!' And that kind of cynicism is there in so many of my songs, going back to 'The Last Time I Saw Richard'. And beyond. So I'd like to think I've maintained that balance in my nature, between romanticism and cynicism. Healthy cynicism!"

That cynicism, healthy or otherwise, certainly surfaces in Taming The Tiger when Joni refers to a radio that "blared so bland/Every disc/ A poker chip/Every song/A one night stand/Formula music/Girlie guile/Genuine junkfood for juveniles."

"What's selling these days is like a degenerate version of what our generation created," she rages. "Bob Dylan's son is not as good as Dylan but he outsells him twenty-to-one. Then again, maybe I shouldn t say this but what the hell! There was this cartoon, which I didn't see, but my friends did. It was based on Taming The Tiger, I think. It had Jewel reading her poetry and the stars behind her spell out 'this sucks'! I shouldn't laugh but her stuff is insipid! And all the animals are all around her in this cartoon and a unicorn takes out a knife and tries to commit suicide while she's reading this poetry. Then a tiger pounces on her and drags her off and all you see are blood spurts. Then I come on and say 'don't it always seem to be, that you don't know what you got till it's gone?' and the animals all start dancing and everyone's happy! It's a dark laugh I got out of that but I needed it. Particularly at a time when I feel so disillusioned with the music business, I want to just get out of it altogether.

"Somewhere along the way the music industry itself kinda wrote me off. And I really don't know how heavily my record label got behind, say, Taming The Tiger. In terms of advertising, promotion and so on. Even after Turbulent Indigo won a Grammy. It's like they sign people like me more for the prestige involved, and the money that can be made on our back catalogue, rather than because they really believe in our new music. At least, that's how I often feel about things. That no matter what I do, it will always be compared, unfavourably, with my past work. Whether it is Blue, Court And Spark, whatever. So I do often think of leaving it all behind, think maybe I should just focus on my painting. After all, in High School my main aim was to be a visual artist. Before I got side-lined into music!"

Let's not forget, however, that these comments were made last year, before Joni completed her new album Both Sides Now. And it's the kind of tribute album that is rooted not in a creative drought as is too often the case with singer-songwriters but in a genuine love of the music. Bringing her story up to date, Joni describes how the inspiration for this new album struck.

"I took part in a very prestigious open-air summer concert here, a few years back, sang a Billie Holiday song with a huge orchestra," she recalls. "And it brought back to mind all that glorious music made by Billie. And by Sinatra when he worked with the likes of Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins. Jenkins maybe more so than Riddle. Because Jenkins did all those truly romantic orchestrations. Another thing I realised, at that point, was how good it felt to just get up on a stage and sing. Other peoples songs. And I thought 'wouldn't it be wonderful to record, and tour with, this kind of stuff?'."

And that is exactly what Joni Mitchell is doing right now, touring to promote Both Sides Now. Clearly, the deeper she involved herself in this project, the more she rescued herself from the to-hell-with-the-music-business tone of the album Taming The Tiger. Indeed, Mitchell says her latest album is the first in a trilogy. The next will feature her own songs in a symphonic setting. And the third album will take her all the way back to the moment she first discovered music while hospitalised as a child, and is tentatively titled Have Yourself A Dreary Little Christmas. Cynical? You bet.

"It will include four of my something bad always happens at Christmas songs, four secular Christmas songs and four carols. I want to make a play out of it," she explains.

And, yes, innovative as ever, Joni does now regard her latest album and its proposed follow up albums as musical plays. For his part, Larry Klein, speaking of Both Sides Now, says that in singing these songs, "I believe Joni achieved something quite extraordinary in that she has truly sung them as if, as Nietzche might say, she had written them in her own blood."

But perhaps Klien should have said that Joni, on Both Sides Now breaks down those songs and remakes them in her own image, Etta James' 'At Last' being a case in point.

"I first heard that song, oddly enough, in a tampon commercial," Joni explains. "Every time I'd hear it, I'd run towards the TV and crank it up because just as it was fading down in the first verse, she'd hit a couple of notes and all the hair on my arms would stand up and God came in and landed on her for four or five notes. Hardly any singers, ever, no matter how good they are, get God to come in."

Quite. And there are millions of us who would say the same is true of Joni Mitchell. So, in the end, despite all her trials and tribulations in the music business, does it help Joni to know that many believe her music will outlast a lot of the "junk food for juveniles" that's being sold as popular music these days?

"The thing that has always been my driving wheel has been the gratitude the genuine gratitude of people for the music," she reflects. "That s what has always kept me going, no matter how close I came to allowing my spirit to be broken by the music business. And I don t think that's going to change now. Once a romantic always a romantic, I guess!"

Revisit Court and Spark below:

The interview above is the final part of a two-part special. Part 1 was republished here.