![\"Issue39-joni-mitchell\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Issue39-joni-mitchell.jpg\")
<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nJoni Mitchell is an eight-time Grammy winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer who\u2019s influenced everyone from Courtney Love to Taylor Swift. So it\u2019s only fitting that her new box set has been crafted with care. It isn\u2019t her first retrospective, but Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, a Ballet, Waiting to Be Danced<\/i> is something special.<\/p>\n
The 53 tracks on these four CDs were painstakingly selected, sequenced and remastered by Mitchell herself. Together, they form a loose four-act narrative about love in its many forms. Perhaps most important, they tell the tale of an innovative poet who\u2019s spent 40-plus years defying expectations. On each disc, listeners get Joni the \u201960s folkie, the \u201970s jazz-pop explorer, and the \u201980s synth-pop dabbler, to name but three of her artistic guises, and they\u2019re all mixed up in nonchronological order.<\/p>\n
Though Mitchell, 71, has retired from making music\u2014she\u2019s been battling Morgellons syndrome, a rare skin condition\u2014the box set has the feel of a new work. In addition to conceiving the story and track list, she penned the liner notes, which open with a tale of Mitchell hanging with some hip-hop artists at the Grammys. One of the rapper\u2019s makeup artists tells her, \u201cGirl, you make me see pictures in my head.\u201d From there, Mitchell unfurls a narrative that includes chance meetings with actor Iron Eyes Cody and some random guy whose homemade tape of howling wolves was just what she needed for the song \u201cThe Wolf That Lives in Lindsey.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is an especially thoughtful set.<\/b><\/p>\n
I put a lot of thought into it\u2014I guess because I\u2019m a frustrated filmmaker or playwright. That\u2019s why I had to start the liner notes with, \u201cGirl, you make me see pictures in my head,\u201d which is a wonderful way to receive your work. I consider that the greatest compliment, that I connected with her. When people used to read books, you\u2019d have to see the pictures in your head. Now, with television, movies and the internet, the images are spoon-fed. You don\u2019t have to use your imagination anymore.<\/p>\n
Any surprises as you put it together?<\/b><\/p>\n
Oh yeah. I sequenced and sequenced, and as I listened to it, it was like a film. I\u2019m a film editor, also. I\u2019m following along, and suddenly, I get thrown out. And I go, \u201cOK, that song\u2019s not in the right place. It should keep pulling you in.\u201d Robert Altman had a film called Secret Honor<\/i>. I must have watched it 10 times. And toward the end, there\u2019s a scene that always throws me out. There\u2019s probably about four or five minutes where I don\u2019t know what happens. I met him once, and I said to him, \u201cI really like that film Secret Honor<\/i>\u201d\u2014because he took a lot of flack for it\u2014\u201cbut toward the end, there\u2019s a place I keep getting thrown out.\u201d He said, \u201cI know exactly the place you mean.\u201d<\/p>\n
You avoided chronological ordering.<\/b><\/p>\n
The people who were going to do the box set\u2014because I was ill\u2014were going to do it chronologically, which would be a crime against this catalog. A crime against it! Some people, they love my 24-year-old thing, when I could hold a note for days, and they put down the later singing, when I have no soprano voice left and I\u2019m an alto. When you put those side by side, to me, they\u2019re characters in a play\u2014and both are delivering their lines very well. There\u2019s a great emotional read on them. It\u2019s not all about belting and hitting high notes and all those vocal calisthenics by which singers are measured. I don\u2019t believe I\u2019ve ever been honored as a singer, and yet I\u2019m a very interesting original singer. To take it out of chronological order and put it in different styles\u2014as characters\u2014breaks down some of that stupid prejudice.<\/p>\n
In the liner notes you talk about the importance of talent.<\/b><\/p>\n
If you\u2019re born with it, you can polish it. It used to be that, in my parents\u2019 generation, people would say, \u201cOh no. I can\u2019t carry a tune.\u201d They seemed to be more rational. Now you\u2019ve got a generation where nobody seems to know they\u2019re no good. You can see it on these talent shows. The judges will tell them, \u201cYou\u2019re no good,\u201d and they\u2019ll argue. \u201cI know I\u2019m good,\u201d they\u2019ll say. How do you know that? You\u2019re not talented. Where does that delusion come from? Why are these people becoming more and more deluded?<\/p>\n
Talent alone won\u2019t make you sample the sound of a cigarette machine, as you did on \u201cSmokin\u2019.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
Well, I guess I\u2019m a genius. That\u2019s the difference. Genius is more flexible. I\u2019ve worked with a lot of very talented players\u2014geniuses are very rare, in my opinion. Many are called geniuses but aren\u2019t. John Lennon was not a genius. He was talented, but I didn\u2019t see any genius there. You take a talented player, and he listens to the music and sits down with a lead sheet\u2014you write down their part\u2014and he gets his first take. Then you need a second take to polish it up, and maybe the third one to get it perfect. I worked with the London Philharmonic. Everything took three takes. They\u2019re starting just by reading. The first one is kind of ragged, the second one is better, and the third is all we get. It\u2019s all we can afford. The third take, it\u2019s pretty good. The same thing with talent: You give them opportunity, and it sounds pretty good.<\/p>\n
Not so with geniuses?<\/b><\/p>\n
You get a genius like [jazz saxophonist] Wayne Shorter\u2014we\u2019d do 12 takes, and he\u2019d never repeat. I\u2019d give him 12 takes, and I\u2019d watch him crawl across the music and explore. Every time he plays, it\u2019s entirely different. Conceptually, he\u2019ll keep changing and running new ideas all the way along. One of the traits with genius is confusion of ideas, and also a nose for magic, being quick on your feet.<\/p>\n
Do you still write songs?<\/b><\/p>\n
It may come back, but I\u2019ve been ill since 2007. From 2009 through 2012, I was extremely ill. I\u2019ve been pulling out. I\u2019m not as sick as I\u2019ve been, but I\u2019m still kind of fragile. I\u2019d love to write songs, but I can\u2019t really sing\u2014the disease has attacked my sinuses and my high end is gone. You have to know when to quit.<\/p>\n
So many wish you wouldn\u2019t.<\/b><\/p>\n
I got a letter from a kid that said, \u201cJoni, I don\u2019t care if you croak like a frog. Just keep doing it.\u201d People still want to hear what I\u2019m thinking, I guess. I don\u2019t know. Maybe I\u2019ll do something. The box set took a lot of energy. I\u2019d like to write my memoirs to counter all of the stupid books that are just gossip and full of ignorant assumptions.<\/p>\n
Will you write a memoir?<\/b><\/p>\n
The music business was just my straight job. I enjoyed making songs. But really, that wasn\u2019t the interesting part of my life. The interesting part was a lot of synchronicity, like the Iron Eyes Cody and wolf stories in the liner notes, which were just really mysterious. That\u2019s the stuff that, as a frustrated filmmaker, I would like to get down in a book. More like short stories\u2014like the liner notes. These are stories nobody knows. Even if they\u2019ve heard me tell them a few times, they wouldn\u2019t be able to tell it right. If I don\u2019t get those down, an incredibly interesting part of my life won\u2019t be recorded.<\/p>\n
\u2013Kenneth Partridge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JONI MITCHELL One of music\u2019s greatest singer-songwriters creates an inspired box set Joni Mitchell is an eight-time Grammy winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer who\u2019s influenced everyone from Courtney Love to Taylor Swift. So it\u2019s only fitting that her new box set has been crafted with care. It isn\u2019t her first retrospective, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[991,7623],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14766,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14764\/revisions\/14766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}