Chalking It Up to Experience

Joni Mitchell’s fans have been puzzling over her music for nigh on 13 years now. One of the most acclaimed stars to emerge from the ‘60s, the Canadian-born singer-songwriter won a huge following in the early ‘70s with her elegant musings on what she describes as “the anatomy of the love crime,” only to abandon the fertile fields of pop for the considerably less lucrative world of jazz.

Lovestruck dreamers who committed the songs on her 1974 commercial blockbuster album “Court and Spark” to memory have been waiting for her to replay that winning formula ever since. What those fans fail to understand is that the supernova of success Mitchell experienced in 1974 was something of a fluke.

Not that her music was unworthy. Rather, Mitchell never saw herself as a mainstream pop artist, never courted superstardom and has never made a record with commercial considerations uppermost in her mind.

“I’m a composer, not a pop star that can be decorated into fashion,” comments Mitchell, 44, during an interview at her manager’s Hollywood office.

“I was never comfortable with all the attention I received as a result of the success of ‘Court and Spark.’ 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 and was raised to believe that if you stick your head up, it will probably get knocked off.”

This one-time critics’ darling has taken her share of knocks in recent years, and she sends out her new LP, “Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm,” with a mixture of pride and resignation. (See review on Page 88.)

“I don’t dare indulge in hope for this record,” she says as she lights the first in an unending series of cigarettes. “They hated my last two albums and ate me alive on the Mingus record (a 1978 collaboration with the late jazz giant Charles Mingus). Rolling Stone voted ‘The Hissing of Summer Lawns’ the worst album of 1975--I mean, the list goes on!” she says with a laugh.

“Of course, I’d love for people to hear this record, but I seem to be out of sync with the times in this decade. Am I early or late? I don’t know. In 1983, I released ‘Wild Things Run Fast,’ which was an album of love songs celebrating my marriage,” notes Mitchell, who wed bassist Larry Klein in 1982.

“It came out during the most anti-romantic period in pop music I can ever remember, and the general response to the record was, ‘Yucckk, love songs.’

“From that, we segued into a period of rah-rah Reaganism, at which time I released ‘Dog Eat Dog,’ which espoused an almost evangelical humanism. At that time, people didn’t seem to want to think about the things we were bringing down upon ourselves, and I was accused of being immature for having the opinions I was expressing. Obviously these things are frustrating, but I’ve come to accept that I must write what I feel when I feel it and can only do what is given me.”

What’s been given Mitchell this time out is a surprisingly upbeat pop record. Co-produced by Mitchell and Klein, “Chalk Mark” features eight new songs, versions of the prairie chestnut “Cool Water” and the blues standard “Corrina”--as well as a glittering roster of guest artists that includes Tom Petty, Don Henley, Willie Nelson, Peter Gabriel, Wendy & Lisa and Billy Idol.

Explaining how she went about selecting the players, Mitchell says she simply makes use of what’s at hand.

“James Taylor and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were around when I made my early records and I put them to work,” she relates. “I recorded some of this album at Peter Gabriel’s studio and he dropped by one day so I put him to work. I met Wendy & Lisa through Prince, who’d been inviting me to a lot of things.

“What I did do here that I’ve never done before was seek out singers I didn’t know because I thought they were suited to songs--Billy Idol and Willie Nelson fall into this category. I saw Billy on the Grammys last year and thought he was a great rock ‘n’ roll singer, so I called him and he came down the next night.”

Mitchell does something else on “Chalk Mark” that she’s never done before: She writes about love with unmitigated optimism.

“I can’t think of any theme that’s expired for me except the search for love,” she says, reflecting on the evolution of her writing. “I found someone with the values I was looking for in a man and I’m happily married now.

“I’ve discovered that with your focus no longer on finding a mate, you get a heightened sense of community, and I’ve become a bit more political--not too political, though.”

A strong sense of social conscience does course through “Chalk Mark,” which explores the importance of spirituality over material goods, the rat race of ambition and success, and the ominous war drums that resound through our ever-smaller global village.

Cynics might dismiss the thematic content of “Chalk Mark” as recycled hippie ideology, but they’ll have a harder time writing off Mitchell’s highly sophisticated music, which is, as always, intricately arranged and impeccably performed.

“ ‘Chalk Mark’ is essentially a series of characters commenting on different times,” says Mitchell. “The female narrator in ‘The Tea Leaf Prophecy’ comments on life in the ‘40s 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.

“The song I identify with the most is the narrator of ‘Number One.’ I like the spirit of that song and loved the fact that I was singing it at the Amnesty International benefit when people were throwing things at me. The song has the line, ‘Will they shower you with flowers or will they shun you when your race is run,’ and I thought the irony was perfect.”

People throwing things at Joni Mitchell? Surprisingly enough, it’s happened more than once in recent years. “My last few performing experiences haven’t been too pleasant,” she says with a rueful laugh.

“I was doing benefits and I get eaten alive at benefits. At the Amnesty Benefit (at the Forum in June, 1986), 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.

“People threw things at me at that benefit, then I did the Leonard Peltier benefit where I was playing to Willie Nelson’s audience (at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa last year). That audience comes to party and I don’t do well in that setting, because my music is fragile and requires a more thoughtful setting. My audience is relatively small and when I do benefits I’m sandwiched between acts whose audience is much bigger, so when I go on they use the time to talk. It’s left me feeling a bit shy about performing.”

With Mitchell none too keen on touring, “Chalk Mark” needs some kind of hit in order to survive in the marketplace, but it’s been more than a decade since she made it to the top reaches of the charts.

“Popular music is going through a period of specialization created by middlemen right now,” she says. “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. I don’t fit into that scheme of things anywhere, and while I think there are four singles on this record, it remains to be seen whether they’ll find their audience.”