Original subtitles

MUSIC: All I Want by Joni Mitchell

# I am on a lonely road and

# I am travelling, travelling, travelling, travelling

# Looking for something What can it be?

# Oh, I hate you some, I hate you some, I love you some

# Oh, I love you when I forget about me

# I wanna be strong, I wanna laugh along

# I wanna belong to the living

# Alive, alive, I want to get up and jive

# I want to wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive... #

Joni Mitchell is a true poet.

She can just steel an experience or a feeling into song

better than anyone.

She is one of those ones where the sparks all connect.

You know, there's some magic that took place there.

# I am on a lonely road and I am travelling

# Looking for the key to set me free

# Oh, the jealousy... #

The journey she's gone on in her music has been really valuable

and really unique

because of the fact that she's not going to put lipstick

and make-up on the truth.

"Here it is, here's what I've found.

"Here's my letter home."

# Wanna be the one that you want to see

# I wanna knit you a sweater

# I wanna write you a love letter

# I wanna make you feel better

# I wanna make you feel free

# Mm hm, hm hm

# Wanna make you feel free

# I wanna make you feel free. #

She creates a musical world that you can feel but you can't explain.

And, ultimately, you're changed by the experience.

MUSIC: Urge For Going by Joni Mitchell

Joni grew up in a small town on the Canadian prairie.

She was an only child and when she was nine years old she got polio.

I think she spent a lot of time alone.

# I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town

# It hovered in a frozen sky, then it gobbled summer down... #

I always had star eyes, I think.

I mean, I always was interested in glamour.

But my childhood longing mostly was to be a painter.

You know, that was always my ambition.

I was always the artist in the classroom.

# I get the urge for going but I never seem to go... #

You know, Joni was always a rebel.

She told me she used to sneak out to the wrong side of town for

rock and roll dance contests.

She really lived to dance.

It's almost as if she was making up for lost time.

# And winter's closing in

# Now the warriors of winter, they gave a cold, triumphant shout

# And all that stays is dying All that lives is getting out... #

When the war ended, my father found us a little house

by the highway with a picture window, and I think

that set up a permanent longing to take off and go somewhere in me.

Things coming and going past that window left an impression upon me.

"Here they come. Where are they going?"

# They get the urge for going

# When the meadow grass is turning brown

# And summertime is falling down... #

Joni had this otherworldly view of what was possible in her life

and that she was definitely going to go out there and find it.

I'm not sure that there was a master plan.

I think she may have been a young woman with enormous talent,

anxious to see what was over the next hill,

and the guitar just kind of afforded her a ticket.

It was, in a way, an accident because I went to art college

and began to sing in this little coffee house called

The Depression in Calgary.

# An old man came courting me, courting me, courting me

# An old man came courting me Faldaro dee... #

You know, in the beginning I mimicked Joan Baez and Judy Collins,

and I thought of myself merely as a competent mimic.

But the idea of being a recording artist was not anywhere in my mind.

It was just a hobby.

So I didn't think I had the gift to take it any further than that.

What happened to me then in art school,

I lost my virginity and became pregnant at the same time.

The main thing was to protect my parents from the scandal.

You had to... What girls did, either you got married to cover it up,

or you went into a home.

Abortion was unheard of.

MUSIC: Little Green by Joni Mitchell

So I entered onto the bad girl's trail, you know,

which was a trail of shame and scandal.

And I had to kind of hide myself away.

# Born with the moon in cancer

# Choose her a name she will answer to

# Call her Green and the winters cannot fade her

# Call her Green for the children who've made her

# Little Green... #

Two weeks after I gave birth to my daughter,

I again went looking for work because I had to put her

into a foster home, and I was penniless at the time.

# Child with a child pretending

# Weary of lies you are sending home

# So you sign all the papers in the family name

# You're sad and you're sorry, but you're not ashamed

# Little Green, have a happy ending

# Just a little green... #

One night, while I was playing in the Penny Farthing,

I met Chuck Mitchell.

We quickly became friends and he said that he could get me

work in the States.

So with that optimism I went and took a few gigs down there.

Eventually I had to tell him that my child was in the foster home,

and he said he would marry me.

I was emotionally weak, with a lot of things pulling me

in all sorts of unattractive directions.

And this was a strong pull in a certain direction,

and somewhat of a solution.

So we married each other, for all the wrong reasons.

We had no money.

I made my wedding dress and I made my bridesmaids' dresses.

One of my bridesmaids was his sister Celia, who I barely knew.

I barely knew any of these people.

And I walked down the aisle brandishing my daisies,

thinking, "I can get out of this."

But the moment we were married he intimated strongly that

he had no interest in raising another man's child.

So I was trapped.

Chuck insisted that we be a duo,

but we were totally unsuited to be a duo.

# Blues in the bottle, blues in the bottle... #

He made more money with me than he did without me.

And he held the purse strings, completely.

# Where do you think you're at? #

Because we were young and attractive we were being

made into kind of Detroit's golden couple.

So we were living a lie.

And I don't like to live a lie.

You try to make the best of moments, and I looked relatively happy.

But I felt like I'd been betrayed.

It was...

..very difficult for me.

So I began to write.

I think I started writing just to develop my own private world,

and also because I was disturbed.

# Rows and flows of angel hair

# And ice-cream castles in the air... #

Both Sides Now was one of the first songs.

I was meditating on fantasy and reality,

childlike optimism and adult reality.

This was the work of my childhood's end.

# They rain and snow on everyone

# So many things I would've done

# But clouds got in my way

# I've looked at clouds from both sides now

# From up and down and still somehow... #

And as my work began to mature I began to long for my own growth.

I felt that I couldn't grow with Chuck,

that we would never grow together,

that I had to separate myself from the duo,

that I had to become an individual in order to grow.

And as soon as the duo dissolved, the marriage dissolved.

# Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels

# The dizzy dancing way you feel

# As every fairy tale comes real... #

I think she had more understanding than most people do of human beings.

She had already been through some hard things.

And what makes human beings get wisdom is paying dues.

It's sort of like you arrive here as a boulder and you knock

corners off yourself until you get smooth like a river stone.

And she was already starting to get smooth.

# I've looked at love from both sides now

# From give and take and still somehow

# It's love's illusions I recall

# I really don't know love

# At all. #

I feel every bit of trouble I went through I'm grateful for, you know?

JONI LAUGHS

Bad fortune changed the course of my destiny.

I became a musician.

APPLAUSE

You... You're just starting out, sort of, aren't you?

Um...

Actually, I've been singing professionally now for two years.

But I consider that I've only started within the last year,

because I've only felt that I've begun to have my own way to go,

my own songs and my own guitar style

and I'm starting to get my own vocal styling now.

How do you determine when you've sort of arrived

and are what you want to be in this...?

It's sort of a law of averages.

It depends on...

You don't bomb any more.

That's what it is!

MUSIC: Night In The City by Joni Mitchell

# Light up, light up

# Light up your lazy blue eyes... #

And Manhattan's Greenwich Village, it was a very gritty scene,

you know, in terms of the outlook, the streets, the whole vibe.

There was, like, Bob Dylan and Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs.

And Joni, Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt,

they kind of came next.

So I went to New York, and I played a lot of coffee houses.

I booked myself - I had no manager.

I worked the bulk of the year, you know, in club dates.

# There are places to come from

# And places to go

# Night in the city looks pretty to me

# Night in the city looks fine... #

I walked into a coffee house,

and she was singing.

And she just floored me.

She rocked me back up against the back wall of that place

and I stood there just transfixed.

I couldn't believe that there was anybody that good.

When I first saw her, hardly anybody was there.

I mean, the coffee house was empty.

She was standing almost a little pigeon-toed.

She was all involved in tuning her guitar,

and she covered her face with her hair.

It's almost like she wanted to erase who she is...

..and just let the voice be...

..let the songs be who she is.

# I had a king in a salt-rusted carriage

# Who carried me off to his country for marriage too soon... #

And then she started to sing I Had A King.

I was going through a divorce then.

And I just felt... I don't know what it was about that song.

Talk about a new way of conveying - through music, through words

- a new way of conveying an existential reality,

a thing, you know, like...

Oh, I just started to sob.

# I can't go back there any more

# You know my keys won't fit the door

# You know my thoughts don't fit the man

# They never can... #

She sang it so real, so true, as if she was singing for me.

She was my voice, you know?

She was everybody's voice - she was like a universal voice.

# They never can. #

I was amazed that she was so young.

You know? There was so much wisdom in her work.

# Moonlight becomes you

# I'm thrilled at the sight... #

I loved the beautiful melodies which belonged to the crooner era.

But those melodies had very simple text.

There wasn't room for much poetic description.

# You're all dressed up to go dreaming... #

They're beautiful but they're very direct English,

and that's what suits that kind of melody.

But I like the more storytelling quality of Dylan's work.

# You've got a lot of nerve

# To say you are my friend... #

Bob Dylan had inspired me and it was the idea of the personal narrative.

He would speak as if to one person in a song.

You know, like, "You've got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend,"

you know? I mean, nobody had ever written anything like that

in song form, you know?

Such a personal, strong statement.

And his influence was to personalise my work.

"I feel this for you,"

or "from you," or "because of you."

That was the key.

"OK, this opens all the doors.

"Now we can write about anything."

# There's a man who's been out sailing

# In a decade full of dreams

# And he takes her to his schooner

# And he treats her like a queen

# Bearing beads from California

# With their amber stones and green... #

The thing that I was reluctant to let go of was

the melodic, harmonic sense.

Whereas Dylan, you could speak in paragraphs,

but it was for the sacrifice of music.

You get the plateaus upon which to speak.

# In the breaking and the breathing

# Of the water weeds

# And she's so busy being free... #

So it was my job to distil a hybrid that allowed for a certain

amount of melodic movement and harmonic movement,

but with a certain amount of plateaus in order to make

the longer statement, to be able to say more.

# And he hopes her heart can hear three thousand miles

# He calls again

# He can think her there beside him

# He can miss her just the same... #

She was always more poetic than most of her peers.

Even in the early songs like The Circle Game and Both Sides Now,

there was a construction of images and structure to her work

and ingenuity of imagery that nobody else had.

# Yesterday a child came out to wander

# Caught a dragonfly inside a jar

# Fearful when the sky was full of thunder... #

Joni sent me a tape of six songs.

The last song, I remember she says into the tape recorder,

"This song isn't done yet, and it really sucks

"and I don't even know why I'm sending it to you, but here it is."

And it was The Circle Game.

# And the painted ponies go up and down... #

It was one of the best songs I'd ever heard.

# We're captive on the carousel of time... #

I was Buffy Sainte-Marie's agent.

And she'd recorded a new album, and I had listened to the album

and I called her up and I said,

"I really loved that song about the circle game."

And she said, "That song was written by Joni Mitchell."

That was the first time I heard Joni Mitchell's name.

The myth was starting about her material,

and people wanted Joni Mitchell songs.

I told her I was a personal manager and I'd kill to work with her.

And she said, "I'm leaving tomorrow and I'm going on the road

"for about three weeks."

And in those days she booked herself,

she travelled with her guitar, she went alone on the road.

And I said, "Can I go with you?"

And she said, "Well, if you meet me at the airport tomorrow,

"I'm flying to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

"If you meet me at the airport and you're there...", and she gave me

the flight number, "..and you pay your own expenses,

"you can come with me."

And we did. I went on the road with her the next day.

Elliot became wildly excited about Joni,

and he introduced me to her, and I became her agent.

And, you know, it was the beginning of her career,

it was the beginning of our careers.

You know, everything was very small-time.

When she first came out, she had a backlog of 20, 25 songs

that were what most people would dream that they would do

in their entire career.

She had already done it before she had recorded.

It was stunning.

APPLAUSE

# Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning

# And the first thing that I heard

# Was a song outside my window

# And the traffic wrote the words

# It came a-ringing up like Christmas bells

# And rapping up like pipes and drums

# Oh, won't you stay? We'll put on the day

# And we'll wear it till the night comes... #

Joni invented everything about her music,

including how to tune the guitar.

From the beginning of the process of writing it,

she's building the canvas, as well as she is putting the paint on it.

# The red, green and gold... #

No-one's trained her. She's trained herself.

And even in these early compositions,

she finds a harmony, or a group of chords,

and, invariably, it's never straight on.

# There's a sun show every second... #

For years, everybody said, "Joni's weird chords, Joni's weird chords,"

and I thought, "How can there be weird chords?"

Chords are depictions of emotions.

These chords that I was getting by twisting the knobs on the guitar

until I could get these chords that I heard inside that suited me,

they feel like my feelings.

You know, I call them, not knowing, chords of inquiry.

They have a question mark in them.

There were so many unresolved things in me that those chords

suited me and I'd stay in unresolved emotionality for days and days.

# The rainbow runs away

# I will bring you incense owls by night

# By candlelight, by jewel-light If only you will stay

# Pretty baby, won't you?

# Wake up, it's a Chelsea morning... #

It was a little daunting to be a singer-songwriter in her presence

because she was so good. She does it in a way that nobody else can do it.

She doesn't sound like anybody.

You hear her play and you say, "Oh, that's Joni."

# De de-de de-de... #

JONI REACHES HIGH NOTE

APPLAUSE

# Trinna wears her wampum beads

# She fills her drawing book with lines

# Sewing lace on widows' weeds

# And filigree on leaf and vine... #

Laurel Canyon in the late '60s was an incredible place to be.

It was the time everyone was coming out to California.

There was a camaraderie among all the artists.

There was always people coming over, up and down the canyon,

going from one house to another, playing new songs for each other.

There was so much happening.

Electric music was starting to happen. The acid rock was happening.

You know, the Byrds and the Airplane and the Grateful Dead,

all of those groups were playing all the small clubs.

# Annie sits you down to eat

# She always makes you... #

I can only liken it to Vienna in the turn of the century

or Paris in the '30s.

Laurel Canyon was very similar in that there was a freedom in the air.

There was a sense that we could do anything.

We were scruffy kids that were, in some small way,

changing the world, changing the way people think about things,

and there was a sharing of ideas

and a true love for being

in the right place at the right time.

# La la-la la-la la-la... #

There really was an ethic of peace and love and art

and poetry amongst that crowd.

Poetry, even more than musicality, was revered

and Joan was the best poet at the time,

so it was the kind of period where she had a lot to say

and everyone wanted to hear it.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

# He'll drop his defences

# You'll see through the stone to the heart of the man... #

I took her around to people that I knew already loved music,

loved singer-songwriters, and I said, "Listen to this,"

and I'd roll them a joint, get them high and sit down

and ask Joni to play, and the word spread pretty much like wildfire.

I'm finally going to make a record. I...

APPLAUSE

I did produce her first record, but I didn't do that great a job.

The only thing I did right was keep almost everything off of it,

keep it to just Joni and the songs.

Creatively, she knew where she wanted it to go

and what she wanted it to be.

She had a vision. She wasn't looking for input.

# Marcie in a coat of flowers

# Stops inside a candy store

# Reds are sweet and greens are sour

# Still no letter at her door... #

There's an innocence about this first album.

Song To A Seagull is a very rarefied, very pure,

very innocent musical experience.

It's a poetic experience.

# Wave another day goodbye

# Marcie's faucet needs a plumber

# Marcie's sorrow needs a man... #

David Crosby once told me that

if I ever ran across Joni Mitchell in my travels to introduce myself

because he thought that we would get on...

..and get on we did.

INTRO TO CONVERSATION

# He comes for conversation... #

She later took me back to her hotel, where she proceeded to play me

music that was...from another planet.

# Comfort and consultation... #

I was looking at this woman who was so beautiful,

surrounded by wonderful warm objects, candles and pieces of silk

and tapestry, gargoyles outside the window.

We were on the top floor.

Quite frankly, I'll never, ever forget that night. Ever.

# He sees me when he pleases

# I see him in cafes... #

I fell completely in love with Joni right then.

I had never heard, seen or met a creature like this in my life.

It was something else.

APPLAUSE

It's a long way from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to Carnegie Hall.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

MAN SHOUTS: I love you!

The audience at Carnegie Hall were ecstatic that Joni was there.

I think it was jammed to the rafters.

# When morning comes to Morgantown

# The merchants roll their awnings down... #

It was Joan's coming out in a really big way.

She brought her parents from Canada. This was a big deal.

# Morning, Morgantown

# Buy your dreams a dollar down... #

Well, Carnegie Hall the first time around was quite an event

on so many levels.

"New York loves you, Joni." It was wonderful.

She was magnificent that night.

She had reached a place in her career that was indisputable.

APPLAUSE

A lot of the people in my audience are very tired

because they came here, I understand, from Woodstock

right here...

APPLAUSE

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had been asked to play Woodstock,

as had Joni.

We had arrived at La Guardia Airport

and I picked up the New York Times.

It said, "400,000 people sitting in mud," and I said to Joni,

"Let's not go."

It was decided at the airport that I couldn't go

because it would be difficult to get me in and get me out

and I had to do a television show, The Dick Cavett Show,

the following day.

It was her first national TV and it was a big break.

The boys weren't going to miss out on it. They rented a helicopter

and they got in, and not only did they get in, but they got out

because they crashed the TV show the next day.

Can I describe to you what it looked like flying in on a helicopter, man?

Yes. It looked like an encampment of the Macedonian army.

You know, when I look at that film, my heart was just breaking.

This was like...

..the biggest event of my generation and I got THAT close to going

and being a part of it.

So, I stayed home in New York and I watched it on television all day

and saw everybody there playing and singing.

It was really a nice festival, I guess, from the looks of everything.

Well, I wrote a little song for my friends to sing,

and for myself to sing as well, and it's called Woodstock.

It goes like this.

By the time we got back to the hotel,

having gone through that tremendous experience, the song Woodstock

had already been basically written.

# I came upon a child of God

# He was walking along the road

# And I asked him I said, "Where are you going?"

# And this he told me

# I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm

# Gonna join in a rock and roll band

# I'm gonna camp out on the land

# Lord, I'm gonna try and get my soul free

# We are stardust

# We are golden

# And we've got to get ourselves

# Back to the garden... #

She contributed more towards people's understanding of that

event than anybody that was there.

I think, throughout her work, there is an effort to make the music

be sky-bound, to relieve the body of temporality

and, when she gets there, oof!

It's almost a chant - this need for release and transcendence.

To ride above the culture, to be in the sky, to reflect,

to not be in it, but to look down upon it.

# I'll light the fire

# You place the flowers in the vase

# That you bought today

# Staring at the fire

# For hours and hours while I listen to you

# Play your love songs

# All night long for me

# Only for... #

It was an intense time.

It was an intense time of, "Who's going to get to the piano first?

"Who's going to fill up the space with their music first?"

I mean, we had two very creative writers living in the same space

and it was an interesting clash of,

"I want to get as close to you as possible, leave me alone to create."

# My old man

# He's a singer in the park

# He's a walker in the rain

# He's a dancer in... #

Graham and I have been the source of many songs for one another.

# We don't need no piece of paper from the city hall... #

A lot of beautiful music came from it

and a lot of beautiful times came from it.

# My old man, keeping away my blues... #

How does a person write a song?

A lot of it is being open, I think, to encounter and, in a way,

in touch with the miraculous.

It has to do with the Irish blood, I think, and luck,

you know, whether the blarney is flowing.

Some nights, if you listen to the rattles of your own head,

it's more linguistically colourful or eccentric than other nights.

Is the blarney running or is it not?

You know, like, at any given time, it's not like, one night,

you'll trip over your tongue, you know, the words won't

come with the same facility, and, another night, it's just with you.

Why? Is it your biorhythms? Is it divine intervention,

you know, saying, "You can't have it tonight"?

Watching her write was the most interesting process.

It's almost like she channels.

She was gone for hours.

I mean, she was physically right there, but she wasn't there.

She was gone. I'd say things to her and she wasn't even listening.

She was gone. And it was a great thing to see.

Great thing to see somebody taken away by vision.

# You could have been more than a name on the door

# On the 33rd floor in the air

# More than a credit card

# Swimming pool in the back yard

# While you still have the time

# You could get away and find a better life

# You know the grind is so ungrateful

# Racing cars, whisky bars

# No-one cares who you really are

# You're the keeper of the cards

# Yes, I know it gets hard

# Keeping the wheels turning

# And the wife, she keeps the keys... #

Joni looks for this magical riff, this little piece of

rhythm and harmony and melody that's going to set up

an extraordinary mood.

And when she finds it, you can almost see her and feel her,

and you hear that from the opening of these tunes.

It envelops the listener,

but think how it envelops her when she finds it.

# More than a consumer Lying in some room... #

She lives with a great respect for this mystery

and with an openness, inviting this mystery.

This is her great strength

because I think it requires tremendous strength to really

believe in something that you cannot put your finger on.

# Love is but a song we sing

# Fear's the way we die... #

I had sworn my heart to Graham in a way that

I didn't think was possible for myself.

And he wanted me to marry him.

I'd agreed to it.

# Though the bird is on the wing... #

And then I just started thinking.

My grandmother was a frustrated poet and musician.

She kicked the kitchen door off of the hinges,

you know, on the farm. And I thought about my paternal grandmother,

who wept for the last time in her life at 14 behind some barn

because she wanted a piano

and said, "Dry your eyes, you silly girl, you'll never have a piano,"

and I thought...

..maybe I'm the one that got the gene that has to make it

happen for these two women.

As much as I loved and cared for Graham...

..I just thought, "I'm going to end up like my grandmother,

"kicking the door off the hinges." You know what I mean? It's like...

..I'd better not. And it broke my heart.

This year, I took some time off from touring and went off

on some adventures of my own, and this is kind of a letter back home.

# Sitting in a park in Paris, France

# Reading the news and it's all bad

# They won't give peace a chance

# That was just a dream some of us had... #

I remember getting a telegram from Greece from Joan

the last line of which was,

"If you hold sand too tightly in your hand,

"it will run through your fingers."

It was Joan's way of saying goodbye to me.

PIANO INTRO TO BLUE

# Blue-ooh

# Songs are like tattoos

# You know I've been to sea before

# Crown and anchor me

# Or let me sail away

# Hey, Blue

# There is a song for you, too

# Ink on a pin

# Underneath the skin

# An empty space to fill in

# Well, there're so many sinking

# Now you've got to keep thinking

# You can make it through these waves... #

Yeah, during the making of Blue I was just so thin-skinned

and delicate that if anybody looked at me,

I'd burst into tears.

I was so vulnerable and I felt so naked in my work.

# Everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go

# Well, I don't think so

# But I'm gonna take a look around it, though, Blue

# I love you

# I love you... #

My individual psychological descent coincided, ironically,

with my ascent into the public eye.

They were putting me on a pedestal and I was wobbling.

# Blue

# Here is a shell for you... #

So, you know, I took it upon myself that

since I was a public voice and was subject to this kind of weird

worship, that they should know who they were worshipping.

# There is your song from me. #

I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty,

more and more revelation in my work,

in order to give it back to the people

where it goes into their lives and nourishes them

and changes their direction and, you know,

makes light bulbs go off in their head,

and makes them feel, and, you know... And it isn't vague,

it strikes against the very nerves of their life, and in order

to do that, you've to strike against the very nerves of your own.

# Just before our love got lost you said

# "I am as constant as a northern star"

# And I said, "Constantly in the darkness

# "Where's that at?

# "If you want me I'll be in the bar..." #

I remember playing it for Kris Kristofferson and he was

kind of shocked by it, said, "Oh, Joni," you know,

"save something of yourself."

I think he'd felt that I had gone too...

Revealed too much or something,

I'd leave myself too vulnerable.

I think she was very insecure whether it was good, you know?

Whether she'd...

I think she felt basically she had taken her skin and turned it inside out.

# Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine

# You taste so bitter and so sweet

# Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling

# And I would still be on my feet

# I would still be on my feet... #

It was naked, pulsating, great poetry.

Blue just went to a level of psychic pain and honesty

that no-one else had ever written before

and no-one else has written since.

# Oh, I am a lonely painter

# I live in a box of paints

# I'm frightened by the devil

# And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid

# I remember that time that you told me

# You said, "Love is touching souls"

# Surely you touched mine

# Cos part of you pours out of me

# In these lines from time to time

# Oh... #

Blue turned forever on its head the notion of what a songwriter

was expected to be.

Joni became enormously popular through that,

and people didn't just love her the way that people love

the Rolling Stones and Motown,

they really felt this woman, by the light of this record player,

is looking into my soul.

You know, a very confusing place for the artist to find herself, too.

APPLAUSE

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The club thing was very informal and kind of fun,

whereas the big stage I hated from the moment that I went up there.

I didn't like that lofty adoration.

It seemed deluded.

The idea of people at my knees was just horrifying to me.

# Now me, I play for fortunes

# And those velvet curtain calls

# I've got a black limousine

# And two gentlemen

# Escorting me to the halls

# Now, I play if you have the money

# Or if you're a friend to me

# But the one-man band

# By the quick lunch stand

# He was playing real good

# For free... #

VOICEOVER: Fame made me really nervous and uncomfortable.

You know, maybe I'm kind of weird but, you know,

when I'm sitting up here and playing

and I hear all those people growling out there and people saying,

"Joni, smile for Amsterdam," and stuff, it really puts me uptight

and I forget the words, and then I get nervous and it's really a drag.

VOICEOVER: I began to dislike, more and more, being a public person.

Give me a little help, will you, so that I can...

VOICEOVER: So I isolated myself

and I made my attempt to get back to the garden.

# It's coming on Christmas

# They're cutting down trees

# They're putting up reindeer

# And singing songs of joy and peace

# Oh, I wish I had a river

# I could skate away on

# But it don't snow here

# It stays pretty green

# I'm going to make a lot of money

# Then I'm going to quit this crazy scene

# I wish I had a river

# I could skate away on... #

I moved up into the Canadian back bush to a small sanctuary

where I could be alone.

Lived with kerosene, stayed away from electricity for about a year.

I turned to nature.

I was going down,

and with that came a tremendous sense of knowing nothing.

Western psychology might call it a nervous breakdown,

but in certain cultures they call it a shamanic conversion.

I read nearly every psychological book that I could lay my hands on

and threw them all against the wall, basically.

But depression can be the sand that makes the pearl.

Most of my best work came out of it.

# It's coming on Christmas... #

If you get rid of the demons, or the disturbing things,

if you get rid of them then the angels fly off, too.

So there is a possibility, in that mire, of an epiphany.

# I could skate away on. #

# I heard it in the wind last night

# It sounded like applause

# Did you get a round resounding for you way up here?

# Seems like many dim years ago

# Since I heard that face-to-face

# Or seen you face-to-face

# Though tonight I can feel you here... #

I took my own advice and I got myself back to the garden.

Well, I am too urban, as it turns out,

and in a year or so I was back in the cities again.

# I guess I seem ungrateful

# With my teeth sunk in the hand

# That brings me things

# I really can't give up just yet... #

When I came back, I came to stay with David Geffen as a guest,

and was kind of the woman who came to dinner.

I ended up staying on for a while.

We were roommates.

It was a very heady time, you know?

It was very tumultuous and a lot of fun, and '70s.

I kept on telling Joni I wanted her to write a hit,

and she was always kind of making fun of me, you know, about the idea

that she should have a hit, but I wanted her to sell a lot of records.

# If you're driving into town with a dark cloud above you

# Dial in the number who's bound to love you

# Oh, honey, you turn me on

# I'm a radio

# I'm a country station

# I'm a little bit corny... #

I remember when she sang it to me, you know?

I mean, it was almost with a kind of, like,

making fun of my attempt for her to write a hit record.

# I'm a country station, I'm a little bit corny... #

# If your head says forget it

# But your heart's still smoking... #

I wrote a song called You Turn Me On, I'm A Radio,

out of blatant commercial...

SHE GIGGLES

I just thought...

I thought it would have a certain amount of disc jockey appeal

since it was full of things like the recording tower and, you know,

"call me at the station" and everything, and it was just,

like, sort of my own peculiar warped sense of humour.

# Feeling all right

# Oh

# I'm not feeling too good myself

# Oh

# Feeling all right

# All right

# All right

# All right... #

Joni has always wanted to be part of the gang.

As feminine as she is, she's always wanted to be one of the boys.

And when she played with the L.A. Express,

she probably just created her own little gang.

# He was sitting in the lounge... #

She loved the camaraderie of all these guys who were great,

great players and who recognised what a great guitar player she was,

and the joy of just having a killer rhythm section.

It was so much more fun.

# Let me sit down

# You know, drinkin' alone's a shame... #

Now being on a stage with a group of people, I can go back and I can say,

"Weren't we great?" if we were,

or, "Ooh, weren't we awful?" if we weren't.

So it's not such a lonely thing.

Her image was the vulnerable blonde.

And when she went with a band, there was something masculine about it.

There was a certain power

and confidence that was conveyed

through the bass and the drums,

and nobody ever heard her sing like this before.

# Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipe... #

REPORTER: Do you think that the fact that you're singing with a band now,

you might lose something by losing that vulnerable image?

Well, I don't want to be vulnerable any more.

THEY LAUGH

I think people have this image and idea of this fragile Nordic goddess

who's descending from the mountains, like...

..wisps of Wagner and...

..Tiffany wind chimes behind her.

But later on, you know, I think when she got infected

with rock and roll, she turned into, like,

a red-hot mama, flesh and blood.

# Come home with me, honey, I ain't asking for no full-length mink coat

# Hey, where you going?

# Don't go yet

# Your glass ain't empty and we just met

# You're mean when you're loaded

# I was raised on robbery... #

I shouldn't be stereotyped as a magic princess,

as I got earlier in my career, you know?

The sort of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star kind of attitude, you know?

I didn't like that feeling.

And I think that the band will only show that there is another

side to the music.

I think it's a good expansion.

Court And Spark was a great achievement for Joni.

It catapulted her into the forefront of recording stars.

It was a triumph.

Court And Spark was a discourse on romantic love

against the backdrops of its time.

# Again and again the same situation

# For so many years

# Tethered to a ringing telephone

# In a room full of mirrors... #

John Guerin and I fell in love

during the making of Court And Spark.

He was a drummer, and we courted and sparked.

# I asked myself when you said that you loved me

# "Do you think this can be real?"

# You've had lots of lovely women

# Now you turn your gaze to me... #

In order to get the right spirit into the music,

there's got to be more than a working relationship.

There has to be a sense of passion,

there has to be something there for the heart,

there has to be something there for the intellect,

there has to be something there for the sensuality and sensation.

# Sometimes you turn it on me like a weapon, though

# And I need your approval... #

A major theme in her work, the struggle between wanting to settle

down with a man, longing for love and this desire for independence.

# I said, "Send me somebody

# "Who's strong and somewhat sincere"

# With the millions of the lost and lonely ones

# I called out to be released

# Caught in my struggle for higher achievement

# And my search for a love that don't seem to cease... #

It defines her life all the way through,

this need for love and this sense of obligation to her art,

to follow her muse.

It's an ongoing conflict in her life and, of course, it fuels the art.

Anything which moves me, influences me.

Now, at this time in my life, I'm going

through a strong musical change from playing with this band

whose chordal sense comes predominantly from jazz.

# I'm travelling in some vehicle

# I'm sitting in some cafe

# A defector from the petty wars

# That shellshocked love away... #

The need to innovate or to be fresh or to be original

is very strong in me.

# There's comfort in melancholy... #

She has this great need for this new language.

When she finishes through a set of feelings,

she has to invent yet another language to keep going.

She understood that she was going to need the sounds

and talents of these other artists to keep the language going.

# So much could not be expressed... #

And so she surrounded herself with people like her engineer,

her musicians, who allowed her to change, to be original,

and Henry was one of those.

Henry Lewy was Joni's engineer for many years,

and was a big influence.

Henry and I had a dialogue that I guess had gotten fairly cryptic.

I never learned the proper names for things

and gave everything nicknames.

"Put a little more Elvis on it," for instance, a little more echo.

And somebody turned to Henry, I forget who it was,

and said, "Do you understand what she's saying?"

And he smiled, and he said, "Every word."

The lovely thing is to watch her grow, year after year,

as a human being, as a musician, as a poet.

She started out being a poetess and a painter,

so now it's gotten to the stage where she's,

like, painting with a large palette of oil colours,

instead of just a very small palette of watercolours.

# You know it never has been easy

# Whether you do or you do not resign

# Whether you travel the breadth of extremities

# Or stick to some straighter line... #

I had tried all along to add other musicians to my music.

Nearly every bass player that I tried did the same thing.

They would put up a dark picket fence through my music

and I thought, "Why does it have to go ploddy, ploddy, ploddy?"

Finally, one guy said to me,

"Joni, you'd better play with jazz musicians."

With Hejira there was a real collaboration with

Jaco Pastorius, the jazz bass player, in which his bass

and her voice became a man-woman duet, an extremely intimate,

deep dialogue between two musicians.

# Coyote's in the coffee shop

# He's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs

# He picks up my scent on his fingers

# While he's watching the waitresses' legs... #

Joni always looked way beyond whatever genre she seemed to be in.

She just kept exploring new boundaries, new frontiers.

She was really one of the first, if not the first mainstream musician

to plunge into what hadn't even been called world music yet,

but really was world music,

and really explore it, bring it into her vocabulary.

BASS SOLO

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

MUSIC: Cotton Avenue by Joni Mitchell

# A red sun came rolling down a grey sky... #

One of my favourite compliments that I ever received was from

a black blind piano player, and he said to me,

"Joni, you make genderless, raceless music,"

and I thought, well, I hadn't set out, you know, saying,

"I'm going to make genderless, raceless music,"

but I did want to make music that crossed...

I never really liked lines, class lines,

social structure lines, and I ignored them always.

Mingus called me from his deathbed to do his last project with him.

He'd heard Don Juan's Reckless Daughter

and was intrigued by it.

And I think because I was dressed like a black man on it,

he was totally intrigued with, you know, the audacity of that act.

Joan was flattered that, "My God, this man who I so admire

"and has been such a ground-setter and trend-setter,

"and has been such an important influence in his genre for so long,

"picked me to do his last project."

Management begged me,

"Don't do this, you're just going to plummet into obscurity."

We talked about it at that time, "It's going to offend some people,

"and it's not going to get radio play,"

but there was no thinking about it for Joan.

She would not be marketed

and she would not let the marketing affect what she was going to do.

That was a great opportunity to study with a great teacher.

I felt that it was meant to be,

in that I've been sticking my big toe into the lake of jazz,

metaphorically, and Charles pushed me right in.

JAZZ KEYBOARD PLAYS

I went to see him

and I came through the door of his apartment

and all I saw was this hulking figure,

from behind in this wheelchair.

When I came around in front of him, whoa, man, this face was, like,

glowing full of the devil and beautiful light

and, you know, just this beautiful open face.

He gave me a tape with six melodies

which he called Joni one, two, three, four, five, six,

and the first song was a bit of a Rumpelstiltskin puzzle.

I said to Charles, "What do you feel this piece of music is about?"

He said, "Well, this is about the things I'm going to miss

"and the things I wish I'd done,"

and I looked at him and he looked at me

and I thought, "He must have a million pieces of music left

"in his head unfulfilled, plus the adventure is slipping away."

# Debating this sentence, biding my time

# In memories

# Of old friends of mine... #

When I finished it, I think he was very surprised that I would

have that insight into him, and yet, at the same time, intuitively,

he knew I would. He must have, otherwise he wouldn't have called.

# Burning up the bandstand... #

I went and cut it with the band of my dreams,

and with the concept that we would all be so braided together

that you couldn't take it apart, it would be a sheet of sound.

That was the concept.

# I'm down to a roll of dimes

# I'm stalking the slot that's hot

# I keep hearing bells all around me

# Jingling the lucky jackpots

# They keep you tantalised

# They keep you reaching for your wallet

# Here in fool's paradise... #

I had no idea she had that much of a kind of freedom

in her approach to the music that was so compatible with jazz.

# I dropped a dime, I blew it

# He kept ringing bells... #

She could see putting another kind of dressing around the music,

another way to kind of weave a different kind of tapestry,

and still capture the essence of Charlie Mingus, but her way.

# It's all luck, it's just luck

# You get a little lucky and you make a little money... #

She wanted to realise the freedom of creation, and when we recorded,

we tried to make the music, like, deliver that feeling of adventure.

# We came up from the subway

# On the music midnight makes... #

The press just thought I'd lost my marbles, I think.

You know, "What is she doing now?" You know.

She was very disappointed when people did not understand

her change of musical direction,

and I think it brought Joan a lot of pain that she wasn't

seen as the creative free-form artist that she really is,

that she was pigeonholed into being this blonde folk singer image

that she has been trying to escape for years

and years and years and years.

# Music, do-do... #

Joni was exercising something called freedom.

And inclusion instead of exclusion.

# Dancing outside this crowded black bar... #

It's not about style, it's about her artistic commitment,

it's about her musical exploration.

It doesn't matter what you draw from, who cares?

A bit from jazz, a bit from... What's the difference?

It's hers.

# And there were two brand-new little musicians dancing there

# Tonight. #

MUSIC: A Chair In The Sky by Joni Mitchell

Any time I make a record, it's followed by a painting period.

It's good crop rotation.

I keep the creative juices going by switching from one to the other,

so that when the music or the writing dries up, I paint.

You rest the ear a while and you rest the inner mind,

because poetry takes a lot of plumbing the depths.

I mean, the way I write, anyway, it takes a lot of meditation.

Without the painting to clear the head, I don't think I could do it.

It's almost as if painting completely takes her out of being

who she is, even though her paintings are also

a great part of who she is.

SHE SCATS

There were three things Picasso did in order to create a new period.

One, he would return home to Spain - that always did it.

Two, he would get a new house.

Three, he would get a new woman.

LAUGHS

UPBEAT '80S ROCK MUSIC

# He came, she smiled

# She thought she had... #

When I began working with her, the songs that she was writing

were born out of a desire to adopt

a more direct method of communicating what she was thinking.

# In the dark, he could see... #

The response to Mingus was very negative,

and I think that she felt that she needed to go back a little bit

more towards the traditional song.

# Wild things run fast... #

With Wild Things,

we had put together a rock band with tremendous virtuosity

in that band, and a lot of the music written about that

was the celebration of this friendship between Klein and I,

which had turned into love.

MUSIC: Underneath The Streetlight by Joni Mitchell

Being in love is extremely important to her muse.

A lot of her creative impulses come from whatever that phenomenon is

that happens to us when we fall in love.

# Yes, I do, I love ya!

# I swear on the blinkin' planes above, I do

# I swear on the truck at the stoplight... #

I was writing about romantic love,

but the '80s were not romantic times.

The press said, "She used the L-word 44 times on this record."

Nobody could handle the fact that there was a celebration of love

going on, and they were in this deadly cold-hearted period.

ACOUSTIC GUITAR AND SYNTH PLAY

# Back in 1957, we had to dance a foot apart

# And they hawk-eyed us from the sidelines

# Holding their rulers without a heart... #

The writing has been an exercise,

trying to work my way towards clarity.

Get out the pen and face the beast yourself,

and what's bothering you, and...

"Right, well, that's not exactly it." You know?

"OK, let's go a little deeper. Well, that's not exactly it..."

Very hard peeling the layers off your own onion.

# Was just to come in from the cold... #

When you get to the truth, you know, do I want to say that in public?

# I am not some stone commission

# Like a statue in a park

# I am flesh and blood and vision

# I am howling in the dark... #

So you're really doing a tightrope walk to keep your heart alive,

to keep your art alive, to keep it vital and useful to others.

This is now useful because we've hit upon a human truth.

# But all I ever wanted

# Was just to come in from the cold... #

She tells the truth about herself,

she tells the truth about what she observes in the world.

It's almost like a welder,

when you see them when they put those visors down

and you see that welding torch and that heat and that point of contact

between the flame and the object...

I think that's where Joni likes to live,

right, right in that essence.

CROWD APPLAUD BAND BEGINS TO PLAY

# I pulled up behind a Cadillac

# I was waiting for the light

# I took a look at his licence plate

# And it said "Just Ice"

# Is justice just ice?

# Governed by greed and lust?

# Just the strong doing what they can

# And the weak suffering what they must?

# And the gas leaks

# And the oil spills

# And sex sells everything

# And sex kills

# Oh, sex kills

# Doctor's pills give you brand-new ills and...

# The bills bury you like an avalanche

# And lawyers haven't been this popular

# Since Robespierre slaughtered half of France... #

The artist is the canary in the coalmine.

I mean, we're supposed to be out there on the fringes

with an overview.

If we are doing our work, we should be a little ahead of the stripe,

but people kept saying things like,

"Aren't you being very negative?"

I'd said, "No, I'm just being realistic.

"Aren't you being a bit of an ostrich, you know?"

# And the gas leaks

# And the oil spills

# And sex sells everything

# And sex kills... #

After we started making Turbulent Indigo,

we just reached a point where we were just not good for each other

as husband and wife.

You know, the thing that carries you through in a relationship

is not romantic love. We started out as friends,

and that's what ended up carrying us through ten years,

which is not a bad run.

When we split up, we got back to being friends,

and now I would say she's my best friend.

MUSIC: Tiger Bones by Joni Mitchell

Well, in the '90s, they really started giving Joni

every kind of honour and award,

they really rolled out the red carpet.

But I think she probably figured they were honouring her

for the wrong things.

Once one was given to me, the others felt the necessity to do it,

but they didn't really know why.

The day after I won the Grammy for Turbulent Indigo,

there was an article that came out in a newspaper that said,

"Singer-Songwriters: Then and Now."

This was a day after I won a Grammy,

and I was in the "then" column.

I do some interviews and they go,

"You, you know, you're that folk singer from the '60s."

I said, "Look, I just won three...

"We are in the '90s now, I've won Grammys like all...

"Doesn't that make me an artist of the '90s?"

# Accolades and honours

# One false move and you're a goner... #

There's been a tremendous amount of growth.

An actress is not expected to continue to play her ingenue roles.

You know, I've written roles for myself to grow into gracefully,

but there is no growing into gracefully in the pop world.

Basically, the reason I'm so unruly in this business

is because I never wanted to be a human jukebox.

She never set out to be a popular artist.

This is the real key to understanding her.

# The moon shed light on my hopeless plight

# As the radio blared so bland

# Every disc a poker chip

# Every song just a one-night stand

# Formula music, girlie guile

# Genuine junk food for juveniles

# Up and down the dial

# Mercenary style... #

She never sold out.

She had the courage to really follow her muse,

to follow what came out of her,

no matter what the marketplace demanded.

I tried to train myself to be a realist.

I'm not cynical. To me, it's like,

"Can you get through this life with a good heart?"

And that's been my struggle.

You know, with all the injustice and everything

and the things that piss you off, you know,

is to try and get the heart to rebound

and come back and bloom again, you know?

Joan has always had a lot of guilt

surrounding the whole situation with her child

and this incredibly strong drive to find her.

I had the great fortune to see her in Vancouver, Canada,

when she was with her daughter for the first time.

She was so overjoyed, she was like a little kid.

Joni's face had changed.

# This is really something

# People will be envious

# But our roles aren't clear So we mustn't rush

# Still, we're burning brightly

# Clinging like fire to fuel

# I'm burning like a fool

# Stay in touch... #

We both were very excited about meeting.

I'm thinking, you know, "What if she doesn't like me?

"Probably she won't like me."

You know, "There's going to be issues here."

# Stay in touch... #

She arrived and I was upstairs and I was painting.

So I walked out on the balcony of the house

and I saw her kind of in the dark.

It was like Romeo and Juliet.

She had some paintbrushes in her hand,

and when we met at the front door in the kitchen with hugs,

it felt like I had gone away on a trip for a couple months

and I was coming home.

# During times like these, the wise or influential

# They can bear the imperfections... #

Joni doesn't look like a grandmother,

or act like a grandmother,

she's like a mother of the three of us.

# No doubt that's always been a tricky one for me

# So we should just surrender

# Let fate and duty shape us... #

It's like the master's class in love,

true altruistic love.

She is going through that now.

She's really exploring and finding her way through

a process of discovery that you can only experience

through your relationship with a child.

It was a healing thing. Yes, it was very cathartic.

It was coming full circle.

She was always truthful in her work,

and maybe the fact that she had not wanted to acknowledge

that she had a child publicly was the missing piece,

and with this piece complete,

not only was her family complete,

but in a weird way, her work was complete.

STRINGS PLAY

# Rows and flows of angel hair

# And ice-cream castles in the air

# And feather canyons everywhere

# Looked at clouds that way

# But now they only block the sun

# They rain and they snow on everyone

# So many things I would have done

# But clouds got in my way

# I've looked at clouds from both sides now

# From up and down

# And still somehow

# It's cloud illusions I recall

# I really don't know clouds

# At all... #

On her first album, there is the song Cactus Tree,

about choosing to leave the roads that were possible,

you know, college, marriage, motherhood, everything,

and go off on her own journey.

Years later, in Hejira, an album about leaving behind entanglements

and following the next horizon,

she at the end pulls into the Cactus Tree Motel

to wash off the dust of the road,

and you're very aware that for all of the changes,

superficial and real,

that she's gone through and her music has gone through

and her audience has gone through in that time,

this is still a continuation of that journey she started,

she is still writing her map as she drives.

# But something's gained

# In living every day

# I have looked at life from both sides now

# From win and lose and still somehow

# It's life's illusions I recall

# I really don't know life

# At all

# It's life's illusions that I recall

# I really don't know life

# I really don't know life at all. #

For me, it's been a very kind of subjective,

I guess you'd say, journey.

Subjective but hopefully universal.

That was always my optimism, that if I described my own changes

through whatever the decade was throwing at us,

that there were others like me,

and it turns out that there were.

BIRDSONG

ACOUSTIC GUITAR PLAYS

# They paved paradise, put up a parking lot

# With a pink hotel, a boutique and a swingin' hot spot

# Don't it always seem to go

# You don't know what you've got till it's gone?

# They paved paradise, put up a parking lot

# They paved paradise, put up a parking lot

HIGH VOICE: # They paved paradise

DEEP VOICE: # Put up a parking lot. #

CHUCKLES

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE