- The 90s were a black year, but now a new era is following, Joni Mitchell tells us via a transatlantic telephone line from Los Angeles.

- My new record is made after funerals and is about coming home.

A young girl with remarkable kindness, heartfelt lyrics, and acoustic guitar emerges from a flock of long-haired hippies and sings with serious mines a sad and sorrowful ballad. Who remembers this scene?

If only one had been fortunate enough to have seen the hippie-comedy in Alice's Restaurant in the cinema, but perhaps one has seen the film on TV. And even if one knows the film, it is highly probable that one knows the girl.

It was none other than Joni Mitchell, who, today, twenty years after Alice's Restaurant, is among the most creative and personal fates in American pop. Night Ride Home is her latest record, the ninth since the previous LP, Wild Things Run Fast, Dog Eat Dog, and Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm, all released on the Geffen label during the 90s.

Long live folk music

It is uniquely produced music, with dissonant chords and strange melodies that essentially deviate from the new female singer/songwriter wave.

Songwriters like Suzanne Vega and Tracy Chapman are often compared to Joni Mitchell, but it is actually the Canadian guitarist and singer who has been more advanced in folk music than the more advanced American experiments. Her range, too, would truly have been a genuine folk musician for those who were ahead of her.

In my childhood, I listened to very different music: Rachmaninov, Piaf, and Sinatra, among others. Later came rock'n'roll. That was perfectly fine, as long as one could just dance to the beat. But when rock reached its second generation, with Fabian and those commercial stars, I lost interest.

The void was filled by folk music and its originality, and it was naturally at that time that I bought my first guitar. I became a folk musician, because it was easiest for me because I had my roots there. My first record was rather in line with the German lieder tradition than with folk music, says Joni Mitchell.

In 1970, the popular tribute song to the Woodstock Festival hit again, but she was already on her way from the acoustic guitar and the new success.

I have never been more modest. My family often told me that I was a child who was very happy, yes, and I also felt so happy for her, yes, and I also felt very modest with her, says Joni Mitchell.

For a long time, my music was rock 'n' roll-dance music and came largely from various provinces. It gave me a cosmic political stance in every province. Besides, I am of mixed race. I have always focused on it, and it reflects in my career. I am rarely free from mere superficialities, but sometimes I find myself becoming superficial, becoming excommunicated, she says.

Unique blend of folk, jazz and rock

First in collaboration with Tom Scott's L.A. Express and then in a series of recordings with the legendary bassist Jaco Pastorius, Mitchell approached her unique blend of folk, jazz and rock, which is her trademark today.

I have only played jazz, namely Mingus from 1979. And that is not true jazz, Charlie Mingus' music is jazz. But it is not only jazz. Mitchell wanted to collaborate with the great jazz musician, but ended up paying tribute to him, recorded shortly after his death. Anyone who knows jazz will say that my accordion-based songs have nothing to do with it. My jazz-music has never contained the Mingus-record. Accordions are highly structured in jazz, often in terms of tone, and music in the broad sense for improvisation, says Joni Mitchell.

Pop-musicians and jazz-musicians often speak differently, but jazz musicians also talk one after the other. I work intuitively, like a painter. I keep the accordion on my lap, like a painter brushes. With the starting point in the mummers, Mitchell's factual is acknowledged, as are billow-tones, and often decorate his own plain-clothes. She tells, to a great extent, of the clangy colors, the known timbre of her music, styles experimented with in different ways of tuning the guitar.

The day I started playing, it was the first spontaneous drumming style, which was generally coarse. Today I work with approximately 50 tunings. It is a compositional tool, which others have also started to use, for example Andreas Vollenweiler.

The special tunings involve quite a lot of difficulties. One is tied to the chords and cannot use the usual [fingering?] that lies in the guitar's tuning. But if you do that, the home-made tunings are far more expansive than they are limiting, believes Joni Mitchell.

Political Reviews

It is not unknown what kind of musician she is. Her generally acclaimed and poetic texts have often moved in two kinds of mood-tunes. In political tressers and half-wild ones, she has inwardly sung of love-stability and loneliness on the country road, but in fact, with the record Dog Eat Dog, she has never performed political reviews.

In the 90s, conservatism emerged from an old, "liberal" attitude, and the gap between rich and poor became extreme. TV series from Dallas constantly depicted unpleasant people as heroes, and suddenly it became legitimate to be rich in other people's reckoning. Otherwise, President Reagan reigned as a king on an endless throne, she says. Joni Mitchell personally experienced the previous time as a hard one. A series of lawsuits over property rights hindered her financially, and her car was involved in several serious accidents in the Californian countryside.

Since 1983, she has rarely taken time off to tour, and in this regard, Night Ride Home is her turn. Nevertheless, she describes her new record as optimistic.

The 90s were a black year, but now a new era is following. The new record is made after the funerals, and it is about coming home. The texts describe half-tressers and tressers, i.e., my childhood and youth. Most of them deal with the old age, I am now, says the 47-year-old Mitchell.

Today, one can still keep young with the help of strengthening and plastic surgery. Why should that be pinned down to a midlife crisis. Paul Newman says in an interview that his acting career lasts longer and his make-up fills his careers to the max. And that's just right. After all, children are better read, and the milder ones are good, and the older ones are good for literature. For we are also part of reality, says Joni Mitchell.

Three Phases of Life

One tends to say that a person goes through three phases in life. The lyrical period here is youth. Then follows the epic period and then the tragic, when one reaches a complete understanding of human nature.

But I have certainly had to change direction at the age of forty and go through a tragic phase. Now I am ready to embrace an epic phase, says Joni Mitchell.