San Francisco Chronicle interview with Joni Mitchell about her retirement from music:
On this afternoon, she talks about how she developed her style, but the most essential quality of a songwriter, she suggests, may be mental toughness. Like Bob Dylan and fellow Canadian Neil Young, Mitchell has fallen in and out of favor over the years. She has been revered, imitated -- and ridiculed for being esoteric and out of touch.Ultimately, she was not tough enough. "Everything in my later career, with few exceptions, has been compared unfavorably to my early work," she says, matter-of-factly. "I've done 16 records hearing people say, 'You're not as good as you used to be. Finally, I said, 'OK, I agree with you.' "
Mitchell announced she was leaving the music business in 2002 and hasn't looked back. "My goal as a writer is more to comfort than to disturb," she says, explaining her decision. "Most of the art created in this particular culture is shallow and shocking, and I can't create music for this social climate."
She pauses. In conversation, she is outspoken, funny, self-deprecating and stimulating. But she doesn't find anything funny about the topic at hand. "There's not much room for subtleties today. It's the shallow, flashy heart that grabs the attention; chase scenes, atrocities."
She doesn't have the same opinion of her songs that us fans do. About Both Sides Now she says:
Even after all this time, she doesn't understand all the excitement over the song. "I thought 'Both Sides Now' was a failure, so what do I know?" she says, smiling. "I was not a good judge of my early material; none of it sounded all that good to me. That's why I wanted to keep moving forward."
Certainly the songwriter is going to have a different perspective on a song, but that sounds like she is trying to distance herself from her past, her early years, the years that everyone compares her current songs to. I understand that. Mitchell has long bemoaned fans and critics wanting her to "paint A Starry Night again, man" (from Miles of Aisles). On that live album she went into a long story about artists repeating themselves. Certainly her affinity is more for painters than songwriters.
Posted by heartandmind at September 23, 2004 08:42 PM