good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with joni mitchell. she just released 53 song collection. we're glad you joined us. a rare conversation with joni mitchell. coming up right now. ♪ ♪ ♪

joni mitchell is one of the top ranked talents the contemporary music. i appoint them to look at her new four disk collection of her 53 remarkable songs remastered and reimaged called love has many faces. before we start our conversation we take a look and tribute to

her. she wrote this song when she was just 21. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ don't give yourself away ♪ ♪ i really don't know love ♪ i really don't know love at all ♪ ♪

joni, 21. you've been prolific a long time. >> yeah. there's a trumpet player named ambros who's new on the jazz seen. he said joni, how do you it. >> i said what. >> he says, how did you do it, 21, whatever. i says, i don't know. you know, i was under contract. i had to deliver. this is some kind of duty. >> there are a whole lot of folk on contract who haven't put out the stuff you've put out for all of these years. >> you do say first in this book. i want to jump in. can i just say that i'm amazed by the packaging. we will talk about that. it's a piece of art. aside from the 53 songs. the way it is presented is a piece of art which i want to come to in just a second.

i'm so glad you spent so much time on the liner notes. i love liner notes. you learn so much about artists when you read your liner notes. speaking of being so prolific, you say your husband, mr. mitchell helped make you a fi philosopher. if you make a good marriage, good bless you. if you make a bad marriage, you become a philosopher. we married for the wrong reasons. he held the purse strings. i had to be a housewife and bring home the bacon as well as him. it wasn't a good marriage. in our wedding day his own mother said the first waffle said be used to hold up the pan

and thrown out. very selfishly, you took all of our money. we were poor. went out and bought himself a porsche speedster. we got off to a bad start. but one good thing that came out of it. he was very skploetitive. when i started out writing, i hasn't figured out how to you do it. i thought i would just skim the surface of what i was contemplating. i considered it a failure and others started to see something in it. in its vagueness, it's interpretable. singing at 21, what do you know about life. people kind of made fun of it.

i thought naber version, who sang it in her 70s. i heard it and paid her a compliment she went, it takes an older woman to bring that song to life. she goes what -- >> i thought oh, dear you never tell a woman she's old. >> speaking of laughing, here is something that i found fascinating in this wonderful book and collection of cds. i played it for geffen and bob dylan and bob's buddy louie kemt. we played it and everybody was

diffusive then i played court and spark. i was so proud of it. bob dylan pretended to fall asleep when the first note faded out, geffen nodded and louie's friend came and said, why are they doing this to you. i don't know i said. i think i'm jackie robinson. so with that collection of people around you, the work wasn't being given the respect in that moment perhaps that it should have been given. >> well, john lennon's perspective, the working class perspective. it's too softis sophisticated. that's a class problem is what i thought.

i had a kind of hard way to go. there weren't that many women in the business. i think it's funny. i'm not wining. even trying to leave people because i had very distinctive ideas about how the bottom end should be. i would lay my part down and had a really good time and put the base and drums afterwards. i couldn't get anybody who could play it. russ who was part of the section who played, couldn't play it. i was throwing in long figures that if you broke them down and analyzed them bar by bar, john would say, you've got a bar by five or eight or something in that.

you have to keep sending up the bar because i'm changing the key in a middle of a song. for two bars where i would change the time signature so to do it in notations, it was excite eccentric. >> who was the writer and instrumentalist that you fell in love with. >> first of all, he could play with me. you have to know what those time signatures are. you're basically playing in a groove and you go through a shuffle. i found it very interesting what he said because it is so articulate from a drummers point of view. for him it was a piece of cake.

he sailed through it like a champ. i said to henry, set me up facing the drummer. he was real cute. i fell in love, yeah. >> i want to get right to the project. you say joni that this box set is rising from the phoenix of the ashes of two dead projects. a ballet and a horrendous il conceived box set. tell me how this ends up being the project of those two failed projects. >> i got put no a back contract and then i got sick. with management trying to keep putting money into my pocket, they send a burglar into my stash where i keep my outsteata.

i had to budget and be comical. if it was a good take. i'd put them on. there weren't a lot of outtakes. the things that were stored, in my safe place is what it is called, they were there because they needed a lot of work. the record company playing the formula. hired a guy who had some success with somebody els. the idea was was two boxes but these tracks weren't suitable

and needed a lot of work. he brought in an engineer who couldn't comprehend my structures. i could do it over the phone with the language of pro tools but he wouldn't follow my instructions which has been a problem throughout my career. i couldn't get him to do my bidding. i knew what i was doing but i needed a great assistant. that's what i needed. a good technician that will enable me. these people, once given the power were over lording.

i'm the general. i know what i'm doing. the guy who was going to do my box set was going to do it in chronological orderment that was a terrible idea. there's a lot of growth in there. i've lost some. some was jazz. some of it was too progressive for charles. it was folky. herby, you know, i love those guys. so anyway, conceptually, i would

say a really different approach to worki. >> yhow did you figure these 53 tracks? >> well, first of all, the first thanni thing i did was a ballad. a ballad is 75 minutes. i tried to get it down to 1 b ris,

ballet. the war ballet was a triumph. it was a blockbuster. men were on the edge of their seats. >> so i thought oh, they are going to think it and take the songs about seduction, they are more the anatomy of the crime. why couldn't be love was the question? how do you do it? the box set in a couple of places, it states how to do it and how hard it is. stay in touch tells you exactly how to do it and corrinthians

tells you what it is and what it isn't. it's really hard. you have to bare the imperfections like the old wives who would rise above it. if the master is a bludgeoning creep, you have to go yes, sir. when you're forced or compelled to have to sit to go through all of this stuff. >> i did it in my head and then listened to it. >> when you're enlisting people for the process, what's the take

way from what you've done? >> oh, for me. it sounded completely fresh to me. i was delighted by the people i had worked with. i went oh, my god oh, fortunate i was to play with the london harmonic and wayne and herby. because of his contract i can only put him on a few cut or i would have put him on anything. i adore his playing and twhab adds when i finally found the people who could enhance any playing i

go oh, my god that's fantastic. >> tell me about the art work on this. it's a piece of art. the art in here -- this is all rushing for the ballet. this is the callingery ballet. two things that i wanted to achieve so 65-year-old joni is up against 25-year-old joni. you can see that both characters are deliveri very well. the alto and soprano.

i wanted it break down story lines. i didn't make music in the 50s. i was a rock and roll dancer in public dance halls. i started with the rock roll. it was basically rubbing berry. kids kissing in cars. the car was breaking down. the pioneers from the generations before were stuck. n now, the dad goes to work. he's got his work. the mom has her world. the teenager was kind of tri

trivialized but suddenly because of the car, they had independence. you would have people living in the house that can have nothing in common. there was something very wrong. the white picket fence collapse. so you go from the happy days of 50s birth of rock and roll days to the break down of the p parental dream so the materialistic -- >> greed is good. >> yeah. greed is good and we were being cohearsed to being consumers as

opposed to saving. >> our time is just about up. i could talk to you for days and hours. there are a couple of things i want to get out in the time that left left. we've talked about this on a few occasions but this time is the right time to ask. what has been the -- as a song writer and artist, what has been the success of your work. >> all of the songs i consider successful distillations. there's nothing that i'd want to fix or a line i'd want to fix. everybody is playing perfectly.

as a matter of fact, we've had three play back parties. we play the whole thing. it's a five hour party. everybody gets up and dances. >> you referenced this. the 65-year-old joni and the 25-year-old joni. who does the joni then think of the joni now? >> the joni then would have no idea -- i had miles blue and i knew how to sing songs.

so in the 20s and everything. i never guess i would be collaborating with these people who are my friends. i hadn't revisited it in a long time. that's what struck me the most rather than trying to get it together. it's not all in one key. they flow. they always say joni's weird cords. i guess i did some things innova innovative. >> what they call weird is innovative. >> i guess when they got mad.

i thought that was weird. >> go in and play like a champ. wayne would say what is it? he would go in and play it on the fly. it was amazinamazing. >> i'm always honored. it isn't everyday that joni mitchell shows up for a conversation. it is always my great delight to see you on my program. >> i asked to see me. >> her new project is called love has many faces a quartet, a ballet, walling to be b danced. a four disk set 53 songs and

beautiful art all the way through it. there's a wonderful handwritten letter in the back of it, if you want to learn more about how this all works. congratulations. that's our show for tonight. as always, keep the faith. for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> join me next time for a conversation with mary jay blidge with her new project entitled the london sessions. that's next time. we'll see you then.

>> welcome to the program. tonight the parents of michael brown, michael brown senior and lesley mcspadden join us along with their attorney benjamin crimp. >> how you can become whole again? >> rose: we're different now. just have to keep the faith. that hole will never be filled. we have other children that we love but, you know, i think that actually broke me. kuz my first, you know. spent a lot of time together. it just-- just broke me. >> rose: we conclude this evening with richard anderson, the.o