good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. tonight our conversation with eight-time grammy winner and rock and roll hall of fame inductee joni mitchell. she's just released a career-spanning four-disc collection of 53 songs re-mastered and re-imagined titled "love has many faces: a quartet, a ballet, waiting to be danced." we're glad you've joined us. a rare conversation with the incomparable joni mitchell coming up right now. ♪ ♪

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. joni mitchell is one of the towering talents of contemporary music. should anyone be foolish 95 to challenge auto -- foolish enough to challenge that, i point them to 53 of her remarkable songs re-mastered and re-imagined,: "love has many faces: a quartet, a ballet, waiting to be danced." a tribute that she wrote when

she was just 21. ♪ on the town it's just another shore and you wear it where you go ♪ ♪ and if you care to make them know don't give yourself away ♪ ♪ i look at love from both sides now ♪ ♪ give and take and still somehow ♪ ♪ the love's unusual that i recall i really don't know love ♪ ♪ i really don't know love at all ♪

>> joni, 21. you -- you've been prolific a long time. >> yeah. it's a trumpet player named ambrose new on the the jazz scene. that's what he said to me, he said, "how did you do it?" i said, "how did i do what?" he said "how did you do it? 21 albums?" i said, "i don't know." i was under contract. i had to deliver. some kind of duty. >> there are a whole lot of folk under contract who ain't put out the stuff you put out all these years. you say in this book -- i want to jump in. can i say first of all -- i'm glad not surprised knowing you as i do that you were in charge beginning to end the packaging. we'll talk about that. it's a piece of art. aside from the 53 songs the beltway's presentway

it's presented is a piece of arta. i love that you spent time in the liner notes. you learn a lot about artists when you read the liner notes. speaking of being 21 and so prolific even then you say your first husband, mr. mitchell, helped make you a philosopher. >> if you make a good marriage god bless you. if you make a bad marriage, become a philosopher. >> right. >> basically. >> yeah. >> anyway i -- i married. we both married for the wrong reasons. he married, fired his old partner and put me in the duo so it became chuck and jonie mitchell, and he held the purse strings. i had to be a housewife and bring home the bacon as well as him. it wasn't -- it wasn't a good marriage. on our wedding day even his mother said of him, he was the first born the first waffle should be used to warm up the pan and then thrown out. >> ouch! >> on our wedding day -- >> hold up. >> selfish, took all the moneys that was given to us.

we were poor. starting out, went out, bought himself a porsche speedster and was late to the wedding. his mother -- we got the off to a bad start. but one thing good that came out of it he was very exploitive but he -- he set up a publishing company. when i began to write it was -- there was inner stuff i had to work out. i hadn't figured out how to do it. it was cryptic in the beginning. "both sides now," for example i thought i skimmed the surface of what i was contemplating. it wasn't thorough. i considered us a failure. other people started to see something in it. in its vague not it was interpretable. i grew into it. also, a funny song for an inenuse. not an ingenue song. people made fun of it. dave sang it well because he --

he looked like an old man like gabby hayes, playing old man when he was -- he was kind of one of those old young men. and i thought his version was very good. mable mercer sang it in her 70s, and i heard heard andr and said, it takes an older woman to bring that song to life. she said huh? i thought, oh dear, you never tell a woman she's old. that's how i found out. >> speaking of people laughing, you said laughing and making fun of you. i don't want to overstate this where this passage is concerned. i do want to share this thing i found fascinating in your -- in this wonderful book and check of c.d.s. when the album -- and collection of c.d.s. when the album was finished i played it for bob dylan and bob's friend. bob had completed "pannet waves pan etplanet waves." not one of his best.

everyone was, fufb effusive. bob, dylan, played to fall aa sleep when the last note faded out. geffen food ednodded, and they said, why are they doing this to you? i don't know, i said, i think i'm jackie robinson. [ laughter ] >> so -- with that collection of people around you that -- the work wasn't being given the respect in that moment perhaps that it should have been given. >> well, the -- john lennon's comment, too. now, that's a working class perspective. >> right. >> he's going, oh, it's too sophisticated too -- you know like -- you know that's a class problem, right. that's the way i thought -- >> sure. >> but i guess -- i had kind of a harvardd way to go.

there weren't that many women in the business. i'm not whining -- >> sure. >> even trying to lead people because i had very, very distinctive ideas about how the bottom in -- i laid my part down and had a really good time. i put the bass and drums on afterwards right? and i couldn't get anybody until -- to play it. and russ kunkel who played with the "singer/songwriter" camp, they couldn't play it. as john says in here, i found the quote. because i was thinking figurative like an african instead of one, two, three, four, like a school play-type person, you know? you know -- i was throwing in long figures that if you book them down and analyze them bar by bar john -- john says that you know, you got a bar of five, eight, something in there or even three men --

♪ >> you don't have to keep sending up the bar because i'm changing key in the middle of the song or have to keep setting the bar for two bars where i change the time signature. to do it in notation it was quite eccentric. >> you mention bass and drums and your unique way of writing music. who was the drummer you fell in love with just because he played? >> john -- oh! he's the one that writes in there -- >> exactly. you loved the way he played. >> everything. first of all he could play with me. >> right. >> and he wrote through those thing. like he said, you have to know what the time signatures are. you're basically playing in a groove, and then you go into a shuffle. but you go through a transition -- i found it very interesting what he said because it's so articulate from a drummer's point of view. what was challenging and yet it was a piece of cake, he wrote -- you had, that's quirky. then he just sailed through it

like a champ. i said to henry set me up facing the drummer. he was real cute and flirty, too. we hit it off. >> the rest is history. >> i fell in love, yeah. >> so you say that this -- i want to get to the project now. you say joni that this box set is rising like a phoenix from the ashes of two dead projects. >> uh-huh. >> a ballet and a horrendously ill-conceived box set. tell me how this project ended up being the result of those two failed projects. >> okay. so bad management put me into a bad contract with ryan -- and then i got sickment. behind my back, management trying to keep money coming into their pocket. they sent you know -- i'm calling the burglar i don't want to name names or take them out. they sent a burglar into my stash where i keep my outtakes. i don't have a lot of outtakes because as i explained in the liner notes i didn't have good

deals. and i had to be really budget conscious and economical. so i would trick myself. i would say, henry, we're going in to make a demo. we'd go in. if it was a good take, i'd start hearing the backgrounds and would put them on. we'd take off. so there wasn't a lot of outtakes. and the things that were stored in my safe place, that's what it was called -- ironically, a safe place -- were there because they were not suitable for release. they needed work, and it wasn't worth it. i eventually rerecorded it and did it right you know. but the record company playing the formula, you know, hired a guy who put together a box set of someone else that they had some success with. so they were -- oh, you'll do, you know. he burglarized my stash. the idea was a two-box set of everything condensed to two but peppered with these not-suitable-for-release tracks or they need a lot of work. he brought in an engineer who

couldn't comprehend my structures, who had terrible attention deficit, you know -- i could have done it over the phone because i was a shut-in. i was very ill. i couldn't leave my bed really. i, do it over the phone with the -- i could do it over the phone with pro tools but he couldn't or wouldn't follow my instruction, which has been a problem through my career trying to get men to do my bidding. you know, i know what i'm doing. >> i love you joni that's why i love you. >> i know what i'm doing. i just need a good assistant who doesn't -- and i've had many. henry of delightful. >> yeah. >> jean, my choreographer, delightful. we worked like champs. we didn't have any of those you know, dominant -- we both fully worked excellent as much as possible. that's what i need, a good technician that will enable me. these people once given the power were overlording. and they -- like putting someone

in charge of the general. i'm the general, i know what i'm doing. the guy who was going to do my box set was also going do chronological order which is a terrible idea. chronologically there's been question about how many stylistic changes i went through. and they liked the young joni better than the old joni. and there's a lot of both in there, you know. and i lost some fans and picked up some new ones. it went jazzier. and finally it went straight in to jazz. but it was even a little too progressive for charles who was like a folky, an acoustic man. and he -- i thought, i went through this before in the folk world. he didn't like electric instruments right. which i did. and i loved miles' in a silent way in particular, and wade me beloved wade, and herbie. i loved those guys. i called for that session.

it was avant guard. "sweet sucker dance" on here of conceptually a different approach to working with a singer for jazz. >> yeah. >> how did you -- since we're into this now, how did you -- you mentioned you didn't want to lay this out chronologically and you didn't. >> no. >> i'm glad you didn't. i hear the point about growth. how did you figure these 53 tracks? i was amazed by some of the stuff that isn't on here. how did you -- >> some thing got to be left -- >> of course. >> "the women of heart and mind" would be -- first of all, the first thing that i did was about a ballet. ballet is 75 minutes. i tried to get everything i've written that i love down to one disc. imagine how much i have to leave out. i even tested it on groups because usually i don't think about an audience when i write. but here it was a ballet -- i had to think about an audience. our war ballet of a triumph, it

was a blockbuster. men were on the edge of their seats. it was exciting, it was war, it was rude. it was rowdy. it was not like a normal ballet. i thought, okay they're going to think it's a chick flick. how are we going to get this a topic of more interest to women? take all the things i've written about love and the lack of it because they're very unorthodox love song. they're not songs of seduction. they're more the anatomy of the crime. >> nicely put. >> my old boyfriend said i was an emotional scientist. graham has me looking at everything with a magnifying glass. you know, judgewhy couldn't we love of 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 how and

corinth a ns tells you corinth corinthians tells you, but it's really hard. you have to bear the imperfections and keep the harmony like the old wives did that were bounds by duty. there's grace to rising above it, you know if the master's the head of the household, you know, a bludgeoning creep. you still have to go yes, sir right? >> when you say -- when you are forced -- and i say forced in a loving way -- but when you are forced or compelled to have to sit to go through all of this stuff -- >> i didn't listen to -- >> i know you didn't listen to it. >> i did in my immediate. then i listened to it. >> right. but when you're forced or compelled to go through the process of putting this together, what's the takeaway for you from you? >> for me from me?

>> what's the takeaway for you from what you have done? >> oh the main thing was -- i was like -- it sounded completely fresh to me. i hadn't listened to it for many years, and i was delighted by my collaborators, you know. i just really -- you know went oh my god, how fortunate i was to play with the london philharmonic, with herbie and especially wayne who suits my music. he's another art student, so he's a pictorial thinker. i adore wayne. and i put as much in there as i could because of a legal contract, i could only put him on a few things. i adore his playing and what it add to my music. when i finally found people that could enhance my music you know, could -- could join, could put strokes on my painting stow speak and make me go oh, my god, that's fantastic -- >> speaking of strokes on your

painting, tell me about the artwork in this. as istead top of the conversation -- as i said at the top of this conversation it's a piece of art. four c.d.s, 53 good stuff, joni's music. the art in there -- >> this is pushing for the ballet. this is jean and i and dancers in the studio of the calgary ballet in alberta. everything in this box set -- two things i wanted to achieve. one i wanted to break down by taking it out of chronology into character so that 65-year-old joni is up against 24-year-old joni who could hold a note forever and has a three-okay taf range. yet, you -- three-okaytive range. yet you could see they're delivering the text very well. they also lapd thend the soprano and go to alto. i wanted to break down prejudices. that was the minor part. the main thing was to find the

storyline. act one begins in my youth. although i didn't make music in the '50s, i was a rock and roll dancer then. lindsay hawk -- you know, the nostalgic pieces. so i started with rock and roll which is basically chuck barry, kids kissing in cars, you know. it was the theme -- right -- of the '50s. and it was this emancipation from parents because of the liberty of the machine. it was also -- the car was breaking down the family from the generation before that was the pioneer. they were stuck together on the farm, and they all had to pull, right. now issue that urbanized and dad's got his car, he goes to the office. he's got his world. mom's stuck at the home. she's got her world. when the kids come to be teenagers often tell me generation the teenager was trivialized trivialized, they weren't an adult yet. suddenly because of the car the

kids had independence. and they had people living in a house that didn't know who -- that had nothing really in common, the wife with the husband, the children with the parents. and this vague rebellion sprang up that you see in those movies like marlon brando. they say, what are -- what have you got right? there was something very strong. the white picket fence, dream -- kids dealt with. you go from the happy days of '50s rock and roll, rock and roll days the name of act one to the breakdown of the parental dream, you know, into the mercenary, litiginous time period, beginning in the '80s. materialistic. where we went -- >> we did good. yeah. >> yeah we did good, and we were being coerced to be consumers as opposed to --

>> yeah. what -- our time is just about up and i could talk to you for days and hours. there are a couple things i want to get out in the time i have left. one is -- we talked a few times over the years. i've never asked this question, but this is the right occasion, i think, to ask. what has been your measure of success? i know it's not about the awards, not about the accolades or the grammys. it may not even be about the sales per se. what, as a songwriter, as an artist, what's been your measure of success of your work? >> oh, well, all the songs on here i consider successful. you know, in the distillation. there's nothing here that i want to fix. you know, i want to read the line different or you know, everybody is playing deliciously, you know. i love this collection. i don't listen to my music, but i will put this on. as a matter of fact, my friend,

we've had three play-back parties -- two, we're going to have a third one -- where we play the whole thing. takes five hours. we take breaks in between. it creates the nicest mood. everybody gets up and dances. you know, sometimes people bring in someone who doesn't know the music you know. >> you referenced early in this conversation the 65-year-old joni and then the 21 24-year-old joni. and i asked you what -- what this project means to you now as you look back on your work. let me ask the question in the reverse. what does the joni then think of the joni now? >> the joni then would have no idea where -- you know, that i would -- i had jazz in high school, you know. miles, kind of blue, and hendricks and ross, i knew everything about it -- so in my 20s, i would never think that i would be playing with miles'

people. that i would. so that's why i guess i'm in awe looking back on it you know. like to these collaborators who are my friends, you know. i just hadn't revisited it for a long time. and i -- that's what struck me most other than, you know trying to get the sequence where the storyline led and the music led beautifully, you know. i had such a range. i could play in any key. it's not like a symphony where it's all one key. but they flow. they all flowed. it's not -- not joni's weird chords, you know, like i guess i did things that were innovative in the history of music, in the way i used -- >> what they call weird is innovative. >> right. >> they hadn't caught up with you yet. >> the fogeys thought they were weird. when the jazzers thought they were weird or when they got mad, you know, i thought that was strange because they were broad. they were wide like jazz chords.

wayne was -- what are these chord? they are not piano chords. then you go in and play like a champ. what is it, what is it? he went in and crawled over it like a fly, you know. >> i'm always honored when -- doesn't happen all the time when joni mitchell shows up for a conversation. and i pray and hold on for dear life because i know there's so much going on in this head and heartment heart. and i want to stay out of the way. it's great having you on my program joni mitchell. >> you, too. i asked to see you -- >> i know you asked to see me. that's all i needed to know. "love has many faces: a quartet a ballet, waiting to be danced." four-disc set, 53 songs and beautiful art all the way through it. and i tried to pick some pieces of her notations.

there's a wonderful letter, handwritten, in the back of the project. wonderful liner notes in the front. if you want to learn more about how this mind works, you'll want to get it listen to it and read it. joni, congratulations, i'm honored to have you on the program. >> thank you. >> thank you. that's our show for tonight. thanks for watching. and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. hi i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with nas on the 20th anniversary release of his groundbreaking work "nomadic." that's next time. see you then. ♪

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with a tragic terrorist attack in paris killing 12 people. we begin with the cbs evening news with scott pelley and their report earlier this evening. >> late today, french authorities identified suspects wanted in the massacre this morning at the offices of a sat satirical magazine in paris. all are frenchmen. brother said and can a karif are well known to police. 18-year-old hamad marad is described as a homeless man. >> first, a volley of automatic gunfire. then the man shouts "get down." and the pedestrians dive for cover. journalist fled for safety and looked on