Billboard Editor-in-Chief and music journalist Timothy White died today at the age of 50.
He is the author of 5 Joni-related articles in the JMDL database, including one that features one of the best Joni interviews. You can find the entire article at: << http://www.jmdl.com/articles/docs/880317rl.cfm >> It's a great read. The article is from March of 1988. I have included a bit of the interview below. In it, Joni tells the story behind "The Tea Leaf Prophecy," which I had never read, although I knew the song was the story of her parents and how they met during WWII. Timothy White: The Andrews Sisters era, of course, was World War II and its aftermath, a period that's the setting for "The Tea Leaf Prophecy (Lay Down Your Arms) " on Chalk Mark. It's such a wistful song. Tell me about it. Joni Mitchell: That song began as a music track that Larry wrote. For the lyric, I kept thinking about World War II and my parents' courtship, which was unusual in a prophetic way. My mother had been a country schoolteacher, and she had come to the town of Regina in Saskatchewan to work in a bank. It was wartime, and nearly all the men in the town had been shipped overseas. So there weren't many prospects for her, and she was a good-looking woman, thirty years oldbwhich was old for that time. There was a fancy hotel in that town that served high tea, and you had to wear hats and gloves in those days to get in. One day she and her girlfriend went over there just for the dress-up of it all. When they were finished, a gypsy came over and read her teacup and said, "You will be married within the month, and you will have a child within the yearband you'll die a long and agonizing death." The last part was a horrible and hideous thing for even a clairvoyant to tell anybody. My mother laughed in her face. She said, "This is ridiculous. Look at this town. There's no men left, just frail boys and babies." Two weeks went by, and a friend of a friend had a friend from out of town, and they put my mother and father together on a blind date and it was instant chemistry. My father had two weeks' leave. He said, "I know this is sudden Myrtle"bher name was Myrtle McKee; in the song it's Molly McKeeb"but would you marry me?" So they ran off to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and got hitched. I was born within the year, and to this day she feels a little funny about the rest of the prophecy, considering the odds of the other parts coming true. She's seventy-six, and she's never been sick a day in her life. I mean, she's a real germ fighter because she's convinced it's a germ that's gonna knock her down. She does yoga, Tai Chi, cross-country skiing, and doesn't even have a quaver in her voice yet. I say to her, "Don't worry about the gypsy, Mom. Two out of three ain't bad." The gypsy got it wrong. It's me who's gonna die the long and agonizing death, with my bad habits. But I had to ask her, "What made you marry Dad? You were so picky." And she said, "Because he looked so cute in his uniform." So that's in the song too.
