http://www.jmdl.com/articles/view.cfm?id=859
JL: We're back now with our Inner View with Joni Mitchell and what was to me some rather surprising revelations for anyone who began listening to Joni in the 60s and came to identify her with the radical idealism of the times. JM: For one thing, I didn't really identify with that. To me, it wasn't really radical change, the 60s. The costumes were the change. You know, for all physical appearances people had painted geometric designs on their faces and they were wearing jester's costumes, 14th century looking apparel, and they'd grown their hair long. I think the style was the most radical. Nothing really that startling came upon me in the 60s. I don't think I've changed very much in my thinking since I was maybe 10, you know, generally speaking. JL: Oh really? JM: Nothing really radical has changed. Things that I observed on the playground in the third grade were fairly astute visions in the small, later to be applied to high school, later to be applied to committees, later to be applied to politics, you know, later to be applied to the world. (Music up: "Songs to Aging Children Come.") JM: I didn't feel a part of the 60s even though that's the part I'm accredited. Mine was an internal revolution. In the 60s I was going through more what people were going through in the 70s in a certain way. You know what I mean? I was going through more of a personal revolution. I didn't find a lot of the leadership in the 60s particularly inspiring in government or within our own peer group. I always felt that we were rather fleas on an elephant's leg and much more powerless than we would want to trump one another up to believe. So the transition wasn't too radical for me. Phil Ochs, of course, when the war ended, he ended. You know, there were some people that were very caught up in it. I'm not a political person. My interest has always been in the spiritual, and they stand in direct opposition in a certain way. Mine has been a freeing of my own bigotry, you know. You need to be a bigot from time to time in order to have confines on your art. You have to prefer, which immediately makes you a bigot. So for me it's been lack of identification with groups. I mean I have no religious affiliation, I have no national affiliation. I'm a Canadian living in America, but I don't feel any more like a Canadian or an American or -- you see what I mean?
