Hejira

"...After hearing Hejira, I feel as if I've known Joni Mitchell all my life when in reality I've never met her and probably never will....I'm only 20, but I find it difficult to see how popular music can be any better than this..." Amazon reviewer Ryan P. Murphy

In 631 A.D. the prophet Mohammed feld from Mecca and found refuge in Medina, ruled by a Christian King of Axum*. That flight to a safe haven is called "hejira".

Joni Mitchell Hejira

Joni Mitchell: Hejira

I'll let you into a little secret:

I wouldn't dream of playing Hejira while my children were around. In fact, I wouldn't even play it when any of my friends around. If they didn't say it, I know they'd be thinking:

"...What is that dreary, depressing drone...with l-o-n-g songs that seemed to go on forever..."

All true, of course...but to you, I recommend it, wholeheartedly.

Why?

Well, if you've read my reviews for:

...you'd probably get the idea that these three albums were three parts of a relay of personal and artistic discovery...and Hejira is the final leg, the sprint home. So, if you've been following the race, you'd be mad if you didn't see how it finished.

Of course, if you're a newcomer, I can only think of two reasons why you might want to listen to it:

you're a jazz fan and have heard that this is the only time in which Jaco Pastoruis, bass player extraordinaire, held his enormous flashy ego in...and complemented, rather than dominated an album...or
you're a woman dealing with a biological clock that's tick-tick-tick-running out of time...and coming to terms with those ramifications

Yes, that's what Hejira is, the "effect" part of cause & effect...and yet, for Joni, at least publicly, her hejira was described as "...the sweet restlessness of solitary travel..." with most of the album written during a car trip from Maine back to L.A.

Joni Mitchell on Hejira #1:

Well, after the end of my last tour...I had an idea; I knew I wanted to travel. I was sitting out at the beach at Neil's {Young} place, and I was thinking: "I want to travel, I don't know where and I don't know who with." Two friends of mine came to the door and said: "We're driving across country." I said: "I've been waiting for you; I'm gone." So we drove across country; then we parted ways. It was my car, so I drove back alone. The Hejira album was written mostly while I was travelling in the car. That's why there were no piano songs, if you remember. Hejira was an obscure word, but it said exactly what I wanted. Running away, honorably. It dealt with the leaving of a relationship, but without the sense of failure that accompanied the breakup of my previous relationships. I felt that it was not necessarily anybody's fault. It was a new attitude. Rolling Stone interview July 1979

Interestingly, Joni paints the picture with a lot more detail, a few years later.

Joni Mitchell on Hejira #2:

"...I traveled across country with a couple of friends of mine. That in itself was an interesting journey. We drove from California to Damariscotta, Maine to kidnap this guy's daughter from the wicked grandmother. It was really, uh, we were just companions to his intent, you know, so he was like the worried father driving to get, you know, it was one of these custody battles like you see these kids on milk cartons now that are being torn apart and families, so it was one of those kind of modern phenomenons. Anyway, I drove home after his mission was completed, it was my car, so I drove back to California by myself and I took my time. It was '76, there were parades all through the South. It was like a lot of jubilee celebrations going on, right? And the songs were written as I traveled. So it's a travel album, absolutely..." WNEW FM interview January 1986

The album starts on familiar ground, Joni's having a quick fling with some local Don Juan...

"...And the next thing I know that coyote's at my door
He pins me in a corner and he won't take "No"..."

...but while accepting the rules of the game, after all, they are her rules, she complains about it, because the night after the liaison, at breakfast...

"...Coyote's in the coffee shopHe's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs
He picks up the scent on his fingers
While he's watching the waitresses' legs..."

Coyote

Of course, we intuit Joni's Scorpio smile and understand that Coyote is really nothing, just a diversion, like all men. No, Joni sees her real purpose in Life is as an explorer, a musical explorer, yes...but a poineer, nevertheless. She addresses Amelia Earheart, (the American aviator and feminist who disappeared while attempting on the final leg of a round-the-world flight in 1937) as if a friend.

However, as happens in conversation between friends, the truth crawls out and she lets slip that the real impetus for Joni's road trip, this hejira to family and friends...hadn't actually been her idea, it had been at the request of her lover:

"...I wish that he was here tonight
It's so hard to obey
His sad request of me to kindly stay away

So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads, cursed and charmed
I say Amelia, it was just a false alarm..."

And then Joni bonds with her female soul-mate and admits to the aviatrix:

"...Maybe I've never really loved
I guess that is the truth
I've spent my whole life in clouds...at icy altitudes

And looking down on everything
I crashed into his arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm..."

Amelia

Now, I could break Hejira down and create the narrative for you...but that's half the fun of watching the final leg of a relay...so I'm just going to keep it brief:

A Strange Boy in which Joni dissects a man-child lover (perhaps the one she pines for, perhaps not): "...What a strange, strange boy, he sees the cars as sets of waves, sequences of mass in space, he sees the damage in my face..."

In Song For Sharon, Joni confronts what could have been...and has a long girlie chat with some friends about having given up a normal family life: "...Dora says 'Have children', Mama and Betsy say 'Find yourself a charity. Help the needy and the crippled, put some time into Ecology.' Well, there's a wide, wide world of noble causes and lovely landscapes to discover but all I really need right now is to find another lover..."

In Black Crow Joni's frenetic and freaked out with a general sense of paranoia: "...In search of Love and Music my whole life has been, Illumination, Corruption and diving, diving, diving, diving, diving down to pick up on every shiny thing...just like that black crow flying...in the blue sky..."

while in Blue Motel Room Joni's mellowed out after (presumedly) a few drinks and sees the ongoing problems with her absent lover in more specific and managable terms: "...I've got a blue motel room, a blue bedspread, I've got the blues inside and outside my head, will you still love me when I come back to town?..."

In Furry Sings The Blues she chats with a cranky old bluesman, hinting at her own possible fate (Time has proven her right) : "...He points a bony finger and says: 'I don't like you.'..."

And that leaves the title-track, Hejira**, the daughter of the album Blue. With no tune to talk of...Hejira is almost a rap without rhythm...a vomiting of words...but it does, effectively, end the 4-album journey:

"...I know no-one's going to show me everything
We all come and go unknown
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone

Well, I looked at the granite-markers
Those tributes to finality...to Eternity
Then I looked at myself
Chicken-scratching for my immortality

In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There's the hope and the hopelessness
I've witnessed these thirty years..."

Hejira

And on and on. After virtually creating the singer-songwriter mode, dumping it for jazz and freer expression, Joni returns, baring her soul in a song with no structure, just musical doodles underneath her existential rave about Love and Mortality.

I believe it's what's known in pop-psychology as "Completion". Dig it.

Joni Mitchell: Hejira

"...If the house is on fire and I can only save one this is the Joni that I'd grab going out the door..." Amazon reviewer Wayne Scott

"...This is a sad record, as stark and as haunting as the cover art...songs of love lost, of travelling, of living without a home to return to...This is music for the love-lost, and it works like fine wine..." Amazon reviewer Colin R. Glassey

"...The songs are...profoundly introspective and self-searching. Unlike her previous albums, the songs here all focus on particular individuals, almost as if she were an analyst attempting to understand people through her music..." Amazon reviewer Robert Moore

"...Now, after listening to zillions of songs from every musical genre from country to classical to jazz to rock and hip-hop... this album stands above everything else. Period..." Amazon reviewer K. Parsons "Hailing from the mountaintop"

*Incidentally, in thanks, Mohammed instructed his followers to respect and protect Axum...and live in peace with Christians.

**I discount the album closer, The Refuge Of The Road, as being a rather boring travelogue covering ground (no pun intended) that had already been explored on the album.

Joni seems to have written the song to push home the "I gave up my life for my Muse" point...but from my eyes, the whole song seems to exist merely to justify one image at its end. Ditch it, it's dreary.

FYI, Joni made an appearance during The Band's final concert, filmed by Martin Scorcese as The Last Waltz movie, now remixed, remastered and with a new digital transfer. She performed Coyote.

The Band & Friends: The Last Waltz DVD

For more info, see:

wikipedia Hejira
Rock Photo's Angela LaGreca on the Hejira album cover, 1985
Doug Fischer talks to Joni Mitchell about the Hejira album, on its 30th anniversary, 2006
praiseworthy covers of Coyote & Amelia by Youtuber Vaniglio