Shooting With Joni

Shooting with Joni Kenny Lyon I don’t remember what I was doing when Baerwald called. It was late afternoon, a clear Los Angeles Sunday in early January. I had just begun working with him again. Hanging out might be a better way to describe it; Larry Klein was producing his new CD so you could be damned sure I wasn’t going to be playing on it. Larry was a bass player himself, and was using his friends—LA session players—to play everything else. Baerwald was of a mind that his music deserved the best musicians and the best musicians were the ones that cost the most. But he wanted me for the live band, and I was his friend, at least as good a friend as a noncelebrity could be. We’d worked on a set of demos a few years back, but he’d “had a nervous breakdown” and disappeared before it got serious. Which means before he had to either start paying me or give me a piece of the action. Anyway, I always liked Baerwald, crazy or not, and was glad to hear from him that day. “Kenny. Look. Joni’s afraid in her house and she wants to try shooting a gun. We’re going to have a few drinks and go over to the Beverly Hills Gun Club.” Joni was Larry Klein’s wife. Joni Mitchell. Baerwald doled out his famous friends the way rich people give out cocaine—carefully and when it suits their purposes. I knew I’d meet her sooner or later; this was as good a time as any. He went on to give me the address of a Mexican restaurant on Pico and instruct me to meet him there at 6:30. I drove to Griffith Park for my daily hike up Mt. Hollywood. From the top I could see all the way to Santa Monica. My eyes traced the clogged freeways I’d be spending 35 minutes on to get there. LA is hard to get a hold of and hard to get around but easy to get a perspective on, visually, if not mentally. Back at the apartment I showered, changed, and climbed into my Toyota for the ride across town. A stucco front wall and terra cotta tile over the door and windows distinguished the small, storefront Mexican restaurant from the other businesses on the block. I walked in and headed for the back. There sat five people—at a table for six. Baerwald stood to introduce me. There were Larry, Joni, Jeff Lord-Algee—a well-known audio engineer—and a girl I remember only as Max, another engineer. I’d met Max before and went on to work with her again years later. I found her the same then as on this occasion: extremely attractive and completely uninterested. On this night she was an engineering groupie and more power to her. I sat, understandably nervous. Everyone was polite. We established context, exchanged connections, traded contacts, drank margaritas, and headed to the range. The Beverly Hills Gun Club wasn’t in Beverly Hills at all, but in a warehouse district in West Los Angeles. And it didn’t fit the name in any other way, either. It was your straight-ahead law enforcement/survivalist/hobbyist shooting range. There was nothing upper class about it: no designer nonsense, no frills. A gun range. The same grim, responsible staff behind the counter. The same displays. The targets. The hearing protectors. And of course, the guns. Joni and I chose Glocks. I can’t remember what anyone else got, though I believe Baerwald might have been shooting a Heckler and Koch. Of course, that might be an extrapolation of his Germanic heritage and fascination with anything having to do with undercover police, intelligence agents, and other armed denizens of the legal underworld. I wanted a Glock because I was fascinated by the thought of a plastic gun, a novelty at the time. Joni wanted something light; a lady-like piece. Joni Mitchell is above all a lady.

The Glocks stood side by side. It was only natural that I should be beside the princess of peace when she fired her first shot: David and Larry were comrades-in-arms, making a record together, and Jeff was trying to fuck (or fucking) Max. So that left Joni and… me. We donned our ear protectors. We pressed the buttons that ratcheted our targets back down the range. We aimed. We fired. I could almost hear Carey in my head. Does that line go “Carey get out your gun?” No, I guess not. Anyway, we fired through our clips and pulled in the targets. I didn’t do as well as I thought I would; Baerwald was a pretty fair shot. Joni didn’t kill her icon or enjoy trying. We spoke. We laughed. We bonded. It was as convivial a set of circumstances as any to get to know someone. I remember having a clear sense of the surreality of the situation. I stepped back—out of myself, as one can do when the going gets really bizarre—and watched the two of us load up, send the targets back, and squeeze off the next set of rounds. I’d stumbled into Fellini’s sitting room, no doubt about it. But it was a pleasant place. In the end, Jeff (a very decent fellow, all told) insisted on paying. We each got an orange Beverly Hills Gun Club membership card. I carry mine in my wallet to this day, if only because there’s no reason to take it out. Joni decided she didn’t want a gun. I decided that Glocks still had bugs that needed working out. (Read: I needed practice.) We all decided to go to another Mexican restaurant, also in Santa Monica, but nearer the ocean. And we did. We sat for an hour or so, eating burritos and drinking. We parted friends and I drove back to Los Feliz. Sometime during the evening I had spoken to Joni about the China Club Monday night jam sessions. I was in the house band at the time. I invited her down. After all, nearly everyone else had come in, from Elton John to Bruce Springsteen. It was time I was responsible for a celebrity. But I thought no more of it. I really didn’t think she’d come, though both David and Larry had. It didn’t seem like her style. I filed the evening away and went on with my life. And getting on with my life meant getting on stage at the China Club the next night. Which is where I was when one of the singers (Sean Murphy? Sheryl Crow? Janis Liebhart? When you work cheap and drink free, details fade) turned to tell me, “Hey, Joni Mitchell’s in front of the stage trying to get your attention.” And she was. She waved. She smiled. I nodded. I smiled. Joni has a lovely smile. Focus had shifted from the song, the singer, the band, the stage. There was Joni Mitchell, right there on the dance floor. Waving at me. My stock rose to splitting point. We finished the song. We finished the set. I found Joni. She was having a good time, but she didn’t want to sit in. She did want to find a phone. I took her down to the dressing room and went looking for Danny Freed. The China Club phenomena was at its peak; Danny—the most visible of the three owners—was feeling expansive. He greeted me with his customary, “What’s up, doctor?” “A friend of mine needs to use the phone.” “What? There’s a payphone right there.” “You don’t understand. That phone is noisy. And my friend is Joni Mitchell.” “Whyn’t you say so? She can use the phone in the office.” “Right.” He followed me back to the dressing room. I introduced them; he took off with her. I went on about the business of the evening: playing music I didn’t really know then and certainly don’t remember now and drinking scotch. Baerwald and Larry never made it down, but Baerwald was going to meet us later up on Hollywood Boulevard to eat Thai food.

Joni followed me down Hollywood Boulevard in her 230SL (280? Anyway, one of the pretty, older ones). We met Baerwald in front of Torung, the most atmospheric of the East Hollywood latenight Thai restaurants. There was no parking; the boulevard itself was off-limits after two. It was late, we were drunk. I’m not sure why we didn’t go a little further east to Sanamuluang Café, with its capacious mini-mall lot, but we didn’t. We threw up our hands and decided to call it. My last memory of the evening is of standing with Joni by her car on a deserted Hollywood Boulevard. I saw her a few times after that, all in connection to working with Baerwald. When that ended— somewhat badly—I no longer ran into her. The following week there was a People article on the China Club phenomenon. The momentous event of Joni Mitchell coming downstairs looking for Danny Freed was prominently featured. Me, the telephone, the range, the targets? Not a word.