By Victor Greto
Joan Baez says she doesn’t think much about her legacy. Still, at 67, and during what amounts to a 50th anniversary tour −− which makes a stop at The Grand in Wilmington on Thursday −− you can’t help but wonder what it might be.
“It’s been such a long series of events,” said Baez from her home in Woodside, Calif., which she shares with her 94−year−old mother and several caregivers.
“They’ll call me a singer−songwriter, then they’ll say I’m a nonviolent activist.”
She stops to think, puzzled.
“There’ll be something, but I wonder. I can see those visual obits they have on Sunday mornings. I’ll be really young, and it will end with old age, with or without dignity.”
But that’s on the outside, she said.
“It might as well be more personal,” she said. “That I work to be a better person. It’s easy to have a
relationship with 3,000 people at a time. There’s no back talk.”
Never thought of it that way, but, yes, performing becomes something of a one−sided addiction, an allure that potentially might shortchange one’s personal life.
More on that later.
So, what exactly happened 50 years ago?
A 17−year−old Baez sang in front of a handful of people, mostly her family, at the Club 47 Mount Auburn in Cambridge, Mass.
From her slim figure, partially outlined by long black hair, came a powerfully distinctive and delicately beautiful soprano voice. She became a professional; she was paid $10.
“The singing I can take for granted,” Baez said. “I worked hard, but it was never work. I started singing at 13, played guitar at 15, and after Newport, the story was public.”
That would be her first appearance at Newport Folk Festival, in 1959, from which the “barefoot Madonna” earned a recording contract. She released her first album the following year.
Baez always has been striking looking, and remains so, with shorter hair, but an angular face that beams as fresh as it appears in those iconic photographs from the 1960s, when she was at her most popular and influential, and where she and Bob Dylan became the folk couple of the first part of the decade.
Career just fell into place
Folk music and social activism came naturally to Baez.
Her father, Albert Baez, was born in Puebla, Mexico, and thought of becoming a minister; his father had been one. Her mother, Joan Bridge Baez, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland; her father had been a minister, too.
“Father became a Quaker when I was 8,” Baez said. “He was going to be a minister, then turned to math and physics.”
For a time, he worked for UNESCO at the United Nations. When she was 10, the family briefly lived in Iraq, where she became affected by the poverty and cruelty she witnessed.
“By the time I was in Baghdad, my mom had given me a copy of Anne Frank’s diary,” Baez said. “That made a huge impression. I was at the right age.”
After the family returned to the States, she segued into the folk music revival.
“The folk music movement was kind of the perfect storm,” she said, “with civil rights and the anti−war movements. By then, I had discovered my root was nonviolence, which was put together with a Quaker background. The tree began to grow early.”
The tree has become a stately oak, which, until recently, had a hard time connecting the dots between the Vietnam War era and post−9/11 America.
“Up until about four or five months ago, I would say both eras had nothing to do with each other,” Baez said.
“We can’t judge ourselves by something that was, but I kept searching for something that would shift us from the age of greed to something that made more sense to me.”
She said the first person that turned her around was “Michael Moore, in his big, clumsy way, and then Cindy Sheehan. Then, nothing happened until [Barack] Obama, and I think he has made a seismic shift.”
So much so that she has done something she has never done before in her long life of activism: endorsed a candidate for president.
“Whatever it is about him, he has created a stirring in people all over this country, especially young and disenfranchised blacks,” she said. “He did that to me. It reminds me of what happened to me way back when.”
Interpretation now is the key
Artistically, Baez views herself mainly as an interpreter of songs.
Most of her more than 30 albums, including a new one, currently untitled but scheduled to come out later this summer, contain just that, covers. The new album will include her versions of songs by Eliza Gilkyson, Patti Griffin, Thea Gilmore and album producer Steve Earle.
But Baez also knows she’s written some good songs.
“Perhaps they may be better as poetry,” she said. “But the obvious ‘best’ song of my own is ‘Diamonds and Rust.’“
Absolutely.
If one takes the time to look at the poetry in that haunting song, written in 1975 at the height of the
singer−songwriter era, one can see not only bittersweet memories, but also a lesson in how to move on.
For better or worse, Baez’s legacy will in part be defined by her relationship with Bob Dylan, whom she met in 1961, and whose early career she promoted.
Well I’ll be damned/ Here comes your ghost again, it begins.
Dylan and Baez. Love and friendship. Youth and ambition. Longing and passion.
“It could be about anybody,” Baez said.
Of course. But it’s not.
The relationship between the two artists −− and its importance in music history −− deserves the doleful ascending−descending picking sequence with which she begins the song. It’s a tender E−minor rumination on loss and forgiveness.
Well you burst on the scene/ Already a legend/ The unwashed phenomenon/ The original vagabond/ You strayed into my arms
“Not really, no,” Baez said when asked if she ever sees Dylan nowadays.
In contrast to Baez’s matured radiance, Dylan seems to resemble more of a gnarled gnome with each passing year.
But that’s not how he appears in the song.
Now you’re smiling out the window/ Of that crummy hotel/ Over Washington Square/ Our breath comes out white clouds/ Mingles and hangs in the air/ Speaking strictly for me/ We both could have died then and there
Romantic and wistful. And bitter.
Now you’re telling me/ You’re not nostalgic/ Then give me another word for it/ You who are so good with words/ And at keeping things vague
Ouch.
That’s poetry −− the words, and to what Baez is referring, Dylan’s own poetry, and perhaps even that aspect of men in general that perennially frustrates women, the instinctive male ability to mouth what the ladies want to hear, but hold tight to themselves what’s in their hearts.
Because I need some of that vagueness now/ It’s all come back too clearly/ Yes I loved you dearly/ And if you’re offering me diamonds and rust / I’ve already paid
Like many of us.
We just don’t express it as well.
Take a look at her 1975 performance of this song, and the places where she can’t help but smile and even wince (type in “Diamonds And Rust” and “Baez” at www.youtube.com and you’ll find it). Wow.
And then look at a 1965 performance of her old flame’s, “It Ain’t Me, Babe” (type in the title and “Baez” at www.youtube.com).
The 10−year progression might as well be a study in watching someone discard the false bravura of youth and heartbreak for maturity and acceptance.
It’s enough of an artistic legacy for anyone.
Baez said she quit writing songs 12 years ago. “It got too difficult, so I just sing others’ songs,” she said.
Does Joan Baez think back on her life and say to herself, “Was that cool or what?”
“It’s a nice way to put it,” she said. “I’m pleased with what I did. It’s nothing I ever planned. But I’m glad I did it.”
Although he might not say so himself, it would be a good bet Bob Dylan would agree.