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Joan Chandos Baez (born January 9, 1941, in Staten Island, New York) is a folk singer, songwriter and activist. She is known for her highly individual vocal style. Many of her songs are topical songs and deal with social issues.
She is perhaps best known for her hit "Diamonds & Rust" and her covers of Phil Ochs's "There but for Fortune" and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" (a top-five single on the United States charts in 1971), and to a lesser extent, "Farewell, Angelina" and "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word" — along with "Joe Hill", "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "We Shall Overcome" (three of the songs she performed at the 1969 Woodstock Festival).
She remains known for her long relationship with Bob Dylan and her lifelong passion for activism, notably in the areas of nonviolence, civil and human rights and, more recently, the environment.
Baez has performed publicly for over 50 years, released over 30 albums and recorded songs in at least eight languages. She is considered a folk singer although her music has strayed from folk considerably after the 1960s, encompassing everything from rock and pop to country and gospel. Although a songwriter herself, especially in the mid-1970s, Baez is most often regarded as an interpreter of other people's work, covering songs by The Allman Brothers Band, The Beatles, Jackson Browne, Dylan, Woody Guthrie, The Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and many other artists. In more recent years, she has found success interpreting songs of diverse songwriters such as Ryan Adams, Steve Earle and Natalie Merchant.
FamilyHer father, Albert Baez, was born in 1912 in Puebla, Mexico, and died March 20, 2007
. His father (Joan's grandfather), the Reverend Alberto Baez, left Catholicism to become a Methodist minister and moved to the U.S. when Albert was two years old. Albert grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where his father preached to — and advocated for — a Spanish-speaking congregation. Her father considered becoming a minister as well, before he turned to the study of mathematics and physics. He became a physicist (co-inventor of the x-ray microscope and author of one of the most widely used physics textbooks in the U.S.). The Baez family converted to Quakerism during her early childhood.
Her mother, Joan Bridge Baez (often referred to as Joan Senior or "Big Joan" because of sharing her daughter's first name), was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the second daughter of an Episcopal priest. Joan Senior and Albert met at a high-school dance in Madison, New Jersey, and quickly fell in love. After their marriage, the newlyweds moved to California.
Baez had two sisters — older sister Pauline and younger sister Mimi (1945-2001).
Pauline married artist Brice Marden in 1960; they divorced a few years later. Their son is musician Nick Marden. Pauline later remarried and has a daughter, Pearl Bryan.
Mimi became a singer, guitarist, activist, and the founder of the organization Bread and Roses. She first married singer/songwriter Richard Farińa, who was killed in a motorcycle crash on Mimi's 21st birthday — shortly after publishing his only novel. Mimi and Richard were best known for their song "Pack up Your Sorrows". In 1968, Mimi married Milan Melvin at the Big Sur Folk Festival at Big Sur, California. Baez wrote the song "Sweet Sir Galahad" about their courtship. Mimi (Farińa) died of neuroendocrine cancer, at her home in California, on July 18, 2001, at age 56.
Baez has one son, percussionist Gabriel Harris, and is a grandmother to Jasmine, the daughter of Gabriel and his wife, Pamela. Her cousin, Peter Baez, was a medical marijuana activist. Another cousin, John C. Baez, is a mathematical physicist.
She is a resident of Woodside, California, and lives with her mother in a house that has a backyard tree house in which she spends a good deal of time meditating, writing, and "being close to nature."
Early lifeBecause of her father's work in health care and with UNESCO, the family moved many times, living in towns across the U.S., as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Canada and the Middle East, including Iraq, where they stayed in 1951. She later became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and non-violence. Social justice, she stated in the PBS series American Masters, is the true core of her life, looming larger than music.'
Music careerEarly yearsA friend of her father gave her a ukulele. She learned four chords, which enabled her to play rhythm and blues songs, the music she was listening to at the time. Her parents, however, were fearful that the music would lead her into a life of drug addiction.[Per Joan Baez, interviewed by Amy Goodman at Pete Seeger's 90th birthday celebration (May 3, 2009)] At her aunt's behest, Baez at age eight attended a concert by folk musician Pete Seeger, and found herself strongly attracted to his music.[ She soon began practicing the songs of his repertoire and performing them publicly. One of her very earliest public performances was at a retreat in Saratoga, California, for a youth group from Temple Beth Jacob, a Redwood City, California, congregation. A short 8mm film of this has recently been found. In 1957, Baez bought her first Gibson guitar for US$50.]
The college music scene in MassachusettsIn 1958, her father accepted a faculty position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and moved his family to Belmont, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. The area was at the time the center of the up-and-coming folk-music scene, and Baez began busking locally in Boston and nearby Cambridge, also performing in clubs, and attending Boston University (from which she later dropped out). In 1958, at the Club 47 in Cambridge (which would later become her most-noted venue), she gave her first concert. When designing the poster for the performance, Baez considered changing her performing name to either Rachel Sandperl (Sandperl is the surname of her high-school teacher and long-time mentor, the pacifist scholar Ira Sandperl) or Mariah (from the song "They Call the Wind Mariah" popularized by The Kingston Trio.) She later opted against it, fearing that people would accuse her of changing her last name because it was Spanish. The audience consisted of her parents, her sister Mimi, and a small group of friends—a grand total of eight patrons. She was paid ten dollars. Baez was later asked back and began performing twice a week for US$20 per show.citation needed
A few months later, Baez and two other folk enthusiasts made plans to record an album in the cellar of a friend's house. The three sang solos and duets, a family friend designed the album cover, and it was released (on Veritas Records) that same year as ''Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square. Baez later met Bob Gibson and the reigning queen of folk music, Odetta, whom Baez cites as a primary influence alongside Marian Anderson and Seeger. Gibson invited Baez to perform alongside him at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, where the two sang two duets, "Virgin Mary Had One Son" and "We Are Crossing Jordan River". The performance generated substantial praise for the "barefoot Madonna" with the otherworldly voice, and it was this appearance that led to Baez signing with Vanguard Records the following yearCitation needed
First albums and 1960s breakthroughHer true professional career began at that 1959 Newport Folk Festival; she recorded her first album for a major label (Vanguard), Joan Baez (1960), produced by Fred Hellerman (of The Weavers), who produced many albums by folk artists. The collection of traditional folk ballads, blues and laments sung to her own guitar accompaniment sold moderately well. It featured many popular Child Ballads of the day, such as "Mary Hamilton" and was recorded in only four days in the ballroom of New York City, New York,'s Manhattan Towers Hotel. The album also included "El Preso Numero Nueve", a song sung entirely in Spanish. That same song later appeared on her Spanish-language album, Gracias a la Vida (1974).
Her second release, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 (1961) went "gold", as did Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1 (1962) and Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2 (1963). Like its immediate predecessor, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 contained strictly traditional material. Her two albums of live material, Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1 and its second counterpart, were unique in that, unlike most live albums, they contained only new songs, rather than established favorites. It was Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2 that features Baez's first-ever Dylan cover. From the early to mid-1960s, Baez emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she introduced her audiences to the then-unknown Dylan (the two became romantically involved in late 1962, remaining together through early 1965), and was emulated by artists such as Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt.
Pack up Your Sorrows, French single, 1966
Baez first got a taste of commercial success when the single "There but for Fortune", written by Ochs, became a top-ten hit in the United Kingdom in 1965. She was profoundly influenced by the music-industry's British InvasionCitation needed
In 1968, Baez traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, where a marathon recording session resulted in not one, but two albums. The first, Any Day Now (1968), consists exclusively of Dylan covers (one, "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word," was never recorded by Dylan and has become a Baez staple). The other, the country-music-infused ''David's Album (1969) was recorded for husband David Harris, a prominent anti-Vietnam War protester and organizer eventually imprisoned for draft resistance. Harris, a country-music fan, turned Baez toward more-complex country-rock influences beginning with David's Album. (See David Harris section below.)
In 1968, she published her first memoir, Daybreak (by Dial Press).
In 1969, her appearance at Woodstock in upstate New York afforded her an international musical and political podium, particularly upon the successful release of the documentary film Woodstock (1970).
Beginning in the late 1960s, Baez began writing many of her own songs, beginning with "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "A Song For David" (the latter written after her husband was imprisoned for draft evasion).
The 1970s and the end of the Vanguard yearsAfter eleven years with Vanguard, Baez decided in 1971 to cut ties with the label that had released her albums since her first in 1960. She delivered them one last success with the gold-selling album Blessed Are... (1971) which spawned a top-ten hit in Robbie Robertson's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", her cover of The Band's signature song. With Come from the Shadows (1972), Baez switched to A&M Records, where she remained for four years and six albums.
During this period, in late 1971, she reunited with Schickele to record two tracks ("Rejoice in the Sun" and "Silent Running") for the science-fiction film, Silent Running (1972). The two songs were issued as a single on Decca (32890). In addition, an LP record (LP-81072) was released on Decca DL7-9188, and was later reissued by Varese Sarabande on green vinyl. In 1998 a limited release on CD by the "Valley Forge Record Groupe" included an additional track with the spoken introduction "God Bless These Gardens". This CD can still be found for sale today.
Where Are You Now, My Son? (1973) featured a 23-minute title song which took up all of the B-side of the album. Half spoken-word poem and half tape-recorded sounds, the song documented Baez's visit to Hanoi, North Vietnam, in December 1972, during which she and her traveling companions survived a week-long bombing campaign. (See Vietnam War section below.)
Gracias a la Vida (1974) (the title song written and first performed by Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra) followed and was a success in both the U.S. and Latin America. It included the song "Cucurrucucu paloma". Flirting with mainstream pop music as well as writing her own songs for Diamonds & Rust (1975), the album became the highest selling of Baez's career and spawned a second top-ten single in the form of the title track, a nostalgic piece about her ill-fated relationship with Dylan.
After Gulf Winds (1976), an album of entirely self-composed songs, and From Every Stage (1976), a live album that had Baez performing songs "from every stage" of her career, Baez again parted ways with a record label when she moved to CBS Records for ''Blowin' Away (1977) and Honest Lullaby (1979).
The 1980s and 1990sIn 1980, Baez was given honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees by Antioch University and Rutgers University for her political activism and the "universality of her music".
In 1983, she appeared on the Grammy Awards for the first time, performing Dylan's anthemic "Blowin' in the Wind", a song she first performed twenty years earlier.
Baez also played a significant role in the 1985 Live Aid concert for African famine relief, opening the U.S. segment of the show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has toured on behalf of many other causes, including Amnesty International's 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope tour and a guest spot on their subsequent Human Rights Now! tour.
Baez found herself without an American label for the release of ''Live Europe 83 (1984). She did not have an American release until Recently (1987) on Gold Castle Records.
Also in 1987, Baez's second autobiography And a Voice to Sing With was published and became a New York Times bestseller. That same year, she traveled to the Middle East to visit with and sing songs of peace for the people of Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank.
In May 1989, Baez performed at a music festival in communist Czechoslovakia, called Bratislavská lýra. While there, she met future Czechoslovakian president Václav Havel, whom she let carry her guitar so as to prevent his arrest by government agents. During her performance, she greeted members of Charter 77, a dissident human-rights group, which resulted in her microphone being shut off abruptly. Baez then proceeded to sing a cappella for the nearly four thousand gathered. Havel cited her as a great inspiration and influence in that country's Velvet Revolution, the bloodless revolution in which the Soviet-dominated communist government there was overthrown.
Baez recorded two more albums with Gold Castle, Speaking of Dreams, (1989) and Brothers in Arms (1991). She then landed a contract with a major label, Virgin Records, recording Play Me Backwards (1992) for Virgin shortly before the company was purchased by EMI. She then switched to Guardian, with whom she produced a live album, Ring Them Bells (1995), and a studio album, Gone from Danger (1997).
In 1993, at the invitation of Refugees International and sponsored by the Soros Foundation, she traveled to the war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina region of then-Yugoslavia in an effort to help bring more attention to the suffering there. She was the first major artist to perform in Sarajevo since the outbreak of the Yugoslav civil war.
In October of that year, Baez became the first major artist to perform in a professional concert presentation on Alcatraz Island (a former U.S. federal prison) in San Francisco, California, in a benefit for her sister Mimi's Bread and Roses organization. She later returned for another concert in 1996.
2000 to present2001-2005
In August 2001, Vanguard began re-releasing Baez's first 13 albums, which she recorded for the label between 1960 and 1971. The reissues, being released through Vanguard's Original Master Series, feature digitally restored sound, unreleased bonus songs, new and original artwork, and new liner-note essays written by Arthur Levy. Likewise, her six A&M albums were reissued in 2003.
Beginning in 2001, Baez has had several successful long-term engagements as a lead character at San Francisco's Teatro ZinZanni.[title= Now it's Countess Baez ]
In 2003, Baez was also a judge for the third annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.
Her album, Dark Chords on a Big Guitar (2003), features songs by composers half her age, while a November 2004 performance at New York City's Bowery Ballroom was recorded for a live release, Bowery Songs (2005).
On October 1, 2005, she performed at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
2006
On January 13, 2006, Baez performed at the funeral of Lou Rawls, where she led Jesse Jackson, Sr., Wonder, and others in the singing of "Amazing Grace".
On June 6, 2006, Baez joined Bruce Springsteen on stage at his San Francisco concert, where the two performed the rolling anthem "Pay Me My Money Down".
In September 2006, Baez contributed a live, retooled version of her classic song "Sweet Sir Galahad" to a Starbucks's exclusive XM Artist Confidential album. In the new version, she changed the lyric "here's to the dawn of their days" to "here's to the dawn of her days," as a tribute to her late sister Mimi, about whom Baez wrote the song in 1969.
On October 8, 2006, she appeared as a special surprise guest at the opening ceremony of the Forum 2000 international conference in Prague, Czech Republic. Her performance was kept secret from former Czech Republic President Havel until the moment she appeared on stage. Havel remains a great admirer of both Baez and her work. During Baez's next visit to Prague, in April 2007, the two met again when she performed in front of a sell-out house at Prague's Lucerna Hall, a building erected by Havel's grandfather.
On December 2, 2006, she made a guest appearance at the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir's Christmas Concert at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California. Her participation included versions of "Let Us Break Bread Together" and "Amazing Grace". She also joined the choir in the finale of "O Holy Night".
2007
In February 2007, Proper Records reissued her live album Ring Them Bells (1995), which featured duets with songstresses ranging from Dar Williams and Mimi Farińa to the Indigo Girls and Mary Chapin Carpenter. The reissue features a 16-page booklet and six unreleased live tracks from the original recording sessions, including "Love Song to a Stranger", "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Geordie", "Gracias a la Vida", "The Water Is Wide" and "Stones in the Road", bringing the total tracklisting to 21 songs (on two discs).
In addition, Baez recorded a duet of "Jim Crow" with John Mellencamp which appears on his album ''Freedom's Road (2007). He has called the album a "Woody Guthrie rock album". The recording was heavily influenced by albums from the 1960s, which is why he invited an icon from that era to appear with him.Citation needed
Also in February 2007, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. The day after receiving the honor, she appeared at the Grammy Awards ceremony and introduced a performance by the Dixie Chicks.
2008
On June 29, 2008, Baez played out the final set on the Acoustic Stage at the Glastonbury Festival in Glastonbury, U.K., to a packed audience.
On July 6, 2008, she played at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland. During the concert's finale, she spontaneously danced on stage with a band of African percussionists.
Social and political involvement1950sIn 1956, Baez first heard a young Martin Luther King, Jr. speak about nonviolence, civil rights and social change, the speech brought tears to her eyes.Citation needed
In 1957, at age 16, Joan committed her first act of civil disobedience by refusing to leave her Palo Alto High School classroom in Palo Alto, California for an air-raid drill. After the bells rang, students were to leave the school, make their way to their home air-raid shelters, and pretend they were surviving an atomic blast. Protesting what she believed to be misleading government propaganda, Baez refused to leave her seat when instructed and continued reading a book. For this act she was punished by school officials, and was ostracized by the local population for being a supposed "Communist infiltrator."She describes all this in the chapter "My Memory's Eye" in her book, 'And a Voice to Sing With'
Civil RightsThe early years of Joan Baez's career saw the civil-rights movement in the U.S. become a prominent issue.
Her performance of "We Shall Overcome", the civil-rights anthem written and popularized by Seeger, at King's 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom permanently linked her to the song.
Her recording of the song "Birmingham Sunday" (1964) (written by her brother-in-law, Richard Farińa) was used in the opening of 4 Little Girls (1997), Spike Lee's documentary film about the four young victims killed in the 1963 bombing, in Birmingham, Alabama, of an African-American church by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Baez joined King on his 1965 march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama, singing for the marchers in the town of St. Jude, Alabama, as they camped the night before arriving in Montgomery.
She linked arms with King to protect African-American schoolchildren in Grenada, Mississippi.Clarify
Baez again sang "We Shall Overcome" in Sproul Plaza during the mid-1960s Free Speech Movement demonstrations at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California, and at many other rallies and protests.
In 1966, she stood in the fields alongside César Chávez and California's migrant farm workers as they fought for fair wages and safe working conditions and performed at a benefit on behalf of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union in December of that year. In 1972, she was at Chávez's side during his 24-day fast to draw attention to the farmworkers' struggle and can be seen singing "We Shall Overcome" during that fast in the film about the UFW, "Si Se Puede" ("It can be done").Clarify
She was a frequent participant in anti-war marches and rallies, including:
- numerous protests in New York City organized by the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, starting with the March 1966 Fifth Avenue Peace Parade,
- a free 1967 concert at the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., that had been opposed by the Daughters of the American Revolution and which attracted a crowd of 30,000 to hear her anti-war message,
- the 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam protests,
and many others, culminating in Ochs's The War is Over celebration in New York City in May 1975.
During the Christmas season 1972, she joined a peace delegation (which also included prominent human-rights attorney Telford Taylor) traveling to North Vietnam, both to address human rights in the region, as well as to deliver Christmas mail to American prisoners of war. During her time there, she was caught in the U.S. military's "Christmas bombing" of Hanoi, North Vietnam, during which the city was bombed for eleven straight days.
She also devoted a substantial amount of her time in the early 1970s to helping establish a U.S. branch of Amnesty International.
Her disquiet at the human-rights violations of communist Vietnam made her increasingly critical of its government and she organized the May 30, 1979, publication, of a full-page advertisement (published in four major U.S. newspapers) in which the communists were described as having created a nightmare, which put her at odds with a large segment of the U.S. left wing, who were uncomfortable criticizing a leftist régime. In a letter of response, Jane Fonda said she was unable to substantiate the "claims" Baez made regarding the atrocities being committed by the Cambodian Khmer Rouge.
Human rightsHer experiences regarding Vietnam's human-rights violations ultimately led Baez to found her own human-rights group, Humanitas International, whose focus was to target oppression wherever it occurred, criticizing right- and left-wing régimes equally.
She toured Chile, Brazil and Argentina in 1981, but was prevented from performing in any of the three countries, for fear her criticism of their human-rights practices would reach mass audiences if she were given a podium. While there, she was surveiled and subjected to death threats. (A film of the ill-fated tour, There but for Fortune, was shown on PBS in 1982.)
In a second trip to Southeast Asia, Baez assisted in an effort to take food and medicine into the western regions of Cambodia, and participated in a United Nations Humanitarian Conference on Kampuchea (Cambodia).
On July 17, 2006, Baez received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Legal Community Against Violence. At the annual dinner event they honored her for her lifetime of work against violence of all kinds.
Gay and lesbian rightsBaez has also been prominent in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. In 1978, she performed at several benefit concerts to defeat Proposition 6 ("the Briggs Initiative"), which proposed banning all gay people from teaching in the public schools of California. Later that same year, she participated in memorial marches for the assassinated San Francisco city supervisor, Harvey Milk who was openly gay.
In the 1990s, she appeared with her friend Janis Ian at a benefit for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a gay lobbying organization, and performed at the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride March.
Her song "Altar Boy and the Thief" from ''Blowin' Away (1977) was written as a dedication to her gay fanbase.
Environmental causesOn Earth Day 1998, Baez and her friend Raitt were hoisted by a giant crane to the top of a redwood tree to visit environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill, who had camped out in the ancient tree in order to protect it from loggers.
War in IraqIn early 2003, Baez performed at two rallies of hundreds of thousands of people in San Francisco protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq (as she had earlier done before smaller crowds in 1991 to protest the Persian Gulf War).
In August 2003, she was invited by Emmylou Harris (who also credits her as a primary influence) and Earle to join them in London, U.K., at the Concert For a Landmine-Free World.
In the summer of 2004, she joined Michael Moore's "Slacker Uprising Tour" on American college campuses, encouraging young people to get out and vote for peace candidates in the upcoming national election.
In August 2005, Baez appeared at the Texas anti-war protest that had been started by Cindy Sheehan.
The following month, she sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Amazing Grace" at the Temple in Black Rock City during the annual Burning Man festival as part of a tribute to New Orleans, Louisiana, and the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and during that month she also performed several songs at the Operation Ceasefire rally against the Iraq War in Washington, DC.
Opposing the death penaltyIn December 2005, Baez appeared and sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" at the California protest at the San Quentin State Prison against the execution of Tookie Williams. She had previously performed the same song at San Quentin at the 1992 vigil protesting the execution of Robert Alton Harris, the first man to be executed in California after the death penalty was reinstated.
PovertyOn May 23, 2006, Baez once again joined Julia "Butterfly" Hill, this time in a "tree sit" in a giant tree on the site of the South Central Farm in a poor neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles, California. Baez and Hill were hoisted into the tree, where they remained overnight. The women, in addition to many other activists and celebrities, were protesting the imminent eviction of the community farmers and demolition of the site, which is the largest urban farm in the state. Because many of the South Central Farmers are immigrants from Central America, Baez sang several songs from her 1974 Spanish-language album, Gracias a la Vida, including the title track and "No Nos Moverán" ("We Shall Not Be Moved").
2008 Presidential electionThroughout most of her career, Baez remained apprehensive about involving herself in party politics. However, on February 3, 2008, Baez wrote a letter to the editor at the San Francisco Chronicle endorsing Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. She noted: "Through all those years, I chose not to engage in party politics.... At this time, however, changing that posture feels like the responsible thing to do. If anyone can navigate the contaminated waters of Washington, lift up the poor, and appeal to the rich to share their wealth, it is Sen. Barack Obama."
Playing at the Glastonbury Festival in June, Baez said during the introduction of a song that one reason she likes Obama is because he reminds her of another old friend of hers: Martin Luther King, Jr.
Although a highly political figure throughout most of her career, Baez had never publicly endorsed a major political party candidate prior to Obama.
Iran's peopleOn June 25, 2009, Joan Baez made a special version of "We Shall Overcome" with a few lines of Persian (Farsi) lyrics in support of peaceful protests by Iranian people. She recorded it in her house, and posted the video on YouTube and also in her personal website.
Personal lifeEarly relationshipsBaez's first real boyfriend — and first lover — was a young man, Michael New, whom she met at college. Years later in 1979, he inspired her song "Michael". New was a fellow student from Trinidad, West Indies, who, like Baez, attended classes only occasionally. The two spent a considerable amount of time together, but Baez was unable to balance her blossoming career and her relationship. The two bickered and made up repeatedly, but it was apparent to Baez that New was beginning to resent her success and newfound local celebrity. One night she saw him kissing another woman on a street corner. The relationship remained intact for several years, long after the two moved to California together in 1960.
Bob Dylan
Baez first met Dylan in 1961 at Gerde's Folk City in New York City's Greenwich Village. At the time, Baez had already released her début album and her popularity as the emerging "Queen of Folk" was on the rise. Baez was initially unimpressed with the "urban hillbilly," but was impressed with one of Dylan's first compositions, "Song to Woody," and remarked that she would like to record it (although she never did).
At the start, Dylan was more interested in Baez's younger sister, Mimi, but under the glare of media scrutiny that began to surround Baez and Dylan, their relationship began to develop into something more.
By 1963, Baez had already released three albums, two of which had been certified "gold," and she invited Dylan on stage to perform alongside her at the Newport Folk Festival. The two performed the Dylan composition "With God on Our Side," a performance that set the stage for many more duets like it in the months and years to come. Typically while on tour, Baez would invite Dylan to sing on stage partly by himself and partly with her, much to the chagrin of her fans.
Before meeting Dylan, Baez's topical songs were few and far between: "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream," "We Shall Overcome," and an assortment of negro spirituals. Baez would later say that Dylan's songs seemed to update the topics of protest and justice.
By the time of Dylan's 1965 tour of the U.K., their relationship had slowly begun to fizzle out after their having been romantically involved off and on for nearly two years. The tour and simultaneous disintegration of their relationship was documented in D.A. Pennebaker's documentary film Dont Look Back (1967).
Joan Baez in 1963.
Despite the bad blood, the pair eventually buried the hatchet and toured together as part of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975-76. Baez also starred as the "Woman In White" in Dylan's film Renaldo and Clara (1978).
Dylan and Baez (plus Carlos Santana) toured together again in 1984.
Her later reflections on this relationship appear in Martin Scorsese's documentary film No Direction Home (2005).
Baez penned at least two songs about Dylan. In "To Bobby", written in 1972, she urged Dylan to return to political activism, while in "Diamonds & Rust," the title track from her 1975 album, she revisited her feelings for him in warm, yet direct terms.[ first = Michael ]
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