Original subtitles

I don't feel that I'm here at this press conference as a star. If we have to put

labels on me, I would prefer the first label to be human being, the second

to be pacifist, and if we have to have a third, it can be folk singer.

All men are false,

says my mother.

They'll tell you we're kids.

When people expected something of me or saw me in a way I probably didn't see

myself.

My battle was, and in a way still is, how do I separate what they think I am

from what I am or what I think I am?

Because they probably don't have much to do with each other.

And somebody says, oh, I feel as though I've known you all my life.

I know that it feels like that, and they don't know anything about me.

And I've decided to sleep alone all of

my life.

Good evening.

Put on mighty mountains and gaze across the wilderness.

Never seen a lion in the sand or a diamond in the dust.

Most of my life, I look back on and I can't, I don't see how that ever really

happened. Did that really happen? I would say that about most of my life.

Even my money keeps telling me it's God I need to trust.

When I

was

young, we moved all the time.

We didn't stay anywhere longer than four years.

And when I was 17, we moved again.

My mother, my father, my sister drove across country to Cambridge.

I thought that my family was different.

My mother was more beautiful than anybody else.

My father was smarter than anybody else.

And I guess that's a good way to grow up.

And Pauline, older sister, was very, very shy.

And then she kind of made it her way to be invisible.

I was really, really close to Mimi.

We sang together, and she would sing the most beautiful harmonies with me.

When you're in Cambridge, guys at Harvard fell in love with me and then

fell in love with Mimi and they couldn't figure out who it was.

So we had them all over the house, which will help you learn songs really fast.

And so when the folk music, boom, started to happen, I was right smack dab

the middle of it in Harvard Square.

I was just out of high school.

I had not been exposed to anything, and all of a sudden, blam.

And for me, it was the music. I mean, this guy sitting under a yellowish lamp

playing Plaisir d 'Amour.

And I think that was a gotcha.

Coffee shops, the current underground, cool, hip and everything.

The one that I ended up spending almost all my time was Club 47.

It was in the merry month of May.

When green buds all were swelling Sweet William

on his deathbed lay For a love of

Barbary Allen I just, you know, hung out there and flirted with guys and learned

another two songs in a night and sang my set every Tuesday and Friday, I think

it was.

I pretended I was going to college for about half a year or something. I must

have lasted about nine minutes in Boston University.

I mean, it's exaggerating a little, but I was out after six weeks. I was out on

the streets of Harvard Square in the snow learning folk songs.

Young man, I think you're dying The ballads were

unrequited love and they were beautiful.

And love and death and beauty somehow are all tangled in there. Young as I

I seemed to have a heart and soul full of the sadness that it took to be

attracted to those songs.

And almost only those songs.

They were sad and long and beautiful.

And there I was.

The first time I became aware of Joan Baez, we went to the 47

Club. And there was this, I like to say, this older woman with long black hair.

I just fell in love. I was smitten. I thought she was wonderful.

I thought she was beautiful, and she didn't just strum the guitar. She finger

-picked, and that impressed me a lot.

She had a very unusual way of playing the guitar.

I'd never heard anybody do it like Jenny did, and I tried to practice it, but I

couldn't get that style down.

My parents had got me some Sears and Roebuck guitar, and I spent all of my

with it from now on out. In pictures of me with a guitar hanging down around my

knees, because I didn't know that you could bring it up higher. I was just

standing there looking like Elvis, because I didn't understand it.

I took my guitar to school and

sang at lunch hour.

I got a lot of attention.

I just wanted to be liked like everybody else in the world.

Even if it was kind of a court jester role, it was attention.

And so I liked it.

I had my little bedside radio that was on as much of the night as I could leave

it on before my mother came and told me to turn it off.

It was rhythm and blues all the way.

anything that had three or four chords, and I could play most of them.

There were two kinds of songs where I lived and in my repertoire.

There were the good ones, and then there were the evil ones.

Of course, you know that I like the evil ones better. The trouble was, I didn't

understand why they were evil.

Like, well,

you're the cutest thing that I did ever see.

I really love you, peach is gonna shake your tree, lovey -dovey.

And I pictured the family out in the backyard shaking the peach tree, you

I don't know why I loved rhythm and blues so much, but it was simple

and the voices were sexy.

It interested me.

way more than any of the white music that was being played.

I don't know how I shifted from singing rhythm and blues to feeling so

absolutely at home with folk music.

Harry Belafonte being the first album that came into the house that was folk

music.

And then moved towards Odetta.

And Pete Seeger.

And that was the beginning.

There were a lot of very talented people trying to...

you know, make a living as a folk singer in the little coffee houses and clubs

that there were around them.

Me included.

Joan was just one of the best at it.

She was extremely talented and knocked people off their feet.

She had that heart -stopping soprano voice, just couldn't get it out of my

And her range of songs was very unusual for that time.

Just the combination of all the things she did, which were put together in such

a, seemed like some kind of miraculous way.

I was singing in these coffee shops and people were even going to pay me.

But I wasn't particularly anybody.

And then very, very, very big deal for me.

The Newport Folk Festival, I was a guest for a couple of songs.

And I don't know if I've ever been that terrified in my life.

I was standing off stage and my knees were shaking. I mean, literally, I knew

where the expression came from. I couldn't get control of my knees.

But then I walked out there, and it was wonderful. And I knew how wonderful it

was because the audience, which is the largest audience in the history of the

world, 13 ,000 people, all cheered and yelled.

It's all just, ow.

And I enjoyed it. I loved it. It was a lot of attention, a lot.

And then all of a sudden, I was folk queen, bingo, like that.

In the early 60s, Joan Baez was the queen of folk music.

She was absolutely at the pinnacle.

It's hard for people today to know how big Joan was.

She was on the cover of Time, and she was it.

At the time, the folk scene was ideal.

It was full of wonderful, vibrant people who were contributing wonderful songs

to it and wonderful performances.

It was the golden age of folk.

Joanie was at the forefront of a new dynamic in American music.

She had a record out circulating among the folk circles called, I think it was

just called Don't Bias.

And everybody was listening to it, me included.

I listened to it a lot.

girl I knew that picked up a guitar when I was picking up a guitar was listening

to John Baez records and they were very very very big records but the first two

were gold albums which was almost unheard of for a folk music LP to sell

many copies my first album came out I remember thinking oh

boy this is sort of fun watching it come into the top 40 or something and I had

never followed music. I didn't know the lingo.

The first time I saw Baez sings S -R -O, Town Hall, New York. S -R -O,

S -R -O. That must mean sold right out.

Standing room only.

Sold right out. That made sense to me. I didn't know all that stuff.

After things started to really move for me, I got very excited and more

frightened.

I was afraid of what would happen to me if I got caught up in the machine of

commercialism.

I found it very important to not be burdened with any bigger an ego than I

already had.

How do you deal with all of that struggle to remain just the person?

while all this stuff is going on around you?

Time magazine asked me if they wanted to do a cover story.

And something in me said, ugh, how ghastly. But something in me said, how

irresistible to be on the cover of Time magazine.

And I try to think whether there's anybody in the world I knew who didn't

that in them, who would sort of like to be on the cover of Time magazine. And I

couldn't think of anybody.

I may be wrong because I may be just projecting.

But I think that there's sort of irresistible thoughts about it. What

actually is, I don't really know because I don't consider myself famous.

I think there's a difference in being well -known and being famous.

I guess one of my ways of dealing with it was by not admitting that it was

on. I think it was still too overwhelming for me.

In the beginning, there wasn't really much of a stage persona.

It was just me scared stiff and having just horrendous stage fright.

I would go out and sing a few songs, and walking and holding my guitar,

sometimes it was almost like walking to an execution.

Usually during the first or second song, that feeling would abate, and then I

would just sing.

I was so dysfunctional in so many ways that I couldn't leave home.

There would be mornings when I was so terrified of leaving the house that as I

walked towards the door, my stomach would turn into this big knot, and I'd

into a sweat, and I'd feel nauseated.

If I turned around and faced the fireplace and my mom, it would go away.

We're talking about panic attacks.

Once in a while, in the middle of a concert, it would hit. That was really

awful. But the curious thing is, I could leave the stage, which I would do, And

I'd say, excuse me, I'll be right back. In the middle of the song, I go

backstage and splash cold water over my face and cry and carry on for maybe five

minutes. I walk back out on the stage and pick up the song, the note that I'd

been on.

Nobody ever said anything because they don't want you to be sick.

They don't want anything to be wrong, so they'd be happy to ignore the whole

thing.

My little sister Mimi was absolutely wonderful with me. I mean, she would

sit with me, and she knew what words to say to make it better, and she was

totally sympathetic.

I battled that for years, and nobody ever knew it.

Ooh.

When I first went into the Deep South, I gave these concerts, were all attended

by whites only, of course, and then discovered that it was a whites only in

contract, which, of course, I went and did one of my little temper tantrums

about it, because I didn't know, nobody told me.

And then the second time, we changed the contract.

You still had to recruit the black folk to come to the concert, but we did.

I'm sitting on the bathroom floor of Holiday Inn in Mississippi.

My whole reason for this tape is that the other side has songs that we did at

Stillman College.

And it was the most integrated audience so far.

Oh boy, it was just really neat. They were just black and white, black and

all over the place.

I did five songs with a gospel choir.

It's not the school's official choir, but just some leader type kid got this

group together And so I said what do you know any freedom songs and I put down

the guitar and I said how about Walking and talking with my mind on freedom

Tuscaloosa

was of course that the headquarters for the KKK the shocking reality was

on this night

I'm singing with Joan Baez.

Tomorrow, I've got to go down to the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse and decide

whether to drink from the white water fountain or the colored water fountain.

Veteran civil rights workers in the South are calling the situation in

one of the worst yet. But the white residents of Grenada, with the open

of police, seem determined to continue their struggle by beating up anyone who

gets in the way. Get the hell out of here. We don't need you.

One has to appreciate in 1964, 5 and 6, we were living under state -sponsored

terrorism. It would be illegal for a person of color to use a hotel or motel

our park.

And if whites and blacks were in the same car, you could be arrested.

In that setting, which was hostile and dangerous, that was shown

by us.

If you're committed to singing meaningful songs, you also have to be

to leading a life that backs that up.

In Grenada, Mississippi, Dr.

King had asked if I would come in, kind of to stave things off until he got

there, because he couldn't get there in time, and the black kids trying to

integrate a school were having rocks and bricks thrown at them.

There are a lot of highway patrol around. Do you think things will be safe

the children?

You know, it's just a pity that it has to resort to that.

On the other hand, I would rather have highway patrols than nothing. And it did

work. I was celebrity enough that they stopped throwing bricks because the

was there. You're not expecting anything from any white bystanders, are you?

No.

You mean like getting run over, for instance?

Those of you who are integrating the schools of this community, you now

join the ranks.

Of the youthful pioneers, blazing new paths,

I want you to know that even though you are in Grenada, Mississippi,

you have friends... I always cried when I heard him speak.

It's so moving and so real.

So you are a part of a courageous company of freedom lovers.

moving on to make America a better nation and to make the American dream a

reality.

When we were in smaller groups and I was there and he was speaking, he would

joke afterwards. He said, yeah, I threw the word nonviolence in there a couple

of extra times because I know Sister Joan there really loves to hear that.

Joan and Dr. King, I think it really was mutual admiration.

Most hearted.

protecting their careers, do it a bit away from the cutting edge of our

struggle, asking for their hot tea and their lemons and their fruit and all of

the stuff you get performing on some stage. She came as a member of that

Please, dear God, go into the march, into the activities, and I'm with you

as much as I possibly can be, but do it with nonviolence. Thank you.

To be realistic about nonviolent action, I got good news for you guys. It works

pretty well, certainly compared to the other stuff.

It works pretty well.

The only failure, worst of nonviolence as a

method of fighting has been violence.

Complete flop.

I'd heard the violence versus nonviolence discussion in households

8. When I was 16 and I was in high school, we were going to have an air

drill.

And the siren was going to go off and all the kids were supposed to leave

and go home.

I thought I would stay in school just to protest the whole possibility that this

made any sense at all in any way, and it didn't.

I asked my father, and he helped me.

figure out how long it would take a missile to get from Moscow to Palo Alto

School. And the whole thing really wasn't going to work, you know. The

would not have time to come and pick up their children and take them to the bomb

shelters and so on.

I was in French class, and I started explaining to them why I was staying in

school, and it was a protest.

And they were just scratching their heads. I mean, nobody had thought about

this. So I guess I knew already that I was on the road to success with at least

getting people to discuss the issue.

It was reported the next day in the papers.

And the day after that, there were the letters to the editors about this

dangerous girl in that high school, and I was a communist, and they better keep

their kids away from me. And it was so fast and so shocking, really.

And I had full support of my family.

My father was a pacifist.

He had been doing research for the military, and at some point he realized

couldn't do that.

He wanted to do right and do good for people.

And my mother ended up getting him to Quaker meeting.

And as Quakers, you really do table the concept that nations are more important

than people.

and therefore you don't salute flags, and you do take the sanctity of human

life and all life, you know, you take that for granted.

And he became a teacher.

He was offered good jobs on both East Coast and West Coast.

And we crossed country in our wooden station wagon.

We really were, I guess, modern -day gypsies.

Not great on kids, you know.

I think you get afraid of making friends because you know you're going to move

again, and we did.

When I was 10 years old, I lived in Baghdad of all places.

It was filthy, and it was sad, you know, and seeing the kind of poverty and,

I mean, not even racism, just the British.

and it had nothing to do with those filthy natives.

Being brown -skinned, I was considered an Arab because I looked like one. My

sisters didn't.

That's kind of how it started, my feeling about how people would want to

treated.

Plus, I had the family discussing this idea of Gandhi and this idea of

nonviolence, so that when I heard Dr. King speak, and I was, I think I was 16,

Anyway, it was around that time period I knew that this was it for me.

When she sang, she sang, I know the above crowd, because she had this

voice.

We knew a pro within the ring, and yet she was with us and among us, and yet

was Joan Baez.

Joan Baez and Odetta and Habrela Quante had these special gifts

of God, and they chose to devote them.

to the emancipation of a people and the transformation of a nation.

March on Washington was massive.

I remember looking out on the sea of people which grew and grew and grew and

grew to as far as you could see.

What an extraordinary gift to be there when Dr.

King took off with that speech.

I don't remember anybody else who spoke.

You know, I guess probably most people don't.

of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and

Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro

spiritual, free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.

Dylan and his music entered my life.

Maybe I didn't know I'd been looking for music, but I certainly was aware that

something was missing, particularly when I heard what it was.

I thought, oh my God, this is the link. This is the link between me and the

world and music and politics and all of it.

I heard that music and that made it clear that that was the direction to go.

It came and it went.

The reason for fighting I never

did get.

But I learned to accept it.

Accept it with pride.

Oh, you don't... Bob came from...

same tradition, the folk music tradition, but he was already writing

songs.

This is a guy who's an unbelievably good poet.

And she knew the strength of the songs.

When Joan started looking for material other than 100 -year -old ballads, you

know, Dylan was there, and he had been studying that so he could write songs

that would fit into what she was doing.

When Joan met Bob Dylan, he was kind of a street urchin. He was scuffling along,

playing Gertie's Folk City, doing Hootenannies.

I don't know, maybe playing the Café Roi, some of the other coffee houses

the village.

And now my mother and things all poured out because he was a scruffy little

mess, you know.

But it was this initial blast of talent and his general

strangeness.

mystique and all of it at a really young age.

I don't know, he was already a legend by the time he got his foot into Gertie's.

And she knew that he was, you know, besides the mystique, very talented,

nice. He's a good guy.

And I think she had a crush on him.

I know he had a crush on her.

And the two of them were quite a force at that time.

Dylan,

I thought, was as taken with me and my music as I was with his.

I was crazy about him.

We were an item and we were having wonderful fun.

I always liked singing and playing with her. I thought our voices

really blended well.

We could sing just about any kind of thing and make it make sense.

To me, it always sounded good. I think it might have sounded good to her, too.

Then we began singing here and there.

And she just asked me if I wanted to play some shows with her, just like

It was probably like this.

Hey, Bob, you want to sing some concerts with me?

I said, I don't know.

And I would say something like, I think this would be a fantastic idea.

Hey, yes, who do I?

So I have these shows coming up.

Would you like to be part of them? Well, you know, what the fuck?

He'd come out on the stage.

People didn't want to hear that. I mean, they were there to hear the pristine

little Virgin Mary.

And then we had one song about how he came.

And I was like, myth dove.

Now you listen.

And it didn't take long before people got it that he was pretty damn special.

And there was this goldmine of music.

I remember the music on my records really taking a leap forward.

Folk music became more important when new songs

started being written. And it set the stage for it becoming the component of

rock and roll that made rock and roll.

and therefore made rock and roll an art form.

I was the singer and he was the writer, and the two of us weren't just two

people, we amounted to a minimum of three.

But we were in a bubble, and it didn't last.

But I heard you say that love is just a four -letter

word.

Do you remember any more, Bobby?

No, I never finished it.

Oh, God.

You finished it about eight different ways. Yeah.

That's a good song. It's beautiful.

The beginning was one thing, because I had a sort of claim on him for a while.

And later on, it was entirely another, and I was just part of the pack.

It was not an easy place to be.

And the magnet element of him, people just wanted to be part of it. And I was

ass enough to feel the same way.

American folk singer Bob Dylan sat scowling in a hotel armchair last night.

his hands was an iris. Bob, who arrived 90 minutes before his British tour was

due. The tour in England was hell.

There's not really much else to say.

It was just hideous, partly because everybody was doing drugs, and I didn't

understand that.

Out of place, big guy.

And it was really demoralizing, and I was letting myself be demoralized by him

not asking me on stage with him.

It was a very unhappy time.

I was just trying to deal with the madness that had become my career.

And unfortunately, she got swept along, and I felt very bad about it. I was

sorry to see our relationship end.

Really good friends on that tour were saying, go home.

If you want to keep sane, go home.

I didn't have the brains to leave. I couldn't leave.

And that's just how people get.

Go away

from my window.

Leave at your own children's feet.

I'm not the one you want me.

Bob suffered under me wanting him to be other than he was.

I wanted him to be a political spokesperson.

I wanted him to be out in public and to be on our team.

That was my hang -up.

If I could just accept him for his songs and what he did and what he was.

But I was trying to shove him into a mold.

And it wasn't until years later that I realized he didn't need to be on the

team. He wrote the songs.

It was the most powerful stuff that we had in our nonviolent arsenal.

When she was doing the protest against the draft, she would go to Oakland,

she would go to the terminal where they were loading the guys on, you know,

recruits on to go to training.

And she would stand there and say, you don't have to do this.

We have lawyers, we have advisors, we can show you how to try and not become

part of this.

This is a bad thing.

And they would spit at her and kick her and curse her and call her every name

under the sun, and she would keep trying.

And every once in a while, she'd manage to pull a guy out of the line.

And then they'd arrest her, and they'd take her down and throw her in jail.

She'd spend a couple of days in jail, and she'd get out, and she'd go home,

a shower, and have a meal, and go right back to Oakland and stand at the door.

She'd go right back and start over.

That's a kind of courage you don't see often.

I've just had the opportunity of visiting my very dear friend, Joan Baez.

And Mother, I decided, as an expression of my appreciation for

what they are doing for the peace movement and for what they have done for

civil rights movement, I would take time out of my schedule to come out to see

them, to visit them, and let them know that they have our absolute support.

The Alameda County prison farm has been home to 78 diehard anti -war

demonstrators ever since their arrest at the draft induction center in Oakland

last week. Among the new inmates, folk singer Joan Baez.

I learned something in there.

What did you learn? When you go into jail as a pacifist, you come out a

stronger pacifist.

Was that the first time you met?

Yeah, it was after you were out of jail.

You had your cowboy hat on. Maybe that was part of it.

It was either before.

The first time I remember was we were organizing resistance, and

at some point somebody said, well, you ought to raise some money off of Joan.

That's perfect. That's right. And I said, okay, what the hell? Did I give

money right off the bat? Yeah, you did.

I remember thinking, God damn, I can't deal with that woman.

And then, of course, it proved out that it wasn't the case.

This was a destiny.

He was the head of the draft resistance movement, and I was who I was.

and we were riding on a wave in tumultuous times.

You know, he's an attractive guy in many, many ways, and I thought that was

terrific, and I fell in love with him, and we went and we did all these things

together.

I wasn't used to committing myself anywhere, you know, to anybody more than

about five minutes.

So this was getting to be quite long.

We did get past five minutes. We got past five minutes, a couple months.

And had a wonderful time during part of it.

And part of it for me was learning.

When you're given a draft card, it's a very simple statement. I mean, it's like

a deed of ownership.

It says the life of the bear belongs to the United States of America.

David is and was a brilliant speaker.

And I love listening to it. I love seeing people respond to it. If that

happens in the world, does it say we live in a blind society?

Yeah, think wartime romance, you know. I mean, it was certainly that. I was head

over heels in love, you know. I wouldn't have done all that without that. And,

you know, you were a gorgeous woman, and you were the woman everybody else

wanted, and I had you, and that was the whoa.

Hey, all right.

Cool, I don't care what she's doing.

For a kid from Fresno, California, that's doing okay.

One of the great stories about the David Harris -Joan Baez romance was the first

time I brought you up and we stayed in the commune. She walks into the regular

house and...

We just scored a pound of weed.

You know, it was going to be split up between a lot of people. And she is

fucking horrified when she sees this out there. And she flushes the whole thing

down the toilet.

Made myself really popular. There was a kind of, what?

She did what?

I didn't realize the import of what I'd done, being a non -pot person.

It was a volatile combination.

You were doing Singing Star, and I was Scruffy Organizer.

You made a pretty good dancing duo when you went out to speak.

Yeah, absolutely.

No, we were a great one -two punch.

Carry it on.

Carry it on.

So we come here today to do, to re -proclaim our brotherhood with the

that we've been told we have to murder.

How could I know what's going to replace the nation state? Because it hasn't

been there yet. You and I are going to have to make it. We're going to have to

do it together.

You've got to make a choice whether they're going to continue to carry draft

cards and continue to pay taxes and continue to go on and on and on.

I think if everybody in

America began to exercise what we're talking about, we'd live in a radically

different society.

I think that was what held our relationship together.

I mean, you know, we broke off and got back together and broke off and got back

together, and we started a speaking tour.

You know, the first day we were broken up, you know, and I'm thinking, oh,

here I am. I've got to travel all around the country with my ex -girlfriend or

whatever, you know. And then the next day we were back together, and then we

married when we hit New York.

Instead of going on a honeymoon, you two are going on an anti -draft lecture.

What type of reception do you think you'll have?

We've been on this tour for a couple of weeks now, and we get all kinds of

reception. We get anger.

We get some people who agree. We get some men who come to the stage and turn

their draft cards. We get some people who begin to have an understanding of

we're talking about when we talk about nonviolence.

We're offering brotherhood. We're saying a society built around principle of

brotherhood is the only hope in this world.

Mr. and Mrs. Peace in America.

Wedding of the century.

Marriage of the century.

And we had about a six, eight month period there where we really found a

kind of balance right before I went to jail.

Well, I found out this morning that my appeals are over.

Man. I'm not going to surrender myself because I figure if somebody's going to

take three years of your life, the least they can do is give you a ride.

In my heart, I will wait by the

stony gate.

And the little one... It was the moonshot day.

It's that morning that the first rocket to the moon took off.

I just remember knowing that this would be a very unconventional arrest because

we would welcome them in, which we did.

As one group of men shot off to the moon, my husband

was shot off to prison for refusing to cooperate with the draft.

I knew when we got married that he would be spending time in prison. I feel that

if he and I continue to be involved in the revolution, which we will, we'll

spend time in prison.

David was

in prison when Gabe was

born. And I called him and told him that we had a boy, this beautiful child.

I stared at him and I worried about him and I fed him and took him to visit his

daddy in prison.

The flowers that we planted through the season

past will all bloom on

the day you return.

It's a much harder transition coming out than it is going in.

There's a reason that all the people who go to prison end up divorced.

Being a convict and being Mrs. Peace in America are very different

roles. Three months after I was out of the joint, we were separated.

Gabe got exactly three months of that experience, and even then it was weird.

mean, who was I?

I mean, I haven't seen him once a month for 15 months.

For me, I thought I was a wonderful mom, and in some ways I

was.

So when Gabe grew up and little by little resentments would spill out that

was my mom, and I thought I was there.

And I really thought I was there. I didn't realize that I'd be reading him a

story and the phone would ring and I'd go dashing off.

get myself on another march. I mean, I didn't have any sense that you didn't do

that. You're reading to your kid and you stay reading to your kid.

And so, I mean, filled with things that if I had to do it again, of course,

I would do it differently.

Wouldn't we all?

How long since I have spent a whole night

in a twin bed with a stranger, his warm arms

all around me.

How long since I have gazed into dark eyes which melted my soul

down to the place where it longed to be.

All of your history had little to do with your face.

You're mainly a mystery with violins filling in space.

It's much easier to have a relationship with 10 ,000 people than it is with one.

I'm safe in my little cocoon of admirers, and that sort of, in a way,

substituted. for whatever other life I could be leading or for any serious

intimacy with another person.

Don't tell me of love ever laughing and other sad

dreams that I don't want to hear.

In Love Song to a Stranger, I wrote about what it's like to be on tour, what

it's like to be transient.

I was promiscuous up until 20 years ago.

I guess I grabbed that moment somewhere in me knowing that it wouldn't last, but

always thinking, well, maybe this time it will. No, but I think it's safer to

write a song about transient relationship.

For many years I didn't have a good balance.

I'm too much.

I'm trying to protect myself or hide myself and at the same time be available

anybody and everybody.

I was invited to North Vietnam.

One of our group of four, was a Vietnam veteran.

And then there was Mike Allen, a minister, and Telfer Taylor, who was a

four -star general.

And he was there to discover for himself or to see whether he thought there were

actual war crimes.

And I was the pacifist.

What we did was offer to take letters to the POWs.

Of course, they wanted us to be impressed by the pictures of what the B

shrapnel and all sorts of hideous weaponry had done to the people of North

Vietnam.

And on the end of the third day, we were sitting there and we heard a siren go

off.

And I thought for sure it was a drill.

And then we heard planes in the distance.

And it got close enough, and they said, please go down here, and they ushered us

into a bomb shelter.

It was like a movie. I couldn't believe my ears.

And the closer they got, you know, the more frightened I got.

And I could feel my nightgown flutter.

And it was the air and concussions.

That went on for 11 days.

It was the heaviest carpet bombing that took place during that whole war.

I understood that I was mortal, really, in a big way, in the first time.

And that...

Autumn One automatically says, oh, please, oh, please, oh, please, not me.

God all of a sudden becomes real for everybody, even atheists who say, oh,

please, get me out of this one.

Can you tell us about what you saw during your stay in Hanoi?

So the same thing that all of us saw, which is just hideousness that would

a while for me to absorb, and coming out of there feelings mixed with relief at

leaving and terrible guilt of being a part of what's landing

on those people's heads over there.

You used the word hideousness. What do you mean by that?

Murder, you know, murder and slaughter, blood, etc.

You can't deny the other side don't want to die any

more than we do.

What I'm trying to say is don't they pray to the same God

that we do?

Tell me how does God choose?

Just whose prayers he will refuse.

Who spins the wheel.

Who throws the dice.

On the day after tomorrow.

And I am alive and well.

I love you and the kids very much.

Last year, I went to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington.

I saw the wall. I wanted to put my hands on the wall.

I wanted to go into it. I couldn't get close enough.

And then I could feel it coming, and I started to scream.

I just do what I've been told We're just the gravel on the

road And only the lucky ones will come home

On the day after tomorrow

I'd sat on most of that stuff all of those years because it was beyond

imagining. It was beyond feeling.

I had stuck down there for all these decades, really.

So that's how deep it was.

We'll touch down on the day after tomorrow.

I think it's true for a lot of people that in order to do one thing, as in the

politics, you're going to sacrifice the music or vice versa.

I certainly know people for whom that's been true.

For me, when I sold the most albums, the most people came to my

concerts, and I was happiest and made the most sense was when I was doing

Everybody would go to Nashville to record at some point, and I'm sure it

suggestion of the record company.

We would work from 3 o 'clock in the afternoon until 3 o 'clock in the

And then they drove old Dixie down. I'm not sure who handed it to me, but it had

been written recently.

And everybody in the studio came in.

where we were singing, we all sang it.

People

have

asked

me all of my life, How do I choose a song?

And the real answer is that it chooses me because I don't know the answer to

that question.

If I choose them or they choose me, we both have very good taste.

Besides her being a great singer, she really recognizes the value of a great

song. And she has consistently throughout her whole career.

She picked great songs.

And she sang the spots off of them.

My theory about songwriting is there's a double whammy at some point.

A lot of songs are lighter and they're nice and you like them, but the ones

mean something to people, it comes from something pretty deep.

Here comes your ghost again, but that's not unusual.

It's just that the moon is full, and you happen to call.

I started writing a song that had nothing to do with Dylan.

I think probably that's when Bob called.

And I think after that, Diamonds and Rust started to develop.

A couple of light years ago, heading straight for a fall.

It's a song that came deep from in me, and somehow that's what makes it bridge

to other people.

As I remember your eyes were bluer than robin's eggs.

My poetry was lousy, you said.

And where are you calling from?

In the Midwest.

I love that song, Diamonds and Broth. That means to be included in something

that Joan had written. I mean,

to this day, it still reminds me. You gave me something And we both

know what memories can bring They bring diamonds and...

Rolling Thunder was really fun.

Bob invited me to be part of this group of Mad Hatters.

It was really pretty.

Bob wore flowers in his hat and everybody had scarves.

I pity the poor immigrants.

Oh, they didn't want to stay home.

I got to see a different side of Joan on the Rolling Thunder tour.

I'd seen her as a sort of pristine, prim and proper lady who stood for social

causes. And then when I got to know her, she let her hair down, and she's just

wild and fun.

It was all being filmed.

And Dylan got his hands on the camera, and he went around shooting.

You know, just shoot whatever you see. That would be cool. That would be cool.

Put it in here.

Joanie's role in that movie was created for her to be the heroine.

I thought that Joanie always wanted to express herself that way. I know she was

completely in her element on that Roland Thunder tour.

She brought a lot to that tour.

It's all pretty much fun.

I didn't have to be Joan Baez. I didn't have to be responsible for anything, and

I enjoyed that.

If I had done it too long, I would have freaked out and thought, I must be doing

something more serious than this.

I have some wonderful memories of when we were on the Rolling Thunder tour,

traveling on a bus with all kinds of other musicians and interesting

running around with other kids from whoever else was there performing.

Most families, everybody

had dinner at a certain time, and everybody knew where their kids were

the time.

But I had a lot of people looking out for me, too. My mom

was... was gone on the road a lot, obviously, being involved in

some pretty intense activities.

The Cambodians here don't have the slightest idea who Joan Baez is, where

comes from, or what her coming here means.

What they do know is that Vietnamese guns are driving them out of their

homeland. There's a war going on 400 yards away.

I know.

Do you think people will consider you a hypocrite, a publicity seeker? Oh, you

bet. You know, I sell all my hottest albums on the Cambodian border.

I mean, that gets to be laughable.

People will say whatever they have to say to make themselves understand what

bias is up to next.

She didn't give up.

She didn't say, OK, we beat that Vietnam War. Now I can relax and go have a

cheeseburger. She has an ethical, moral stance in the world.

And to her, you know, it's very clear.

There's right and there's wrong, and she can see which is which.

She knows which side she's on.

I'm perfectly aware that I'm at my happiest and healthiest when I'm very

wrapped up in politics.

I'm aware that music plays a secondary role in my life, and there doesn't seem

to be much I can do about that except try to be conscientious about the music

and keep it up.

But the real driving force and excitement in my life is when I'm

other people or in a project.

The core thing driving her was her personal beliefs and philosophy and

having a real deep...

passion for human rights.

I certainly feel a sense of pride in what

my mom has done, the kind of message that she's spread around the world.

That's how I wanted to spend my life.

You know, if I had been doing something else and somebody called me to a task

that I didn't really want to do, and when I went and did it, sort of half

-heartedly, that would be a sacrifice.

But that's not how it's been for me.

You see some people that are wounded and they're not in our party, stay back.

Don't approach them.

There'll be a second round, I'm almost for sure.

Don't get used to it.

When something hits here, there's no notice.

And being together...

Deciding what to do in a microsecond is going to be crucial.

Sarajevo was incredibly terrible, horrific.

It was a city under siege that I'd never seen the likes of.

You're talking about people who were for hundreds of days without power, food,

water, subsisting on their own.

People trying to just survive and being shot and killed.

I had just pretty much made the decision to do music and stop hopping around the

map.

Literally, the phone rang, and it was Lionel Rosenblatt.

Would I go to Sarajevo and give a concert? Of course I said yes.

Joan was brave enough to come to show the people in Sarajevo that somebody

cared.

There was a bakery where people would line up to get their daily bread, which

was about the only food available.

The Serb shellers zeroed in on it as a place where they knew they'd get a crowd

of 100 or more people every day.

Explosion, and 22 people instantly died.

Why, why, why?

400 was wounded.

They are all my neighbors, and I don't sleep all night.

Next morning, I just take my tuxedo, take cello, walk

down the street. I don't know where I'm going and what am I doing. I just go

down.

I find myself on a dead spot, and I start to play.

His power in doing what he did, he did it because it was essential, he did it

because it was life -supporting, and he did it courageously.

It was an instant soul connection.

I cannot never, ever forget.

I open my eyes, and that's you.

Hard cry.

You don't plan to sit on my chair that judge musician

heart to heart.

Absolutely no suggestions, because I had none, about politically what to do.

What I went to do was to sing to the population in Sarajevo.

Being in Sarajevo, I've never really dealt with that loss.

I don't deal well with loss.

And the fact is, I've never dealt that completely with the loss of my sister.

I like to sing you a song I hadn't sung in years and years and years. I used to

sing it with my sister Mimi.

You may or may not recognize it. It was written by Donovan.

Hours and minutes of uncertainty I long to breathe

In the warm hold of your love and mine

To feel you all around me

And to take your hand along the sand Ah, but

I may as well try and catch

Mimi asked me whether I thought she should be a singer.

And I thought I should be honest.

And I said I didn't want her to be.

I wanted her to be something that was independent of me.

It wasn't what she wanted to hear, and she became a singer anyway.

About ten years ago, Mimi was diagnosed with cancer.

I knew, oh God, this is going to be a rough trip.

She was very ill. She had a lot of pain.

One day she called all of us together, friends and a family, and she said, I

need your permission to go ahead and die.

To kill my fears, to help me, to leave all my blues

behind.

And so he stayed with her and my mom, Pauline,

and me right there while it happened.

Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind.

I think I've constructed a life in which I don't feel lonely.

The important thing for me is to spend time with my family.

But music, particularly the songs that I chose, they were my best friends, and

of course they were my therapy.

Without that, I don't know what I would be right now.

On this album, I think we were looking for, maybe not consciously at the

beginning, but some kind of bookend for this 50 -year stretch.

And so the songs began coming in. The ones that I was choosing were ones that,

they didn't have a theme.

They just had a feeling. It's sort of an essence.

and they were pared down musically to the point that they sounded in their

nature and in the sound like what I did 50 years ago.

There are very, very few artists that are able to stay in a creative career

50 years to be able to connect decade after decade with audiences.

What she does is even more rare because she's insisted on combining new material

by new writers as well as...

drawing from the source that originally made her famous.

She's done it all through the years.

Bond with a new piece of material and bring it to life and therefore reinvent

herself as a contemporary singer, not just as an interpreter of older songs.

I believe in prophecy.

Some folks see things not everybody can see.

Once in a while they pass the secret along to you and me.

And I believe in miracles.

I've been able to go around for some years now saying that Joan Baez sings

of my songs pretty much every night.

And there's a handful of us that can say that, that do what I do for a living.

So that's pretty huge.

Well, I can say that you wrote me one song specifically for me.

Two. And God is God.

God is God was written for you for that session. I had just finished it that

morning when I came by and played it for you. I didn't know that, but I'm going

to boast about it. Maybe someone's watching and wondering what I got.

Maybe this is why I'm here on earth and maybe not.

But I believe in God.

And God is God.

The same gratefulness I had for Dylan's early music is the same that I have for

something like God is God. For me, because I haven't written for a long

fills a gap.

Man.

I love to be on tour.

Whenever a tour is over, it's, oh, hell, I wish it was going on longer because

we really had the music together and had the friendship.

I love it.

One of the people in the world I'm most comfortable with is my boy.

My relationship with Gabe has come to a place that probably not many people get

to experience.

to work with him and with music.

And the people I've surrounded myself with, finally, I have the right ones.

It took until I was in my 60s to do that, to find the right ones.

When the band is good, which they are right now, we're just working in a unit.

She's very serious about what she does, but she also...

really loves to laugh.

We have a great time together.

I don't get stage fright anymore. I don't have to deal with things like

quite cheerfully walk out on the stage and hi everybody and enjoy myself.

There'll be no barricade then, and there'll be no wire through

walls. We can wash all this blood from our hands, and all this hatred from

our throats.

And I believe that on that day, all the children of Abraham

will lay down their thoughts forever into the

land.

Lay down their thoughts forever into roots of love.

The spirit is absolutely still there.

This is all you need to prove that life is worth living. I mean, this is really

all you need.

I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you

and me.

Says I, but Joe, you're ten years dead.

I never died, said he.

I never died, said he.

The copper bosses killed you, Joe.

They shot you, Joe, says I.

Takes more than guns to kill a man, says Joe.

I didn't die, says Joe. I

didn't die.

standing there as big as life and smiling

From San Diego up to Maine, in every mine

and mill, where working men defend

their rights, it's there you find your hill.

It's there.