November 9, 2023 • 66 mins
The legend. And the subject of the new documentary film "I Am a Noise."
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is the one and only legendary Joan Bias. Joan,
the new movie is out. I am a noise. Now
that it's out, how do you feel about it?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, the response has been absolutely extraordinary and wonderful. But
even before that, I recognize it as a superb work
of art. And that doesn't even have that much to
do with me. It's the filmmaking. I mean, I'm glad
they were making it about me, but it is really
(00:48):
a work of art, and it was meant to be
an honest legacy, and it did turn out to be that.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Well, it's one thing to have private conversations, is another
thing to hear your see your story depicted on the
big screen for everybody. You talk about a lot of
personal elements, depression, relationships. Do you squirm a little bit
seeing that up there? Or do you say, no, that's me,
that's fine.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
The funny thing is what I squirm about is something
like a vocal lesson the other You know, it's me,
It's fine. I didn't know how i'd feel. Plus I
wasn't there when I made it. I had nothing to
say about it at the very very end, they do.
You want to have a look, but it's too mad
to do anything about it. So I didn't know what
(01:39):
extent of it would be cringe worthy, But the little
parts that are now just make me laugh. And I
know that as a whole, whatever is in there is
in there for a reason. And you know, I mean,
I've got nothing to lose now, really, Famili's gone. I'm
eighty two, and if I want to be honest, let's
(02:04):
just let it all hang out. So that's what we did.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So you talk a lot about depression in the movie.
When did you first feel that you were different from
other people that you felt depressed?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, it's funny about depression. My mother was depressed her
whole life, but didn't know it until she took any
depression when she was in her eighties. So you don't know,
you just know, I mean, for me, speaking for me,
I didn't know that word. I didn't know. I just
knew I was different. I knew other kids didn't feel
(02:36):
sick in the morning, didn't you know? Those are the
things that made me feel different, you know, in another
world from my classmates.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
So do you take medication now?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yes, I do for the deep work that I did
to really go through the tunnel and come out what
I considered to be healthy human being. We had to
find the appropriate medication that would allow me to work.
If I was working from a place of depression and
(03:11):
I didn't have really didn't have my faculties available to me,
I don't think it could have worked, or it would
have been really really painful. So to find that takes
some experimenting, you know. And then we came up and
I still it's different now because it internally one changes
(03:31):
and periodically something will go off and I'll review the
medication see what Maybe you know I need less of
or more of, et cetera. But I know I'm still
on it. It's a steady I'm joking about it in
the film, you know. I say I'm taking sea sick
pills and nausea pills, up and down pills, and then
(03:55):
on top of that, I take my own stuff, So
my own stuff is what's concerned.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, So how is your outlook and feeling differently different
now that you're on medication.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I don't think that's the question. I think the question
is how is it different from the work that I did?
I think, well, okay, do this way. If I stopped
all on medication, I think I would be in pretty
big trouble. But that isn't the issue because I'm I
found what's appropriate to keep the highest from being too
(04:31):
high and the lows from being too low. And then
it's more about the work that I have done and
to some degree still do. But I don't see a
therapist anymore. No, I'm really free of that. So no,
it is it's about the work. It's about having done
the work.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Okay. In the film, you say that you ultimately do
this deep work at a relatively advanced age, inspired by
your system. Me me, can you tell us a little
bit more how that comes to be?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Well, she was She and I always knew there was
something wrong. I mean, there's something wrong with our relationship,
but we never understood why. And then but she was
the first one to think, whoopsie, you know, maybe it
was something that we really that was really buried and
did I was I understood in going investigating that with her,
(05:25):
and so we both embarked on this journey and came
up with very similar stories and supported each other through
it in spite of our difficulties. Together, You know, we
really were there to support each other on their mutual journeys.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Well, in the movie, there's issues of abuse, which your
father denies and the two of you believe happened. Uh,
how did you reconcile your father's deniy was what you felt?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
You know? I read him. I was reading a book
of a famous actor who I willed that name, but
he he discovered that he was abused by a priest
when he was eight, and he struggled with that for
his entire lifetime, and at one point decided he was
going to call this old man you know who had
(06:24):
abused him and other kids. And he called him, ready
to just say, you know, you sort of a bitch,
you whatever, and he realized he couldn't say anything. This
old guy was a pleasant old man who was living
probably a fairly decent life, having passed the stage where
he had to do all the shenanigans, and he didn't.
(06:45):
And he realized I didn't remember. I mean, he buried it.
And I don't know how that happens, but obviously it
happened to me. So I the reason I could forgive
my parents is that I I knew they didn't remember anything,
and that that's one of the hardest things for people
to understand, because I mean, just the expression on your face,
(07:10):
for instance, on the zoom is what what what the
fuck is that about?
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Okay, So, how do you find a box to put
that in? All these years later?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
I guess the process of discovering who did what to
whom is a long process and a deep process, and
I guess the best answer to that is putting in
my little multiple helpers, and that's what they're there for,
and just somebody helps take the take the load off
(07:49):
each You know, each time there's a fresh realization, there
are different ways, there are different places to put it in,
different ways to deal with it. And it's ongoing, No,
it's it's constant through that time period of discovery.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
In the movie, you say a number of times you're
not good at relationships. Do you think that's as a
result of the abuse?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
I think that from when I talk to people, everybody
goes ha ha ha ha, yam too, So I don't.
I think one to one, one on one relationships are
probably the hardest things for us, the human beings, to tackle.
I think that it's exacerbated by the fact that we
once trusted and that trust was taken away, you know,
(08:39):
so who do you trust? You don't to be intimate
means you have to trust the other person to open
yourself up to the other person. So I'm kind of
joking when I say I'm I mean, I'm really good
one on two thousand, because I am, and I never
I mean. Towards the end of the time period that
(09:01):
I was really working on this stuff, I reached a
level of wholeness that I couldn't have imagined before. And
my therapis said he started hinting around about, well, you know,
maybe the next step is to try and find somebody,
to find a partner, and I didn't know. I'm happy here.
(09:22):
I don't want to take on that load, which you'd
take another ten years. So that was just a decision
I made because I know that I don't have the
patients to disrupt my life again when it's reached this really,
really happy level.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Now we've had COVID the last handful of years really
been crazy. But what does your everyday life look like?
Are you more of a homebody? Do you go out?
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I am homebody. I would say those two choices very much.
Your homebody, I guess I've been out enough for sixty
years traveling around, and I thought, oh, you know, when
I'm through with that, and I can go visit these
places and just hang out and see stuff, all things
I didn't do while I was traveling. But I haven't
really had any interest in getting back on a plane.
(10:14):
The only thing I've been doing is hopping around the
country talking about this film. And you know, at some
point that might change, because because right now it's I
don't have a what's a normal day for Joan? You know,
when I'm not working on something. A normal day for
Joan is more time on the property. There's a creek
(10:37):
on this property where I spend a lot of time.
It's my one of my happy places. I collect rocks,
I mean I do. I talk to trees. I live
a life full of nature, as much as a much
nature as I can fit in there.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Okay, you're someone who is attractive, outspoken, in legendary famous.
I have to believe when you're out and about to
use the vernacular, men are hitting on you.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
But a nice thought, I mean son thought, because at
this age it's a question of sensuality, sexuality. Where is that?
When I was talking to Jane fondo. She said, oh,
I closed up shop a couple of years ago, and
I said, well, I don't know what's what is here
(11:31):
at this point to be hit upon. I feel very
vibrant and I would be delighteders. No men were hitting
on me as long as I don't have to hit back.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
So if a man is warm and congenial, you basically
send a vibe. At best, we're on the friend level.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Probably probably yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And when we were young, person, what vibe did you send?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Oh? I think really confused messages. I mean really, I
look back at myself and my schoolmates. They couldn't understand me.
I mean I didn't understand me, but it was very
confusing message that I sent out. And I'm thinking also
when we moved to Baghdad, for we were there for
(12:29):
a year, my family and I would write my classmates
and they never responded. And I was telling them all
about Baghdad. Well, they had no point of reference. It
wasn't interesting to them that or not I was talking about.
So it was just one more I guess what I'm
saying is that when we moved a lot and so
(12:52):
I never really did have time to hang out and
get friends. So I don't know whether I really was
capable of doing that or not, but the messages a
girlfriend from those days, there were a few people who
were really kind to me, and this girl was so
(13:13):
sweet and would go through the when I was having
a panic attack. She'd be helpful and she would be there.
Then years and years later, decades later, I got a
letter of her from her saying, oh, now I get it.
She had developed a phobia of bridges, going over a
bridge and that, you know, all of a sudden, Oh,
is that's what my strange friend Joan was going through.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
When did you have your first panic attack?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Oh, Jesus, I don't know. I mean depends probably on
how you define it. When you're really little, pretty little, And.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
If you told your mother you were feeling this way,
what would she say?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Oh? She I wanted to be with my mom because
she would say, oh, let's have a cup of tea.
I mean, I've run home from school in kindergarten. That
my first day of kindergarten, I remember, and I found
my way back home because I couldn't. I was too
scared to be there. And instead of saying, well, we're
(14:13):
going to take your back and talk to the teacher.
She said, oh, let's have a cup of tea. You know,
so that did two things. It was my comfort zone
but also helped keep me from dealing with the reality
out there. I'm still glad she did it.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Okay, so you live this tenoran lifestyle and you talk
about not being able to make friends. How much of
that was situational and how much of that was you.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Well, yeah, that's what I was trying to say just
now that because we traveled like that, and I don't
know if we'd ended up somewhere for ten years, would
I have developed, you know, relationships, would they have been healthy?
Would they have been healthy relationship? I mean this first
time I thought of it in those terms. But if
(15:04):
I had stayed somewhere, I really don't know. I can't
imagine that I would really develop, you know, a healthy
bunch of friends around me that I wanted to hang
out with and you do whatever normal kids do.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
So at this late date, how integrated? How mean you
talk to other people on the phone? Do you hear
from email or you're more of an ice, You're more
of an isolated person with your team.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
No, No, I have the emails and the text coming
and going, and yeah, no, I'm not isolated in that sense. Really,
it's just not I just really don't want to go anywhere.
I don't want to. I don't go to many concerts.
It's just like, you know, I'm stay home and I
(15:52):
have lots of friends. Now I have good friends.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Okay, I move.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
We have movie night and there are six women who
watch it. This happened when my mom was still alive
for ten years in her little house, we'd have movie
Night the first Tuesday of every month. Well I'm still
doing that. And then I have another group of friends.
We dance together. We used to dance in the city
and now we just dance on Zoom once a week
(16:18):
and that's and then I have a group I call
the Gang of Eight. And there are people I refer
to for anything political, to discuss with them and ask
their suggestions and their thoughts. So some of those overlap.
But I have a lot of friends.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So how do you pick the movies? And what are
some good movies you've seen?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
How do you pick the movies? Oh, usually it's somebody
has a plan and then we start talking about it
and the planet switches and then we just turn on
TV and see whatever comes up. We turn on the
Prime one night and on the Waterfront was on, and
it was it was an old brainer. It was so wonderful,
especially compared to so much of the trashism that's out now,
(17:03):
to see, you know, really good. Sometimes you just want
to be silly. I think the next one I have
in my mind for us to watch is TUTSI. I
haven't seen it for years, you know, it would make
us laugh. And then their serious nights, in their nights
when there's political stuff going on, and we'll brave it,
you know, I'll watch something it's hard to watch.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And this group of eight that you check in with
political stuff on what kind of topics have you been
broaching recently?
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Well, you know, obviously the most recent is the Middle East,
where we all pretty much decide the exception of few things,
I wish they had them in front of me, because
there are a few things that you can do and
go and be with. It's such an agonizing situation. And
we're all, you know, and have been non violent activists
(17:56):
for most of our lives, and there comes a point
when things aren't such full flow. There's very little room
for non violent action, although there is some and you know,
it's non violent action. There's those wonderful women who are
thanking their captors and getting hell for it because they're
(18:19):
supposed to be resentful and shabby. And this woman, I
guess shaking hands with her abductor, with her kidnapper as
he treated her well, she's saying thank you. That is
an act of strength, and real strength.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
You're a cent in your career coincided with the advent
of the sixties, youth quake blowing up. Politics was everything.
The younger generation was a great percentage of the population.
There was the Vietnam War in nineteen seventy, there was
Kent State, there was a so called returned to the land,
(19:04):
people looking their wounds, and then we had the Iran
crisis in the next decade, and people were talking about
bombing Iran. With the perspective you have, it's like, is
there any hope can we you know? Or is this
just endemic to society.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I don't really know. I know that, you know, people
would assume that I'm an optimist. I never have been.
I struggle to not be a pessimist. Somebody suggested it
was a waste of time, and I think that's true.
I struggle with hope. Somebody said, hope is a discipline,
(19:46):
and it's like a muscle. It has to be exercised
for me, for somebody who's glass half empty and sometimes
all the way empty. I think the trick is that
I've always done what I've done anyway, whether I was
optimistic about it or not. The moral compass would just
(20:06):
dictate what I did next.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
In the movie, it hints at the fact that you
always knew you were different, you were charismatic, you were
going to be successful. When did you internally recognize that.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
I don't know about being successful. I don't think that
word was in my vocabulary. I had total faith in
my voice. I might have been, you know, had squeamish
about everything else, or thought I wasn't good enough, or
thought I was a dumb Mexican whatever, But once that
voice started to I'd say by sixteen, I was sure
(20:52):
that it was special. By the time I was twenty,
and there was nothing could have could have inter feared
with my feelings about my own voice. So I don't
know what your question was.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Now, Well, okay, well you felt that voice to be successful.
In the world of entertainment, talent, is it most fifty percent.
The other fifty percent is dry and need, etc. So
where did that drive and need come from?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I think I don't seize myself as ambitious, and I
think it's probably because I didn't have to be. I
had to get ambitious enough to keep going when the
career fell apart. And that's all in the film is
pretty clear. But at the beginning, my idea of the
(21:45):
future was the following Wednesday. You know I didn't have
Some kid asked me once I was about seventeen, I
thought I was going to be famous, and I hadn't
even thought about it. It seemed like a fun idea.
Once he said it, I didn't me. I thought that
would be kind of cool. And once I was seeing
(22:05):
any chiatrist when I was twenty, and I told him
I'd had a dream that I was singing with Harry
Bellafai and he said, don't you think you're having delusions
in grandeur?
Speaker 1 (22:15):
And I said, no, that begs the question. Did you
ever sing with Harry Bellefanie?
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Yes? I did, Yeah, I did on Marches. Yeah, what
a wonderful guy.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Okay, so your family moves to Boston. How do you
end up playing at club forty seven.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Well, I have to say, good old Dad took his
three daughters and his wife into Cambridge because he'd seen
with his own eyes these coffee shops and he knew that,
you know, I was starting to play guitar and starting
to learn folk music. And he took us into Cambridge,
and he took us into the Harbor Square. He walked around.
(22:57):
I remember looking in the door of one of these
coffee shops sing a guy playing guitar, singing, sitting under
his yellow light. Everybody's smoking, and all these students, you know,
discussing whatever, and that kind of was. It was a bingo,
you know. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted
(23:19):
to go and beg every song off of him and
everybody I knew, everybody I met, and have them teach me,
teach me the guitar.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Okay, So what happened first the learning process? Did you
would shed for a while or at what point did
you get up on stage and then perform for others?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Oh? Very fast, Because I was eighteen or nineteen at Newport,
I had already sung. I sang this thing for the Shriners.
I mean I would go where somebody said, hey, I
was sixteen. I'm in high school. So and so wanted
you to come and sing for their class. Okay, I
(23:59):
go singing to their class. Some of his dad was
with the Shriners. They wanted me to come and sing
with the Shriners. And I went and I sang in
his drunken old shriner came over and he said, honey,
don't sign cheap.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
It's that great phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
That was really funny.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, okay, was your first public outing club forty seven
or did you play another clubs before that?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
No, that was the first one and almost the only one.
I mean it was became home and I started off
on every two I think it was every Tuesday, and
had ten dollars. That was a big deal. Then they
added a probably it was Tuesdays and Fridays. Then it
went up to fifteen dollars, and I really felt he
felt like a rich girl. And I had had two jobs.
(24:51):
I had had one job at Boston Vespa company, where
I taught people how to drive vestpro.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
So I had to if you're driving investment was did
you ever crash?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yes? I did once, but it was on a motorcycle.
It was on a little tiny, stupid motorcycle. But yes,
I did fall over once as on my way to
my psychiatrist, and I told what happened. He said, are
you crazy? That's a stupid question. Anyway, where did I
Where did I veer off?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Just now you were talking about playing Club forty seven,
working your way up the ladder.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, I played the one week. The first night I played,
there was my mother and father, two sisters, and one
other person. I don't remember who that was. That was it,
probably the owners of the club. And then whatever happened
between that and the following week, it was then full,
(25:48):
and I don't remember what happened.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And then if there were only your family members there,
why did everybody show up a week later?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
I don't know. And I don't know if anybody knew
on that first night, or if the word got out
or I don't know, but it was really fast. And
then shortly after that, Albert Grossman, who handled just about
everybody in the folk world, invited me to come to Newport.
(26:19):
Wanted me to go to Newport, and so.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
So I went.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
And that was the You know what I'm thinking when
I'm going through this, I had already been to Chicago,
to the Gate of Horn to sing itub It was
his club and it was a real club and people
drank and stuff. It was a big deal for me
because I didn't think that was appropriate. Man, people drank anywhere.
(26:44):
So and I was there for a couple of weeks
opening for Bob Gibson. That's okay, that's how it goes.
And then Gibson was singing at Newport and he invited me,
an Odette invited me, and that's where that's we were
all kind of pop.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Let's go a little bit slower. You're playing club forty seven,
you're going to college. How do you end up dropping
out of college?
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Oh? That was easy, that was the easy part. I
literally I was there for about six weeks. I mean
after that it was just pretending to my parents that
I was in school. I don't think there was I
didn't know there are that many ways to flunk. There
was you know, there was a zero, there was an F,
(27:32):
there was a missing an action, whatever they are. But
the only grade I got that was decent was art class,
and it was because they studied Alasco caves. And I
was so enthralled with that that I actually paid attention.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Okay, but your your father's academic how does he feel
about you dripping out of college?
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Horrible? But he knew. I mean, my opalling went to
college just really for him. She had no desire to
go and she didn't last there. And I was so
out of it. By the end of high school. Everybody's
talking about college boards. I didn't know what a college
(28:16):
board was, and I was too embarrassed to ask, And
anytime anybody said it, I just pictured a two x
four plank a board that and I wouldn't go be
I wouldn't ask any questions beyond that. And then my
mother was trying to get me interested in one of
the East Coast girls schools, you know, Bennington, where it's
(28:37):
free for the arts and encouraged arts and music. And
I went to the interview with Mimi and my parents
and it was a complete disaster. She'd say something like, well,
what are your study habits like, and I'd say, I
don't have any you know. It was just horrible, and
I didn't get in. And the only place I got
(28:58):
into was Boston University. Fine Arts.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Okay, so you're at Club forty seven. You obviously are
feeling good that there's an audience, you're making money. What
At what point do professionals say, hey, kid, you know
you should come here and make a deal with me.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Well, actually that happened when I was in high school,
and these two they remind me of the of those
sneaky guys in Pinocchio. They kind of came in, they said,
come on, little girl, we're going to make an album.
And all I had was stuff like Annie had a
baby and work with me, Annie and six Bellefontie songs.
(29:41):
So I went and did everything I knew and they
pressed it and it was one that we banned. I
can't remember the name of it, but it was really
really early. And then it was that come on, honey,
we're going to make you famous. And then oh it
(30:02):
happened in an ice way. That all at grossman time period.
I was in twenty nineteen, I think, and he wanted
me to sign with Columbia, which is where everybody was going,
and I was just leary of the size of it,
you know, the gold records on the walls, and I
wanted to talk to Vanguard, which is basically a classical
(30:24):
music company. And first I went to Columbia with Grossman,
and I literally developed a cold while I was sitting
there and he's over my shoulder saying sign here, and
I said, no, I had to fight it. No, I
want to go talk to Vanguard first. And of course
I was more comfortable at Vanguard. And it was a
wonderful decision.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
It was a wonderful decision because because it.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Was the right company for me. The Maynard Solomon owned
the company, and he produced my albums, and he understood
and loved folk music and he, you know, we helped
me with always with the songs I was going to choose,
And yeah, I don't know what the path would have been.
(31:11):
If I'd gone on Columbia, probably fine, Probably would have
been fine. But I think for me to stay oriented,
for me to not tip over, it's probably safer to
be with that guard.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Okay, you start to have the success very quickly. How
do you cope with the attention? Very few people are
in this situation, yeah, and very few people in this
situation that quickly. Yeah, but there's a lot of tumult.
There's no one from your regular life who understands what
you're going through. Yeah, So what was it like for you?
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Well, as part of it was really exciting because there
I was with an identity, and there I was with
people paying attention to me, and I had value and worths.
And then so that would It's like reading reviews. If
you read good reviews, you get all puffed up. If
(32:08):
you read bad ones, you get miserable. You know, So
what do you do with your life? And that do
you believe everybody was saying wonderful things about you? I
know that my Quaker background was helpful because I understood
about being quiet, and I understood about meditation, and I
understood about you know that I was just so small
(32:29):
in this, in the greater scheme of things, and so
I did a lot of meditation and prayer back then
to sort of try and keep me on the right path.
And not that I was always on the right path,
but I but I tried. At an early age. I tried,
and I was a little neurotic. I didn't. I mean,
I didn't want anything on the stage. I want to
(32:52):
pitch black. I wanted no frills, and I thought it
would be easier for everybody, and it wasn't. It was
just as difficult. People had planned to pour roses on
the stage, you know. And then once I said no
more limousines for me, I don't want any more limousines
because I felt too privileged. And that lasted a couple
(33:15):
of months. If somebody showed up has broken down, Volkswagen Bus,
give me the limousines back, and I've been happy in
them ever since. I wish they didn't need so much gas.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
What about the me too moments?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
I was not not active in that, and you know,
I wasn't speaking about myself at that point.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
So I guess what I'm saying is, you're a young girl,
twenty years old, you're in business, You're a hot commodity.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Anyway, I see any.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Woman who's twenty years old, even at this late date,
with new consciousness, it's a volatile situation.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Say which situation?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Sorry, sexually charged with men trying to take advantage of you.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Oh I see, well, I think it was in some
ways too puritanical at some point, and then they didn't
take advantage when I hadn't slept with them. Okay, this
isn't I don't know if it's okay or not, but
I'm just trying to be honest.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Oh died great, But this is an era with the
folk music scene. We even end up with a TV
show about folk music Kot and Nanny prior to the Beatles,
but Dylan comes along in the early sixties. First album
is Covers, but then he starts to write did you
feel any pressure to write? Did you feel different from
(34:43):
the people who wrote?
Speaker 2 (34:45):
You know what, I never even considered it, because I
just considered that I was an interpreter of folk balance
folk music. And it was somebody after ten years in
said well, are you ever going to write anything? And
that's the first time I'd really thought about her. And
that's when I I wrote Sweetster Galahad, and so I
(35:07):
sort of proved to myself that yeah, I could write.
And then after that I enjoyed it. I mean, I
wrote a bunch of things.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
And what did you feel when the Beatles came along?
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Oh? I loved the Beatles. I was in there. I
was when they might have been their first show in
the States. It is certainly the first tour. I was
in Denver and they were I'd been at Red Rocks
and they were there the next night, and I met
them out there, absolutely charming and funny, and they were
(35:41):
so thrilled in that hotel room. They had a whole
floor to themselves. What got them most excited was the
fact that there was a Coca Cola machine. You didn't
have to put any money in. It looked ludn't put
the co in, and then you get to Coca Colo.
They were happy.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Did you have any idea that the British invasion was
coming and this might negatively impact your career?
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Neither I learned, as as everybody else did. They started,
you know, just one hit after another in this massive phenomenon,
and you know, I was fortunate enough to spend a
little time with them.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Well did you wake up in the later years and say,
wait a second. You know, you talk about the seventies
in the movie, but even the sixties you'd say, wait
a second. You know, I'm not the hot thing, and
the direction seems to be going somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, that was a little later, because I was a
hot thing for maybe fifteen years or something, and then
I was, you know, still more than tepid for the
next five or six years. Okay, question again, Well.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Let me let me back into it. You are famously
in the Woodstock movie. Okay, no one else is like you.
You're pregnant. You're talking about your husband in jail when
you see that or when you're reminded of that, do
you feel comfortable or do you feel you're being so
authentic that you WinCE in some way?
Speaker 2 (37:19):
No, I you know, I don't WinCE much in this.
I was young, Dylan was young, We still had our
baby fat. We got to forgive ourselves for some things. No,
there are a couple of times when I laugh. The
goal I had we're going to start a peace movement
and talking it was just rolling off the tongue. No,
(37:41):
and that's what I felt that it's kind of it's
not cringe eorthy, just sort of amazing and slightly funny.
And then I went on and did as much of
that as I could in my lifetime.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Okay, so tell me about the realization in the seventies
that you're talking about after fifteen years in the business.
A second, I seem to be in my own little
eddie and it seems to be a have passed me by.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Well, I think it does. A realization doesn't come that fast. First,
it's how come this hall isn't full? They must not
have gotten the advertisements out in time? You everything, it's
finger pointing time, And couldn't never dawned on me that
I would have anything but a full house, because that's
(38:27):
how it started out, and that's how it was. So
that was the beginning, just the very beginning, because it
took years really to catch up with my life as
a musician. I was way steadier with the politics. I mean,
that was I was on solid ground with that. So yeah,
(38:50):
I think, And I start the film off by saying,
I don't think anybody who's ever been famous thinks it's
ever going to stop, especially if you're that young. No,
there's no frame of reference except you know, there.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Was my own. So you know, you talk in the
movie about having success with diamonds and rust and then
switching managers. It was a bad decision. Now, if you
many musicians from that era will tell you they're living
off the publishing and the performing rights money that you
can get mailbox money when you're sitting at home. But
(39:26):
you didn't write that many songs, that's true. How's it
worked out for you financially?
Speaker 2 (39:34):
I had some really good people around me, Otherwise I'd
be a mess that I had. I did pick wonderful people,
and they worked me through that quagmire because they knew
what they were doing. And I'm fine. I am not.
You know, I am not a millionaires. I never will
(39:56):
be that interested in making that kind of money. So
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Okay, you write Diamonds and Rust. It ends up becoming
very successful, even on FM radio, which is getting harder
and more corporate. At the time. You're writing about the
ten years before twelve years before Bob Dylan, did this
cause any Let me put it this way. Did you
(40:33):
say I'm going to do this or did you say, hmm,
you know, I'm trading on the past. I'm trading on Dylan.
This might not be the right thing to do.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
No, I wasn't trading on anybody. I just wrote the song.
I had no idea that it was going to become popular.
In fact, I was writing another song to that melody.
And it's true Bob called from the phone booth in
the Midwest and they read me one of his songs,
and that's where the whole song was triggered. That I
(41:03):
just had written a song. And anyway, if you didn't
know the history of Bob and me to some degree,
fortunately it still holds up as a song.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
It absolutely does. But there was so much information back then.
So this phone call took place when.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Oh, I'm not going to remember. Please don't ask me
date you No.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
What I'm trying to say is was this a memory
of a phone call in the sixties or was this
just before you wrote the song?
Speaker 2 (41:32):
It was just before I wrote the song.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, so you had maintained contact with Bob Dylan over
these years?
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Not really, I mean it was sort of out of
the blue that Betty called. Yeah, it was nine. You know,
we weren't buddies all that time, and you talked of
it all now. I don't know if anybody does.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
He's busy on tour than going back to the bus.
So you meet him when his career is very nascent,
and then in sixty five, as a giant radio hit
like a Rolling Stone, you go to England with him.
Did you see him change? This is you know in
the movie you talk about the fact you wake up
one day, what am I doing here? This is not
(42:20):
my world? Okay? Did he change with success? Was that
part of it?
Speaker 2 (42:26):
I think so? I think so. And it was also
says that the film had happened very quickly, that suddenly
there was this crush of people around him. It started
but just kids, you know, fans wanted to be around
him and adore him. And then it was a slightly
(42:48):
different scene going to Europe. Yes, there were all those fans,
but then there was his sort of cluster of in
house people, of the in crowd, and that's where I
was not comfortable. I think I was welcomed, but I
wasn't comfortable. And in the end, you know, those that
group of people, it was really a druggy group, and
(43:14):
I didn't. I didn't fit in. I didn't. It wasn't
part of my circles.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
So in terms of your own drug, as we said
back then, experimentation, we did you go through that? Was
it never your thing? Or you dabbled?
Speaker 2 (43:31):
No. The only thing ever, and it's also in the
film was many years later fet Onto Coaylude and took
a lot of coyluded for about eight years. But well,
everybody else was doing all this stuff. They were leaving
these pills on the stool by their microphone, and you know,
it probably was great stuff, but I just didn't relate
to it. I throw it in my purse and return
(43:53):
to powder. So I wasn't. I just didn't relate to it.
For whatever. I don't think they're virtue reasons. I think
I've probably just scared.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
So quayludes and soapers, which are the same things, start
to happen in the early seventies. So how do you
first start taking quayludes?
Speaker 2 (44:13):
I can't remember. I can't remember because I was so
scared of taking anything. I must have taken an eighth
of it or something, and that a sixth of one,
and I never took Mommy the half of them. Half
one was probably the most I ever took at a time.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
So what was the motivation to continue to take them
all those years?
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Comfort zone? It was made my life easier, made meeting people, laughing,
going to restaurants, all things that had a lot of anxiety.
It took away to anxiety. That's the real answer to
your question.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
So, even at this late date, although we're all older,
did you have a level of social anxiety? Like as
someone called you up, Oh, we're going to go to
dann there's going to be s having people there you
don't know, would say, oh, sounds great. When I show up,
you say, well, you know, I really have something I
want to do at home. I'd rather not.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
No, when you're saying that, I don't go to dinner
that much. But when I go with my pals. We
have a wonderful time. No, I think it's boiling down
to it. And I hadn't thought about all this till
we started talking. I don't know how many friends one
really needs. I know, I'm not interested in going to parties.
(45:31):
I'm not interested in going to places where the leaves
look like really nice people. And then somebody says, oh,
I saw you in nineteen seventy two and I was
wearing a plaid shirt, sitting in the front row. I think, yeah,
not interested, you know, but I try to be nice
because that meant something in that person's life. Somebody gave
(45:52):
me a great T shirt wanted to said please, don't
tell me your story, and then he proceeded to tell
me his long story about how he found the T shirt. Anyway,
it's about people wanting to place themselves in your life
or place you, and what it meant to them so
and it meant a lots. So I think treating them
decently is the you know what I can do.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Okay, So you're a famous person, you're out and about
on tour, you're in an airport, whatever. Everybody who comes
up to you tells you a story.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
They want to do you travel with me someday and
it's just you. I see it in their eyes and
they take a big breath they say I saw you
as they go fuck do. And I was in the
front row. And almost a lot of people will start
with you may not remember me, but I think you know,
(46:47):
the chances that I remembering you I want in a million.
But how do I you know, let that person know
that they count as a person and try to avoid it.
Sometimes I'll just say no stories, no stories please.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Well that's one of the reasons I don't talk on
the phone people bull It's like, get to the ask
what do you want? So I can say no, so
I can hang.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Up perfect because we're get to the ask. When I
do Q and A after the film and you have
to say, please just ask a question. I am not
interested in here. Yeah, gotta say it. Sometimes they actually do.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
That drives me crazy. Have Q and A and somebody
stands up to make a company. We don't give a
shit what you have to say. The people of the
stage are the ones. But just to drill down a
little bit further on this, not now, but when you
were throughout your life brought into situations well, you may
or may not have been the focus, and there were
(47:47):
people you didn't know. Did that cause extreme anxiety?
Speaker 2 (47:53):
You know, as you're saying that, I sort of picture myself.
I was pretty. I was protected somehow because I was
already separate from them. I wasn't vying for a friendship
position or I knew I looked okay. You know, I
was established in myself. I might not have been very interested,
(48:15):
and I might have been, I might have gotten more
out of it. And if I'd been more interested and
more open, but I was okay for the most part.
I was okay.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
And living is a famous person. Where people treat you
differently your whole life, good, bad or otherwise, How would
I know? Well? Sometimes, I mean everybody can tell. You
can perceive that when you're in a group of people,
they're treating you differently from the other people in the room.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
No, But what I mean is that's gone on more
of my life than not, you see, So that's what
I mean. How would I know? I wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Well, I understand your point of your life. You're the phone.
But you can tell when someone's being as sick a fan,
Oh yeah, I can.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
And the clearest I've ever had to be was just say,
get the fuck out of here. I get what you're
trying to say. I am not interested. Stop saying it now.
I'm going to call a tour manager and get the
fuck out of here.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
And in your everyday life, when somebody calls you on
your shit, are you good with that or not good
with that?
Speaker 2 (49:25):
I'm pretty good with that. I don't have therapy to
be pretty good with that. In fact, you know you
asked to be called on your shit. You have to
ask because it's hard for people to. You know, somebody's
standing there buttoned up, wishing that you would change or
you have to unbutton and I have to hear it.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Okay. In the movie we do see Richard Ferina, it
does not mention the book he wrote, which is one
of the most impactful books I've ever read. Been down
so long it looks like up to me right as
a freshman in college. What can you tell us about Richard?
Speaker 2 (50:04):
Richard was an interesting guy. He fancied himself a man
about the world, and in some ways he was. In
some ways he was a big blowhard. I can tell
you that he and I for a while would get
into these we'd have these dinners with Mimi and some friends,
and Dick and I would get into some goofy story
(50:27):
being East Indians or being whatever, and we go back
and forth and creating this play, and we realized everybody
had left because they were bored. It was just Stick
and me. And then at a certain point, I, you know,
I sort of got tired of it because Mimi wasn't growing,
she wasn't happy. And then you know, after he died,
(50:53):
he lived on with her forever. I mean, she couldn't
let go o him and he couldn't let go her.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Now, Mimi had a singing career. To what degree could
your sisters accept or resent your incredible success?
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Well, I think a lot of that is in the
film that there were two different reactions Paulling. The older
sister had to just leave. I mean, the closest I
ever heard her come to saying what she was able
to say in the film was that I sucked up
the oxygen in the room, and that's why she would
(51:32):
sometimes not be able to share in whatever time they
were having. And then Mimi was more complicated because Mimi
really wanted to be me in some ways, and she
wanted to be a singer, and it's true. And she
asked me, and I'll never know whether I should have
said absolutely, Mimi, and just back to the whole way.
(51:54):
I don't even know what that would have meant. But
I told her what I thought was the truth, which
is that it was going to be a rough road
with big sister, and it was.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
You're talking about Pauline, your oldest sister, saying you sucked
up the oxygen before you were famous, before you played
at Club forty seven. Did you suck up all the
oxygen in the family.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
I think that's a very good question.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
I think the answer is yes. I because Pauline's feelings
would get hurt and I didn't understand why. And then
later on, as we moved through life, I would see
that I would get the attention. For instance, when I
was thirteen, somebody gave me, gave us each a ukulele,
(52:44):
and Pauline went to a room to learn how to
play that because she was, you know, she was a perfectionist.
And I learned two chords with flying downstairs and sang
a song for everybody. So where does that leave Pauline. No,
there were things like that that happened constantly and I
(53:04):
wasn't really aware of them. I was just aware. I
might have been you know, it might have been competitive
saying well, hah, I did this before she did. But
I think it was more I could now go and
get you know, and get people's attention.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
So what was it about you that you were the
charismatic one and you wanted all the attention. You're the
middle child. Usually the oldest child is that person.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
I don't know. I mean, I don't know how the
stars lined up for the any of it. It's just
I think that there are genetics. There are the situations
you've I mean, there was Bagdad. We all had this
huge reaction to Bagdad, which was Mimi was one of
the sisters. Through her taper, she struggled through some papers
(53:57):
supposed to write and wanted it up and threw it out.
So this is how Americans think or do their homework.
And Mimi said that that never left her that kind
of shattering, and I was just And that's the pictures
in there in the film, or pictures I did back then,
(54:19):
beggars and poverty, and that impacted me in a way
that when I went through my life with those images
and as part of what I ended up doing what
I was doing, and Mimi and then Pauline, I don't
even really know. Pauline used to find a way to
say something good about everything, and in the film, I'm saying, yeah,
(54:43):
I don't think I was that easy for me to
be so jolly about our lives.
Speaker 1 (54:49):
And when you reach a level of success. I was
just reading the paper before we started. The woman who
wrote the book made turned into a Netflix series. How
everybody hit her up for money? What deg we do
you become the family breadwinner? Do you have to take
care of your family? Or was it clear of this
was your money, your life, do your thing.
Speaker 2 (55:09):
Oh, I think whenever anybody needed it now, of course
would be there with it. But it's also funny in
the film, and I'm talking about I made that money
at the Vespa company, you know, and I came home
not with just the fifteen dollars of my singing, with
(55:30):
a fist full of money and thinking that was, you know,
to make everybody happen through it in the air and
people could take what they wanted. And of course this
is stupid, you know, But I didn't know that, and
everybody resented me for it. I don't blame them.
Speaker 1 (55:50):
So it's kind of like Brian Wilson that he was
the one in the Maelstrom. He has mental problems, but
he still lives and the brothers are dead. And is
it just luck of the draw that you're the last
one standing?
Speaker 2 (56:05):
Oh, I don't know. You mean out of the whole family, right, Yeah,
I don't know. Because you're all strong, We're all physically strong,
and I am physically strong. And it ain't over it
till it's over. No, I have so many relatives who
died to cancer. So far, I've just been lucky.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
One of the points you make in the movie, which
resonates so much, is with all these people gone, you
have all these memories no one can connect with that
no one knows about.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yeah, I know. It's a strange feeling. It's very strange.
You sort of look around and realize nobody is going
to remember that but me. Maybe it's free. I can
remember it the way I want to remember it, and
nobody's going to contest that. In fact, I've written writing
a book of poetry, I've written a couple of things
(57:02):
that relate to that that you each of us has
our own perception of whatever happened, and it can be.
You know that dress was blue? No, I remember exactly.
It was pink? No, and you do you remember exactly,
And it does nothing to do with what color the
dress was. It was probably white.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
But talking about these people passing, my mother died three
years ago about this time. My father died long before that.
But as much as she was an influence on me,
there was a sense of liberation. So to what degree
with your parents and your sisters passing, do you feel
you can be more yourself as opposed to have thinking
(57:45):
about what their judgment might be.
Speaker 2 (57:48):
Oh, it's absolutely For instance, couldn't have made this film
if they were there. It was too hurtful, too confusing. Yeah,
I'm sure. I'm sure liberated in a lot of ways.
You know, they don't have to worry about you know.
(58:12):
I mean, as I went, I didn't take the film
to show me what my sisters felt. It took it
to really define it. I've never heard them say because
they would never Pauline would never get in front of
a camera. It was only because she trusted Karen O'Connor.
They'd say, I keep getting the end of the conversation.
(58:36):
What was the question.
Speaker 1 (58:38):
The question was, to what degree was it liberating with you?
Speaker 2 (58:42):
Liberating? Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it was. I'm sure it
was liberating, and I hadn't thought of it in those terms,
miss said, and then it is. There's a piece that
I didn't have to put the time and energy into
knowing it was a conflict.
Speaker 1 (59:03):
So how has all this family stuff affected your relationship
with your son?
Speaker 2 (59:10):
I was just thinking about him. We worked so hard. No.
I thought he was so generous and forgiving and eloquent
in the film, No saying really what it felt like
to be a lonely little kid. And I what I
(59:30):
learned from my family is that I wasn't nurtured properly,
and so how would I really know? How would I
know how lonely he felt. I thought I was a
great mom, you know, I thought everything was hunky Dori,
and that's what happens. And then and then it wasn't.
(59:52):
And we've had time to make up for that as
much as possible. After the film, I decided I was
going to start a bad mothers club, because seriously, I mean,
every mother thinks she was could have done more, did
wrong or so that guilt is something to deal with
(01:00:13):
for the rest of my life. Forgiving oneself seems to really,
by far the hardest thing to do. But Dave, you know,
he helps me with that. We have a wonderful therapist.
And we hit a snag, we just go back, go
back and say can you help us straighten the sound.
Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
So you married David Harris, you're involved with him, you
marry him, you're pregnant. He goes to jail for a
long time. He comes out of jail. How do you
pick up the relationship and what was it like?
Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Well, first thing comes in my mind is that somebody
who was, say, for instance, a Quaker type, who has
known themselves and seen the world in an open sense
of seeing how unimportant we are as individuals, goes into
(01:01:11):
jail with a certain mentality. And some guys would just
do it. They'd do their time and come out and
they were okay. For David, it was really, really difficult.
He had no idea. But he was macho, he was
a guy, this Fresno's Boy of the Year and all
of that was in there. Plus when he was in jail,
(01:01:34):
they picked on him, you know, because he was a magitator, etc.
And he would be in a strike they throw him
in solitary confinement, and it was very hard for him
to not resent all that after he came out. So
he had a really hard He had a really hard
go of it when he was in prison, and equally
(01:01:58):
is hard when he came out and we did. We
had a hard time.
Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
But inherently does that separation mean it's hard to pick
back up?
Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
It was for me. I mean, I'm sure for the
most stable couple, the most quakerly meditative type, it would
not be easy. But I don't think it had to
be as difficult as it was with David's nature.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Mean what it was now, David was younger than you.
Steve Jobs was younger than you. Is that just luck
of the drawer? You like younger men, I like younger men.
Can you tell me anything about that?
Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Oh, I'll leave it to your imagination.
Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
Okay, then let's just go to the crux of the
movie is its retirement tour. Most people are never on
stage in front of thousands of people, that are not
in stage in front of tens of people, And what
they don't understand is this incredible adrenaline hit that the
money is good, but a lot of people they need
(01:03:11):
that hit, so you're on the road for decades and
now you're off. Do you miss that?
Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Absolutely? Not for a second? Is that interesting? I didn't know.
I had no idea, and that reflect on that in
the films thing. I don't know what I'll feel like,
and from what I hear, everybody who quit starts up again.
But I had a feeling inside that this was it,
and I managed, I manager, and I planned. It took
(01:03:39):
three years to do this properly, and I had a
strong feeling that that was going to be it. What
I didn't know is how calm it was to stop.
And I didn't know how hard I was working until
I stopped. And as soon as I stopped, I thought,
how did I do that? I mean in the film,
(01:04:01):
how did I do that? Traveling like that? But no,
I haven't missed it, and I haven't missed the bus either,
which I thought I would do well.
Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
I know people have been on the road for a
year and a half and it takes them six months
to recover. So how long did it take you to
find your new normal after you ended?
Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Not long. I was already in the studio painting before
it ended for number of years. So I just as
though I just took a deep breath and shifted over
to the art studio.
Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
If someone called you and said, oh, we're doing a
big piece festival, come out and sing a song, you
would say, My.
Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Only regret is that I the facility to just get
up and sing a song is much more limited. So
yes I can. I'm not really interested to do that,
but if it's something that really tugs at me, then
I'll do it. I mean, I went to the Ukraine
and just sang for kids because it tugged at me,
you know. But to really join in a musical sense
(01:05:10):
takes a lot of work for me.
Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
And do you care about legacy or not?
Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
No? Oh, well the honest legacy. Yeah. Do I care
about archiving my life? No?
Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Okay, Joan. I want to thank you for taking this
time to speak to my audience and being so honest.
Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
Hey, thank you. It was fun. I like to make
you laugh, but.
Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
I'm laughing now until next time. This is Bob left
stets
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is the one and only legendary Joan Bias. Joan,
the new movie is out. I am a noise. Now
that it's out, how do you feel about it?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, the response has been absolutely extraordinary and wonderful. But
even before that, I recognize it as a superb work
of art. And that doesn't even have that much to
do with me. It's the filmmaking. I mean, I'm glad
they were making it about me, but it is really
(00:48):
a work of art, and it was meant to be
an honest legacy, and it did turn out to be that.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Well, it's one thing to have private conversations, is another
thing to hear your see your story depicted on the
big screen for everybody. You talk about a lot of
personal elements, depression, relationships. Do you squirm a little bit
seeing that up there? Or do you say, no, that's me,
that's fine.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
The funny thing is what I squirm about is something
like a vocal lesson the other You know, it's me,
It's fine. I didn't know how i'd feel. Plus I
wasn't there when I made it. I had nothing to
say about it at the very very end, they do.
You want to have a look, but it's too mad
to do anything about it. So I didn't know what
(01:39):
extent of it would be cringe worthy, But the little
parts that are now just make me laugh. And I
know that as a whole, whatever is in there is
in there for a reason. And you know, I mean,
I've got nothing to lose now, really, Famili's gone. I'm
eighty two, and if I want to be honest, let's
(02:04):
just let it all hang out. So that's what we did.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So you talk a lot about depression in the movie.
When did you first feel that you were different from
other people that you felt depressed?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, it's funny about depression. My mother was depressed her
whole life, but didn't know it until she took any
depression when she was in her eighties. So you don't know,
you just know, I mean, for me, speaking for me,
I didn't know that word. I didn't know. I just
knew I was different. I knew other kids didn't feel
(02:36):
sick in the morning, didn't you know? Those are the
things that made me feel different, you know, in another
world from my classmates.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
So do you take medication now?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yes, I do for the deep work that I did
to really go through the tunnel and come out what
I considered to be healthy human being. We had to
find the appropriate medication that would allow me to work.
If I was working from a place of depression and
(03:11):
I didn't have really didn't have my faculties available to me,
I don't think it could have worked, or it would
have been really really painful. So to find that takes
some experimenting, you know. And then we came up and
I still it's different now because it internally one changes
(03:31):
and periodically something will go off and I'll review the
medication see what Maybe you know I need less of
or more of, et cetera. But I know I'm still
on it. It's a steady I'm joking about it in
the film, you know. I say I'm taking sea sick
pills and nausea pills, up and down pills, and then
(03:55):
on top of that, I take my own stuff, So
my own stuff is what's concerned.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, So how is your outlook and feeling differently different
now that you're on medication.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I don't think that's the question. I think the question
is how is it different from the work that I did?
I think, well, okay, do this way. If I stopped
all on medication, I think I would be in pretty
big trouble. But that isn't the issue because I'm I
found what's appropriate to keep the highest from being too
(04:31):
high and the lows from being too low. And then
it's more about the work that I have done and
to some degree still do. But I don't see a
therapist anymore. No, I'm really free of that. So no,
it is it's about the work. It's about having done
the work.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Okay. In the film, you say that you ultimately do
this deep work at a relatively advanced age, inspired by
your system. Me me, can you tell us a little
bit more how that comes to be?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Well, she was She and I always knew there was
something wrong. I mean, there's something wrong with our relationship,
but we never understood why. And then but she was
the first one to think, whoopsie, you know, maybe it
was something that we really that was really buried and
did I was I understood in going investigating that with her,
(05:25):
and so we both embarked on this journey and came
up with very similar stories and supported each other through
it in spite of our difficulties. Together, You know, we
really were there to support each other on their mutual journeys.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Well, in the movie, there's issues of abuse, which your
father denies and the two of you believe happened. Uh,
how did you reconcile your father's deniy was what you felt?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
You know? I read him. I was reading a book
of a famous actor who I willed that name, but
he he discovered that he was abused by a priest
when he was eight, and he struggled with that for
his entire lifetime, and at one point decided he was
going to call this old man you know who had
(06:24):
abused him and other kids. And he called him, ready
to just say, you know, you sort of a bitch,
you whatever, and he realized he couldn't say anything. This
old guy was a pleasant old man who was living
probably a fairly decent life, having passed the stage where
he had to do all the shenanigans, and he didn't.
(06:45):
And he realized I didn't remember. I mean, he buried it.
And I don't know how that happens, but obviously it
happened to me. So I the reason I could forgive
my parents is that I I knew they didn't remember anything,
and that that's one of the hardest things for people
to understand, because I mean, just the expression on your face,
(07:10):
for instance, on the zoom is what what what the
fuck is that about?
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Okay, So, how do you find a box to put
that in? All these years later?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
I guess the process of discovering who did what to
whom is a long process and a deep process, and
I guess the best answer to that is putting in
my little multiple helpers, and that's what they're there for,
and just somebody helps take the take the load off
(07:49):
each You know, each time there's a fresh realization, there
are different ways, there are different places to put it in,
different ways to deal with it. And it's ongoing, No,
it's it's constant through that time period of discovery.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
In the movie, you say a number of times you're
not good at relationships. Do you think that's as a
result of the abuse?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
I think that from when I talk to people, everybody
goes ha ha ha ha, yam too, So I don't.
I think one to one, one on one relationships are
probably the hardest things for us, the human beings, to tackle.
I think that it's exacerbated by the fact that we
once trusted and that trust was taken away, you know,
(08:39):
so who do you trust? You don't to be intimate
means you have to trust the other person to open
yourself up to the other person. So I'm kind of
joking when I say I'm I mean, I'm really good
one on two thousand, because I am, and I never
I mean. Towards the end of the time period that
(09:01):
I was really working on this stuff, I reached a
level of wholeness that I couldn't have imagined before. And
my therapis said he started hinting around about, well, you know,
maybe the next step is to try and find somebody,
to find a partner, and I didn't know. I'm happy here.
(09:22):
I don't want to take on that load, which you'd
take another ten years. So that was just a decision
I made because I know that I don't have the
patients to disrupt my life again when it's reached this really,
really happy level.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Now we've had COVID the last handful of years really
been crazy. But what does your everyday life look like?
Are you more of a homebody? Do you go out?
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I am homebody. I would say those two choices very much.
Your homebody, I guess I've been out enough for sixty
years traveling around, and I thought, oh, you know, when
I'm through with that, and I can go visit these
places and just hang out and see stuff, all things
I didn't do while I was traveling. But I haven't
really had any interest in getting back on a plane.
(10:14):
The only thing I've been doing is hopping around the
country talking about this film. And you know, at some
point that might change, because because right now it's I
don't have a what's a normal day for Joan? You know,
when I'm not working on something. A normal day for
Joan is more time on the property. There's a creek
(10:37):
on this property where I spend a lot of time.
It's my one of my happy places. I collect rocks,
I mean I do. I talk to trees. I live
a life full of nature, as much as a much
nature as I can fit in there.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Okay, you're someone who is attractive, outspoken, in legendary famous.
I have to believe when you're out and about to
use the vernacular, men are hitting on you.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
But a nice thought, I mean son thought, because at
this age it's a question of sensuality, sexuality. Where is that?
When I was talking to Jane fondo. She said, oh,
I closed up shop a couple of years ago, and
I said, well, I don't know what's what is here
(11:31):
at this point to be hit upon. I feel very
vibrant and I would be delighteders. No men were hitting
on me as long as I don't have to hit back.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
So if a man is warm and congenial, you basically
send a vibe. At best, we're on the friend level.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Probably probably yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And when we were young, person, what vibe did you send?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Oh? I think really confused messages. I mean really, I
look back at myself and my schoolmates. They couldn't understand me.
I mean I didn't understand me, but it was very
confusing message that I sent out. And I'm thinking also
when we moved to Baghdad, for we were there for
(12:29):
a year, my family and I would write my classmates
and they never responded. And I was telling them all
about Baghdad. Well, they had no point of reference. It
wasn't interesting to them that or not I was talking about.
So it was just one more I guess what I'm
saying is that when we moved a lot and so
(12:52):
I never really did have time to hang out and
get friends. So I don't know whether I really was
capable of doing that or not, but the messages a
girlfriend from those days, there were a few people who
were really kind to me, and this girl was so
(13:13):
sweet and would go through the when I was having
a panic attack. She'd be helpful and she would be there.
Then years and years later, decades later, I got a
letter of her from her saying, oh, now I get it.
She had developed a phobia of bridges, going over a
bridge and that, you know, all of a sudden, Oh,
is that's what my strange friend Joan was going through.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
When did you have your first panic attack?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Oh, Jesus, I don't know. I mean depends probably on
how you define it. When you're really little, pretty little, And.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
If you told your mother you were feeling this way,
what would she say?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Oh? She I wanted to be with my mom because
she would say, oh, let's have a cup of tea.
I mean, I've run home from school in kindergarten. That
my first day of kindergarten, I remember, and I found
my way back home because I couldn't. I was too
scared to be there. And instead of saying, well, we're
(14:13):
going to take your back and talk to the teacher.
She said, oh, let's have a cup of tea. You know,
so that did two things. It was my comfort zone
but also helped keep me from dealing with the reality
out there. I'm still glad she did it.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Okay, so you live this tenoran lifestyle and you talk
about not being able to make friends. How much of
that was situational and how much of that was you.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Well, yeah, that's what I was trying to say just
now that because we traveled like that, and I don't
know if we'd ended up somewhere for ten years, would
I have developed, you know, relationships, would they have been healthy?
Would they have been healthy relationship? I mean this first
time I thought of it in those terms. But if
(15:04):
I had stayed somewhere, I really don't know. I can't
imagine that I would really develop, you know, a healthy
bunch of friends around me that I wanted to hang
out with and you do whatever normal kids do.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
So at this late date, how integrated? How mean you
talk to other people on the phone? Do you hear
from email or you're more of an ice, You're more
of an isolated person with your team.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
No, No, I have the emails and the text coming
and going, and yeah, no, I'm not isolated in that sense. Really,
it's just not I just really don't want to go anywhere.
I don't want to. I don't go to many concerts.
It's just like, you know, I'm stay home and I
(15:52):
have lots of friends. Now I have good friends.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Okay, I move.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
We have movie night and there are six women who
watch it. This happened when my mom was still alive
for ten years in her little house, we'd have movie
Night the first Tuesday of every month. Well I'm still
doing that. And then I have another group of friends.
We dance together. We used to dance in the city
and now we just dance on Zoom once a week
(16:18):
and that's and then I have a group I call
the Gang of Eight. And there are people I refer
to for anything political, to discuss with them and ask
their suggestions and their thoughts. So some of those overlap.
But I have a lot of friends.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So how do you pick the movies? And what are
some good movies you've seen?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
How do you pick the movies? Oh, usually it's somebody
has a plan and then we start talking about it
and the planet switches and then we just turn on
TV and see whatever comes up. We turn on the
Prime one night and on the Waterfront was on, and
it was it was an old brainer. It was so wonderful,
especially compared to so much of the trashism that's out now,
(17:03):
to see, you know, really good. Sometimes you just want
to be silly. I think the next one I have
in my mind for us to watch is TUTSI. I
haven't seen it for years, you know, it would make
us laugh. And then their serious nights, in their nights
when there's political stuff going on, and we'll brave it,
you know, I'll watch something it's hard to watch.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And this group of eight that you check in with
political stuff on what kind of topics have you been
broaching recently?
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Well, you know, obviously the most recent is the Middle East,
where we all pretty much decide the exception of few things,
I wish they had them in front of me, because
there are a few things that you can do and
go and be with. It's such an agonizing situation. And
we're all, you know, and have been non violent activists
(17:56):
for most of our lives, and there comes a point
when things aren't such full flow. There's very little room
for non violent action, although there is some and you know,
it's non violent action. There's those wonderful women who are
thanking their captors and getting hell for it because they're
(18:19):
supposed to be resentful and shabby. And this woman, I
guess shaking hands with her abductor, with her kidnapper as
he treated her well, she's saying thank you. That is
an act of strength, and real strength.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
You're a cent in your career coincided with the advent
of the sixties, youth quake blowing up. Politics was everything.
The younger generation was a great percentage of the population.
There was the Vietnam War in nineteen seventy, there was
Kent State, there was a so called returned to the land,
(19:04):
people looking their wounds, and then we had the Iran
crisis in the next decade, and people were talking about
bombing Iran. With the perspective you have, it's like, is
there any hope can we you know? Or is this
just endemic to society.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I don't really know. I know that, you know, people
would assume that I'm an optimist. I never have been.
I struggle to not be a pessimist. Somebody suggested it
was a waste of time, and I think that's true.
I struggle with hope. Somebody said, hope is a discipline,
(19:46):
and it's like a muscle. It has to be exercised
for me, for somebody who's glass half empty and sometimes
all the way empty. I think the trick is that
I've always done what I've done anyway, whether I was
optimistic about it or not. The moral compass would just
(20:06):
dictate what I did next.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
In the movie, it hints at the fact that you
always knew you were different, you were charismatic, you were
going to be successful. When did you internally recognize that.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
I don't know about being successful. I don't think that
word was in my vocabulary. I had total faith in
my voice. I might have been, you know, had squeamish
about everything else, or thought I wasn't good enough, or
thought I was a dumb Mexican whatever, But once that
voice started to I'd say by sixteen, I was sure
(20:52):
that it was special. By the time I was twenty,
and there was nothing could have could have inter feared
with my feelings about my own voice. So I don't
know what your question was.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Now, Well, okay, well you felt that voice to be successful.
In the world of entertainment, talent, is it most fifty percent.
The other fifty percent is dry and need, etc. So
where did that drive and need come from?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I think I don't seize myself as ambitious, and I
think it's probably because I didn't have to be. I
had to get ambitious enough to keep going when the
career fell apart. And that's all in the film is
pretty clear. But at the beginning, my idea of the
(21:45):
future was the following Wednesday. You know I didn't have
Some kid asked me once I was about seventeen, I
thought I was going to be famous, and I hadn't
even thought about it. It seemed like a fun idea.
Once he said it, I didn't me. I thought that
would be kind of cool. And once I was seeing
(22:05):
any chiatrist when I was twenty, and I told him
I'd had a dream that I was singing with Harry
Bellafai and he said, don't you think you're having delusions
in grandeur?
Speaker 1 (22:15):
And I said, no, that begs the question. Did you
ever sing with Harry Bellefanie?
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Yes? I did, Yeah, I did on Marches. Yeah, what
a wonderful guy.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Okay, so your family moves to Boston. How do you
end up playing at club forty seven.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Well, I have to say, good old Dad took his
three daughters and his wife into Cambridge because he'd seen
with his own eyes these coffee shops and he knew that,
you know, I was starting to play guitar and starting
to learn folk music. And he took us into Cambridge,
and he took us into the Harbor Square. He walked around.
(22:57):
I remember looking in the door of one of these
coffee shops sing a guy playing guitar, singing, sitting under
his yellow light. Everybody's smoking, and all these students, you know,
discussing whatever, and that kind of was. It was a bingo,
you know. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted
(23:19):
to go and beg every song off of him and
everybody I knew, everybody I met, and have them teach me,
teach me the guitar.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Okay, So what happened first the learning process? Did you
would shed for a while or at what point did
you get up on stage and then perform for others?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Oh? Very fast, Because I was eighteen or nineteen at Newport,
I had already sung. I sang this thing for the Shriners.
I mean I would go where somebody said, hey, I
was sixteen. I'm in high school. So and so wanted
you to come and sing for their class. Okay, I
(23:59):
go singing to their class. Some of his dad was
with the Shriners. They wanted me to come and sing
with the Shriners. And I went and I sang in
his drunken old shriner came over and he said, honey,
don't sign cheap.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
It's that great phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
That was really funny.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, okay, was your first public outing club forty seven
or did you play another clubs before that?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
No, that was the first one and almost the only one.
I mean it was became home and I started off
on every two I think it was every Tuesday, and
had ten dollars. That was a big deal. Then they
added a probably it was Tuesdays and Fridays. Then it
went up to fifteen dollars, and I really felt he
felt like a rich girl. And I had had two jobs.
(24:51):
I had had one job at Boston Vespa company, where
I taught people how to drive vestpro.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
So I had to if you're driving investment was did
you ever crash?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yes? I did once, but it was on a motorcycle.
It was on a little tiny, stupid motorcycle. But yes,
I did fall over once as on my way to
my psychiatrist, and I told what happened. He said, are
you crazy? That's a stupid question. Anyway, where did I
Where did I veer off?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Just now you were talking about playing Club forty seven,
working your way up the ladder.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, I played the one week. The first night I played,
there was my mother and father, two sisters, and one
other person. I don't remember who that was. That was it,
probably the owners of the club. And then whatever happened
between that and the following week, it was then full,
(25:48):
and I don't remember what happened.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And then if there were only your family members there,
why did everybody show up a week later?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
I don't know. And I don't know if anybody knew
on that first night, or if the word got out
or I don't know, but it was really fast. And
then shortly after that, Albert Grossman, who handled just about
everybody in the folk world, invited me to come to Newport.
(26:19):
Wanted me to go to Newport, and so.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
So I went.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
And that was the You know what I'm thinking when
I'm going through this, I had already been to Chicago,
to the Gate of Horn to sing itub It was
his club and it was a real club and people
drank and stuff. It was a big deal for me
because I didn't think that was appropriate. Man, people drank anywhere.
(26:44):
So and I was there for a couple of weeks
opening for Bob Gibson. That's okay, that's how it goes.
And then Gibson was singing at Newport and he invited me,
an Odette invited me, and that's where that's we were
all kind of pop.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Let's go a little bit slower. You're playing club forty seven,
you're going to college. How do you end up dropping
out of college?
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Oh? That was easy, that was the easy part. I
literally I was there for about six weeks. I mean
after that it was just pretending to my parents that
I was in school. I don't think there was I
didn't know there are that many ways to flunk. There
was you know, there was a zero, there was an F,
(27:32):
there was a missing an action, whatever they are. But
the only grade I got that was decent was art class,
and it was because they studied Alasco caves. And I
was so enthralled with that that I actually paid attention.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Okay, but your your father's academic how does he feel
about you dripping out of college?
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Horrible? But he knew. I mean, my opalling went to
college just really for him. She had no desire to
go and she didn't last there. And I was so
out of it. By the end of high school. Everybody's
talking about college boards. I didn't know what a college
(28:16):
board was, and I was too embarrassed to ask, And
anytime anybody said it, I just pictured a two x
four plank a board that and I wouldn't go be
I wouldn't ask any questions beyond that. And then my
mother was trying to get me interested in one of
the East Coast girls schools, you know, Bennington, where it's
(28:37):
free for the arts and encouraged arts and music. And
I went to the interview with Mimi and my parents
and it was a complete disaster. She'd say something like, well,
what are your study habits like, and I'd say, I
don't have any you know. It was just horrible, and
I didn't get in. And the only place I got
(28:58):
into was Boston University. Fine Arts.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Okay, so you're at Club forty seven. You obviously are
feeling good that there's an audience, you're making money. What
At what point do professionals say, hey, kid, you know
you should come here and make a deal with me.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Well, actually that happened when I was in high school,
and these two they remind me of the of those
sneaky guys in Pinocchio. They kind of came in, they said,
come on, little girl, we're going to make an album.
And all I had was stuff like Annie had a
baby and work with me, Annie and six Bellefontie songs.
(29:41):
So I went and did everything I knew and they
pressed it and it was one that we banned. I
can't remember the name of it, but it was really
really early. And then it was that come on, honey,
we're going to make you famous. And then oh it
(30:02):
happened in an ice way. That all at grossman time period.
I was in twenty nineteen, I think, and he wanted
me to sign with Columbia, which is where everybody was going,
and I was just leary of the size of it,
you know, the gold records on the walls, and I
wanted to talk to Vanguard, which is basically a classical
(30:24):
music company. And first I went to Columbia with Grossman,
and I literally developed a cold while I was sitting
there and he's over my shoulder saying sign here, and
I said, no, I had to fight it. No, I
want to go talk to Vanguard first. And of course
I was more comfortable at Vanguard. And it was a
wonderful decision.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
It was a wonderful decision because because it.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Was the right company for me. The Maynard Solomon owned
the company, and he produced my albums, and he understood
and loved folk music and he, you know, we helped
me with always with the songs I was going to choose,
And yeah, I don't know what the path would have been.
(31:11):
If I'd gone on Columbia, probably fine, Probably would have
been fine. But I think for me to stay oriented,
for me to not tip over, it's probably safer to
be with that guard.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Okay, you start to have the success very quickly. How
do you cope with the attention? Very few people are
in this situation, yeah, and very few people in this
situation that quickly. Yeah, but there's a lot of tumult.
There's no one from your regular life who understands what
you're going through. Yeah, So what was it like for you?
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Well, as part of it was really exciting because there
I was with an identity, and there I was with
people paying attention to me, and I had value and worths.
And then so that would It's like reading reviews. If
you read good reviews, you get all puffed up. If
(32:08):
you read bad ones, you get miserable. You know, So
what do you do with your life? And that do
you believe everybody was saying wonderful things about you? I
know that my Quaker background was helpful because I understood
about being quiet, and I understood about meditation, and I
understood about you know that I was just so small
(32:29):
in this, in the greater scheme of things, and so
I did a lot of meditation and prayer back then
to sort of try and keep me on the right path.
And not that I was always on the right path,
but I but I tried. At an early age. I tried,
and I was a little neurotic. I didn't. I mean,
I didn't want anything on the stage. I want to
(32:52):
pitch black. I wanted no frills, and I thought it
would be easier for everybody, and it wasn't. It was
just as difficult. People had planned to pour roses on
the stage, you know. And then once I said no
more limousines for me, I don't want any more limousines
because I felt too privileged. And that lasted a couple
(33:15):
of months. If somebody showed up has broken down, Volkswagen Bus,
give me the limousines back, and I've been happy in
them ever since. I wish they didn't need so much gas.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
What about the me too moments?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
I was not not active in that, and you know,
I wasn't speaking about myself at that point.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
So I guess what I'm saying is, you're a young girl,
twenty years old, you're in business, You're a hot commodity.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Anyway, I see any.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Woman who's twenty years old, even at this late date,
with new consciousness, it's a volatile situation.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Say which situation?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Sorry, sexually charged with men trying to take advantage of you.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Oh I see, well, I think it was in some
ways too puritanical at some point, and then they didn't
take advantage when I hadn't slept with them. Okay, this
isn't I don't know if it's okay or not, but
I'm just trying to be honest.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Oh died great, But this is an era with the
folk music scene. We even end up with a TV
show about folk music Kot and Nanny prior to the Beatles,
but Dylan comes along in the early sixties. First album
is Covers, but then he starts to write did you
feel any pressure to write? Did you feel different from
(34:43):
the people who wrote?
Speaker 2 (34:45):
You know what, I never even considered it, because I
just considered that I was an interpreter of folk balance
folk music. And it was somebody after ten years in
said well, are you ever going to write anything? And
that's the first time I'd really thought about her. And
that's when I I wrote Sweetster Galahad, and so I
(35:07):
sort of proved to myself that yeah, I could write.
And then after that I enjoyed it. I mean, I
wrote a bunch of things.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
And what did you feel when the Beatles came along?
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Oh? I loved the Beatles. I was in there. I
was when they might have been their first show in
the States. It is certainly the first tour. I was
in Denver and they were I'd been at Red Rocks
and they were there the next night, and I met
them out there, absolutely charming and funny, and they were
(35:41):
so thrilled in that hotel room. They had a whole
floor to themselves. What got them most excited was the
fact that there was a Coca Cola machine. You didn't
have to put any money in. It looked ludn't put
the co in, and then you get to Coca Colo.
They were happy.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Did you have any idea that the British invasion was
coming and this might negatively impact your career?
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Neither I learned, as as everybody else did. They started,
you know, just one hit after another in this massive phenomenon,
and you know, I was fortunate enough to spend a
little time with them.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Well did you wake up in the later years and say,
wait a second. You know, you talk about the seventies
in the movie, but even the sixties you'd say, wait
a second. You know, I'm not the hot thing, and
the direction seems to be going somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, that was a little later, because I was a
hot thing for maybe fifteen years or something, and then
I was, you know, still more than tepid for the
next five or six years. Okay, question again, Well.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Let me let me back into it. You are famously
in the Woodstock movie. Okay, no one else is like you.
You're pregnant. You're talking about your husband in jail when
you see that or when you're reminded of that, do
you feel comfortable or do you feel you're being so
authentic that you WinCE in some way?
Speaker 2 (37:19):
No, I you know, I don't WinCE much in this.
I was young, Dylan was young, We still had our
baby fat. We got to forgive ourselves for some things. No,
there are a couple of times when I laugh. The
goal I had we're going to start a peace movement
and talking it was just rolling off the tongue. No,
(37:41):
and that's what I felt that it's kind of it's
not cringe eorthy, just sort of amazing and slightly funny.
And then I went on and did as much of
that as I could in my lifetime.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Okay, so tell me about the realization in the seventies
that you're talking about after fifteen years in the business.
A second, I seem to be in my own little
eddie and it seems to be a have passed me by.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Well, I think it does. A realization doesn't come that fast. First,
it's how come this hall isn't full? They must not
have gotten the advertisements out in time? You everything, it's
finger pointing time, And couldn't never dawned on me that
I would have anything but a full house, because that's
(38:27):
how it started out, and that's how it was. So
that was the beginning, just the very beginning, because it
took years really to catch up with my life as
a musician. I was way steadier with the politics. I mean,
that was I was on solid ground with that. So yeah,
(38:50):
I think, And I start the film off by saying,
I don't think anybody who's ever been famous thinks it's
ever going to stop, especially if you're that young. No,
there's no frame of reference except you know, there.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Was my own. So you know, you talk in the
movie about having success with diamonds and rust and then
switching managers. It was a bad decision. Now, if you
many musicians from that era will tell you they're living
off the publishing and the performing rights money that you
can get mailbox money when you're sitting at home. But
(39:26):
you didn't write that many songs, that's true. How's it
worked out for you financially?
Speaker 2 (39:34):
I had some really good people around me, Otherwise I'd
be a mess that I had. I did pick wonderful people,
and they worked me through that quagmire because they knew
what they were doing. And I'm fine. I am not.
You know, I am not a millionaires. I never will
(39:56):
be that interested in making that kind of money. So
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Okay, you write Diamonds and Rust. It ends up becoming
very successful, even on FM radio, which is getting harder
and more corporate. At the time. You're writing about the
ten years before twelve years before Bob Dylan, did this
cause any Let me put it this way. Did you
(40:33):
say I'm going to do this or did you say, hmm,
you know, I'm trading on the past. I'm trading on Dylan.
This might not be the right thing to do.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
No, I wasn't trading on anybody. I just wrote the song.
I had no idea that it was going to become popular.
In fact, I was writing another song to that melody.
And it's true Bob called from the phone booth in
the Midwest and they read me one of his songs,
and that's where the whole song was triggered. That I
(41:03):
just had written a song. And anyway, if you didn't
know the history of Bob and me to some degree,
fortunately it still holds up as a song.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
It absolutely does. But there was so much information back then.
So this phone call took place when.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Oh, I'm not going to remember. Please don't ask me
date you No.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
What I'm trying to say is was this a memory
of a phone call in the sixties or was this
just before you wrote the song?
Speaker 2 (41:32):
It was just before I wrote the song.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, so you had maintained contact with Bob Dylan over
these years?
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Not really, I mean it was sort of out of
the blue that Betty called. Yeah, it was nine. You know,
we weren't buddies all that time, and you talked of
it all now. I don't know if anybody does.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
He's busy on tour than going back to the bus.
So you meet him when his career is very nascent,
and then in sixty five, as a giant radio hit
like a Rolling Stone, you go to England with him.
Did you see him change? This is you know in
the movie you talk about the fact you wake up
one day, what am I doing here? This is not
(42:20):
my world? Okay? Did he change with success? Was that
part of it?
Speaker 2 (42:26):
I think so? I think so. And it was also
says that the film had happened very quickly, that suddenly
there was this crush of people around him. It started
but just kids, you know, fans wanted to be around
him and adore him. And then it was a slightly
(42:48):
different scene going to Europe. Yes, there were all those fans,
but then there was his sort of cluster of in
house people, of the in crowd, and that's where I
was not comfortable. I think I was welcomed, but I
wasn't comfortable. And in the end, you know, those that
group of people, it was really a druggy group, and
(43:14):
I didn't. I didn't fit in. I didn't. It wasn't
part of my circles.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
So in terms of your own drug, as we said
back then, experimentation, we did you go through that? Was
it never your thing? Or you dabbled?
Speaker 2 (43:31):
No. The only thing ever, and it's also in the
film was many years later fet Onto Coaylude and took
a lot of coyluded for about eight years. But well,
everybody else was doing all this stuff. They were leaving
these pills on the stool by their microphone, and you know,
it probably was great stuff, but I just didn't relate
to it. I throw it in my purse and return
(43:53):
to powder. So I wasn't. I just didn't relate to it.
For whatever. I don't think they're virtue reasons. I think
I've probably just scared.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
So quayludes and soapers, which are the same things, start
to happen in the early seventies. So how do you
first start taking quayludes?
Speaker 2 (44:13):
I can't remember. I can't remember because I was so
scared of taking anything. I must have taken an eighth
of it or something, and that a sixth of one,
and I never took Mommy the half of them. Half
one was probably the most I ever took at a time.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
So what was the motivation to continue to take them
all those years?
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Comfort zone? It was made my life easier, made meeting people, laughing,
going to restaurants, all things that had a lot of anxiety.
It took away to anxiety. That's the real answer to
your question.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
So, even at this late date, although we're all older,
did you have a level of social anxiety? Like as
someone called you up, Oh, we're going to go to
dann there's going to be s having people there you
don't know, would say, oh, sounds great. When I show up,
you say, well, you know, I really have something I
want to do at home. I'd rather not.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
No, when you're saying that, I don't go to dinner
that much. But when I go with my pals. We
have a wonderful time. No, I think it's boiling down
to it. And I hadn't thought about all this till
we started talking. I don't know how many friends one
really needs. I know, I'm not interested in going to parties.
(45:31):
I'm not interested in going to places where the leaves
look like really nice people. And then somebody says, oh,
I saw you in nineteen seventy two and I was
wearing a plaid shirt, sitting in the front row. I think, yeah,
not interested, you know, but I try to be nice
because that meant something in that person's life. Somebody gave
(45:52):
me a great T shirt wanted to said please, don't
tell me your story, and then he proceeded to tell
me his long story about how he found the T shirt. Anyway,
it's about people wanting to place themselves in your life
or place you, and what it meant to them so
and it meant a lots. So I think treating them
decently is the you know what I can do.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Okay, So you're a famous person, you're out and about
on tour, you're in an airport, whatever. Everybody who comes
up to you tells you a story.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
They want to do you travel with me someday and
it's just you. I see it in their eyes and
they take a big breath they say I saw you
as they go fuck do. And I was in the
front row. And almost a lot of people will start
with you may not remember me, but I think you know,
(46:47):
the chances that I remembering you I want in a million.
But how do I you know, let that person know
that they count as a person and try to avoid it.
Sometimes I'll just say no stories, no stories please.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Well that's one of the reasons I don't talk on
the phone people bull It's like, get to the ask
what do you want? So I can say no, so
I can hang.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Up perfect because we're get to the ask. When I
do Q and A after the film and you have
to say, please just ask a question. I am not
interested in here. Yeah, gotta say it. Sometimes they actually do.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
That drives me crazy. Have Q and A and somebody
stands up to make a company. We don't give a
shit what you have to say. The people of the
stage are the ones. But just to drill down a
little bit further on this, not now, but when you
were throughout your life brought into situations well, you may
or may not have been the focus, and there were
(47:47):
people you didn't know. Did that cause extreme anxiety?
Speaker 2 (47:53):
You know, as you're saying that, I sort of picture myself.
I was pretty. I was protected somehow because I was
already separate from them. I wasn't vying for a friendship
position or I knew I looked okay. You know, I
was established in myself. I might not have been very interested,
(48:15):
and I might have been, I might have gotten more
out of it. And if I'd been more interested and
more open, but I was okay for the most part.
I was okay.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
And living is a famous person. Where people treat you
differently your whole life, good, bad or otherwise, How would
I know? Well? Sometimes, I mean everybody can tell. You
can perceive that when you're in a group of people,
they're treating you differently from the other people in the room.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
No, But what I mean is that's gone on more
of my life than not, you see, So that's what
I mean. How would I know? I wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Well, I understand your point of your life. You're the phone.
But you can tell when someone's being as sick a fan,
Oh yeah, I can.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
And the clearest I've ever had to be was just say,
get the fuck out of here. I get what you're
trying to say. I am not interested. Stop saying it now.
I'm going to call a tour manager and get the
fuck out of here.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
And in your everyday life, when somebody calls you on
your shit, are you good with that or not good
with that?
Speaker 2 (49:25):
I'm pretty good with that. I don't have therapy to
be pretty good with that. In fact, you know you
asked to be called on your shit. You have to
ask because it's hard for people to. You know, somebody's
standing there buttoned up, wishing that you would change or
you have to unbutton and I have to hear it.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Okay. In the movie we do see Richard Ferina, it
does not mention the book he wrote, which is one
of the most impactful books I've ever read. Been down
so long it looks like up to me right as
a freshman in college. What can you tell us about Richard?
Speaker 2 (50:04):
Richard was an interesting guy. He fancied himself a man
about the world, and in some ways he was. In
some ways he was a big blowhard. I can tell
you that he and I for a while would get
into these we'd have these dinners with Mimi and some friends,
and Dick and I would get into some goofy story
(50:27):
being East Indians or being whatever, and we go back
and forth and creating this play, and we realized everybody
had left because they were bored. It was just Stick
and me. And then at a certain point, I, you know,
I sort of got tired of it because Mimi wasn't growing,
she wasn't happy. And then you know, after he died,
(50:53):
he lived on with her forever. I mean, she couldn't
let go o him and he couldn't let go her.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Now, Mimi had a singing career. To what degree could
your sisters accept or resent your incredible success?
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Well, I think a lot of that is in the
film that there were two different reactions Paulling. The older
sister had to just leave. I mean, the closest I
ever heard her come to saying what she was able
to say in the film was that I sucked up
the oxygen in the room, and that's why she would
(51:32):
sometimes not be able to share in whatever time they
were having. And then Mimi was more complicated because Mimi
really wanted to be me in some ways, and she
wanted to be a singer, and it's true. And she
asked me, and I'll never know whether I should have
said absolutely, Mimi, and just back to the whole way.
(51:54):
I don't even know what that would have meant. But
I told her what I thought was the truth, which
is that it was going to be a rough road
with big sister, and it was.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
You're talking about Pauline, your oldest sister, saying you sucked
up the oxygen before you were famous, before you played
at Club forty seven. Did you suck up all the
oxygen in the family.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
I think that's a very good question.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
I think the answer is yes. I because Pauline's feelings
would get hurt and I didn't understand why. And then
later on, as we moved through life, I would see
that I would get the attention. For instance, when I
was thirteen, somebody gave me, gave us each a ukulele,
(52:44):
and Pauline went to a room to learn how to
play that because she was, you know, she was a perfectionist.
And I learned two chords with flying downstairs and sang
a song for everybody. So where does that leave Pauline. No,
there were things like that that happened constantly and I
(53:04):
wasn't really aware of them. I was just aware. I
might have been you know, it might have been competitive
saying well, hah, I did this before she did. But
I think it was more I could now go and
get you know, and get people's attention.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
So what was it about you that you were the
charismatic one and you wanted all the attention. You're the
middle child. Usually the oldest child is that person.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
I don't know. I mean, I don't know how the
stars lined up for the any of it. It's just
I think that there are genetics. There are the situations
you've I mean, there was Bagdad. We all had this
huge reaction to Bagdad, which was Mimi was one of
the sisters. Through her taper, she struggled through some papers
(53:57):
supposed to write and wanted it up and threw it out.
So this is how Americans think or do their homework.
And Mimi said that that never left her that kind
of shattering, and I was just And that's the pictures
in there in the film, or pictures I did back then,
(54:19):
beggars and poverty, and that impacted me in a way
that when I went through my life with those images
and as part of what I ended up doing what
I was doing, and Mimi and then Pauline, I don't
even really know. Pauline used to find a way to
say something good about everything, and in the film, I'm saying, yeah,
(54:43):
I don't think I was that easy for me to
be so jolly about our lives.
Speaker 1 (54:49):
And when you reach a level of success. I was
just reading the paper before we started. The woman who
wrote the book made turned into a Netflix series. How
everybody hit her up for money? What deg we do
you become the family breadwinner? Do you have to take
care of your family? Or was it clear of this
was your money, your life, do your thing.
Speaker 2 (55:09):
Oh, I think whenever anybody needed it now, of course
would be there with it. But it's also funny in
the film, and I'm talking about I made that money
at the Vespa company, you know, and I came home
not with just the fifteen dollars of my singing, with
(55:30):
a fist full of money and thinking that was, you know,
to make everybody happen through it in the air and
people could take what they wanted. And of course this
is stupid, you know, But I didn't know that, and
everybody resented me for it. I don't blame them.
Speaker 1 (55:50):
So it's kind of like Brian Wilson that he was
the one in the Maelstrom. He has mental problems, but
he still lives and the brothers are dead. And is
it just luck of the draw that you're the last
one standing?
Speaker 2 (56:05):
Oh, I don't know. You mean out of the whole family, right, Yeah,
I don't know. Because you're all strong, We're all physically strong,
and I am physically strong. And it ain't over it
till it's over. No, I have so many relatives who
died to cancer. So far, I've just been lucky.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
One of the points you make in the movie, which
resonates so much, is with all these people gone, you
have all these memories no one can connect with that
no one knows about.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yeah, I know. It's a strange feeling. It's very strange.
You sort of look around and realize nobody is going
to remember that but me. Maybe it's free. I can
remember it the way I want to remember it, and
nobody's going to contest that. In fact, I've written writing
a book of poetry, I've written a couple of things
(57:02):
that relate to that that you each of us has
our own perception of whatever happened, and it can be.
You know that dress was blue? No, I remember exactly.
It was pink? No, and you do you remember exactly,
And it does nothing to do with what color the
dress was. It was probably white.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
But talking about these people passing, my mother died three
years ago about this time. My father died long before that.
But as much as she was an influence on me,
there was a sense of liberation. So to what degree
with your parents and your sisters passing, do you feel
you can be more yourself as opposed to have thinking
(57:45):
about what their judgment might be.
Speaker 2 (57:48):
Oh, it's absolutely For instance, couldn't have made this film
if they were there. It was too hurtful, too confusing. Yeah,
I'm sure. I'm sure liberated in a lot of ways.
You know, they don't have to worry about you know.
(58:12):
I mean, as I went, I didn't take the film
to show me what my sisters felt. It took it
to really define it. I've never heard them say because
they would never Pauline would never get in front of
a camera. It was only because she trusted Karen O'Connor.
They'd say, I keep getting the end of the conversation.
(58:36):
What was the question.
Speaker 1 (58:38):
The question was, to what degree was it liberating with you?
Speaker 2 (58:42):
Liberating? Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it was. I'm sure it
was liberating, and I hadn't thought of it in those terms,
miss said, and then it is. There's a piece that
I didn't have to put the time and energy into
knowing it was a conflict.
Speaker 1 (59:03):
So how has all this family stuff affected your relationship
with your son?
Speaker 2 (59:10):
I was just thinking about him. We worked so hard. No.
I thought he was so generous and forgiving and eloquent
in the film, No saying really what it felt like
to be a lonely little kid. And I what I
(59:30):
learned from my family is that I wasn't nurtured properly,
and so how would I really know? How would I
know how lonely he felt. I thought I was a
great mom, you know, I thought everything was hunky Dori,
and that's what happens. And then and then it wasn't.
(59:52):
And we've had time to make up for that as
much as possible. After the film, I decided I was
going to start a bad mothers club, because seriously, I mean,
every mother thinks she was could have done more, did
wrong or so that guilt is something to deal with
(01:00:13):
for the rest of my life. Forgiving oneself seems to really,
by far the hardest thing to do. But Dave, you know,
he helps me with that. We have a wonderful therapist.
And we hit a snag, we just go back, go
back and say can you help us straighten the sound.
Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
So you married David Harris, you're involved with him, you
marry him, you're pregnant. He goes to jail for a
long time. He comes out of jail. How do you
pick up the relationship and what was it like?
Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Well, first thing comes in my mind is that somebody
who was, say, for instance, a Quaker type, who has
known themselves and seen the world in an open sense
of seeing how unimportant we are as individuals, goes into
(01:01:11):
jail with a certain mentality. And some guys would just
do it. They'd do their time and come out and
they were okay. For David, it was really, really difficult.
He had no idea. But he was macho, he was
a guy, this Fresno's Boy of the Year and all
of that was in there. Plus when he was in jail,
(01:01:34):
they picked on him, you know, because he was a magitator, etc.
And he would be in a strike they throw him
in solitary confinement, and it was very hard for him
to not resent all that after he came out. So
he had a really hard He had a really hard
go of it when he was in prison, and equally
(01:01:58):
is hard when he came out and we did. We
had a hard time.
Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
But inherently does that separation mean it's hard to pick
back up?
Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
It was for me. I mean, I'm sure for the
most stable couple, the most quakerly meditative type, it would
not be easy. But I don't think it had to
be as difficult as it was with David's nature.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Mean what it was now, David was younger than you.
Steve Jobs was younger than you. Is that just luck
of the drawer? You like younger men, I like younger men.
Can you tell me anything about that?
Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Oh, I'll leave it to your imagination.
Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
Okay, then let's just go to the crux of the
movie is its retirement tour. Most people are never on
stage in front of thousands of people, that are not
in stage in front of tens of people, And what
they don't understand is this incredible adrenaline hit that the
money is good, but a lot of people they need
(01:03:11):
that hit, so you're on the road for decades and
now you're off. Do you miss that?
Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Absolutely? Not for a second? Is that interesting? I didn't know.
I had no idea, and that reflect on that in
the films thing. I don't know what I'll feel like,
and from what I hear, everybody who quit starts up again.
But I had a feeling inside that this was it,
and I managed, I manager, and I planned. It took
(01:03:39):
three years to do this properly, and I had a
strong feeling that that was going to be it. What
I didn't know is how calm it was to stop.
And I didn't know how hard I was working until
I stopped. And as soon as I stopped, I thought,
how did I do that? I mean in the film,
(01:04:01):
how did I do that? Traveling like that? But no,
I haven't missed it, and I haven't missed the bus either,
which I thought I would do well.
Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
I know people have been on the road for a
year and a half and it takes them six months
to recover. So how long did it take you to
find your new normal after you ended?
Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Not long. I was already in the studio painting before
it ended for number of years. So I just as
though I just took a deep breath and shifted over
to the art studio.
Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
If someone called you and said, oh, we're doing a
big piece festival, come out and sing a song, you
would say, My.
Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Only regret is that I the facility to just get
up and sing a song is much more limited. So
yes I can. I'm not really interested to do that,
but if it's something that really tugs at me, then
I'll do it. I mean, I went to the Ukraine
and just sang for kids because it tugged at me,
you know. But to really join in a musical sense
(01:05:10):
takes a lot of work for me.
Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
And do you care about legacy or not?
Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
No? Oh, well the honest legacy. Yeah. Do I care
about archiving my life? No?
Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Okay, Joan. I want to thank you for taking this
time to speak to my audience and being so honest.
Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
Hey, thank you. It was fun. I like to make
you laugh, but.
Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
I'm laughing now until next time. This is Bob left
stets
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.