February 9, 2021 • 47 mins
Rick Rubin speaks with the great Joan Baez fresh off her birthday and the announcement that she'll be among this year's Kennedy Center honorees! Joan was known the world over as the Queen of Folk at the height of her career in the 60s. She used her fame to help spread the tenets of the non-violence movement, and was a close ally to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Joan also helped introduce Bob Dylan to the world by giving him stage time at her shows when she was the biggest ticket in town and he was a complete unknown. In this conversation with Rick Rubin, Joan explains why after performing for over 60 years, she recently made the decision to stop singing and turn her attention to painting. She also talks about the time she and Pete Seeger were run out of town by local cops after a performance and getting banned from Brazil for her music.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Joan Baez has always used her voice as a
tool for social change. Show me the Prison, show me
(00:37):
the jan show me the Prisoners Lie. At the height
of her career in the nineteen sixties, Joan was known
the world over as the Queen of Folk. She used
her fame to help spread the tenets of non violence
(00:57):
and was a close ally to doctor Martin Luther King Junior.
Joan also helped introduce Bob Dylan to the world by
giving them stage time at her shows when she was
the biggest ticket in town and he was a complete unknown.
In this conversation with Rick Rubin, Joan explains why, after
performing for over sixty years, she recently made the decision
(01:18):
to stop singing. She also talks about the time she
and Pete Seeger were run out of town by local
cops after a performance, and how is a badge of honor?
When the Brazilian government banned her music because they felt
it made people too emotional. This is broken record liner
notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmontain. You're a
(01:45):
Rick Rubin and Joan Bias. How are you hey, mountain man.
Nice to see you, Nice to see you. Everything well,
it's been a minute. It's been a minute. Everything's just
as good as it can be, Beautiful, Tell what's been
going on? What's been going on? Let me think. Well,
(02:06):
I made the decision and quit touring, as you know,
and on New Year's Eve, I made the decision to
not sing at all. So people can't say it, would
you just do this one? Just that's it. You know,
I'm ready to do other things and don't want to
put the effort into making this voice sound right, and
it doesn't anyway, So so I'm free of that, which
(02:27):
is wonderful, beautiful. What tell me a little bit about
the work that would go into keeping your voice working
in the way that you wanted at work? Well, first
of all, I had was just hanging on to old
recordings of the last teacher I had, and that went
back about a year, and I was just doing a
couple of hers just to get through. I didn't bother
(02:48):
anything new. And then my granddaughter started studying with Max
and Lewis. She was an I cat back in the day,
and she teaches and she's wonderful and was working well
for Jasmine, and I thought, well, I'd like to sing
with Jasmine a little bit before I stop all this,
and so I started working with Max Sam was totally
(03:11):
different from anybody else, but one way or another, it
involves conscientious work. You know, it should be five days
of weeks, even if it's twenty minutes a sec. That
concentrated takes you away from everything else. And honestly, if
I if the voice sounded more like what I really
wanted to sound like, I made a stuck with it.
But it won't matter how hard I work. Now you
(03:34):
know they're a muscle in there is not going to
be what it was, and I'd rather let it all
go interesting. It's I got to work with Johnny Cash
at the end of his career and his voice was
definitely failing at the end, and it was really it
really impacted him emotionally in a great way, in a
(03:57):
terrible way, exactly, and we found a way through the
emotion of the words that he was singing to not
have it being negative but be positive that it wasn't
that his voice was failing. It's that the things that
he was singing about were so difficult that it made
(04:19):
sense for to have difficulty in the words coming out.
So I don't know, it was at least there was
a method that worked. If you ever decide to try
it again, if you ever get the mood that you
can make it work for you instead of against you.
I think because my saying was this voice, you know,
I mean, yeah, good wine and so on up to
(04:40):
a certain point, and then you I mean, and Johnny
because of the nature of himself and his work and
his voice and his songs, he didn't have to do
that stuff. He just bared his soul. And that's why
those last albums were so gorgeous. He was apparently happy
with what was coming out of him. Yeah, he was,
but he during I will say, during the period, he
(05:02):
was very uncomfortable with his voice, yeah, and really questioned it.
And he would say that his voice was the one
thing that he could always rely upon and now he
couldn't rely upon that anymore, and it really it made
him uncomfortable. And we all go through I mean, anybody
who sings that. You don't know that when you're young,
(05:23):
there's no way to know it. But it's a certain point.
The muscles are like a tennis player just gonna start giving,
you know, So at any rate, that was New Year's Eve,
So yeah, tell me about the very what was the
very last performance in front of an audience, your last concert?
It was in Spain. It was in Madrid, and it
(05:45):
was glorious. I mean there was a big concert hall.
It was beautiful. It was filled with people. And I
had Emanciato Prava, a guitar songwriter, singer, famous, you know
the kind everybody goes ah when he walks on the stage.
And he and I worked on a song together and
sang it together and it was a big emotional moment
(06:07):
for everybody. And then I sang and that was basically it.
And I got an encore and I sang what I
had been singing, which was if I had wings, and
said goodbye that way. Yeah. What was the emotion of
the feeling like this is it? Well, I was already
(06:29):
feeling what was coming, and it was a relief. And
I wondered, often, is this something I'm going to really
wish that I know? Everybody says, oh yeah, I'll be
back on the road, and I thought, well, maybe to
be fair, I should leave that open. But I had
never a second. It was my people and the bus,
my friends, my co workers, the engineer, sound likes. That's
(06:52):
what I missed, but not being on the stage, not
all that stuff. It just I mean, and partly I
think is I walked right into the painting. You know,
it was like shifting or shifting into another gear, and
so I just something final and wonderful about it. We
were all exhausted because it was the end of it
(07:14):
was the end of our emotions too. I mean, we're
all wiped out with that. Yeah. Interesting that so many people,
we think of, so many artists, have a difficult time
walking away from it. Yeah. But for some reason, I
get the sense that you've always had as much of
a life outside of performance, where so many artists that's all,
(07:36):
that's all they have, So it seems like you've always
had an inner life to come back to. I think
that's true. I think partly at the very beginning, when
I was so disciplined and stiff, and this is you know,
traditional songs and everything else was commercial, it set me
on a path where I had to I had to
(08:01):
keep my spiritual life in order. I'd keep my body
in order. But I didn't fall into a lot of stuff,
but a lot of my friends did. I never did
the drugs. I'm sure I missed out on a lot
of stuff. I'm sure that I did. But yeah, I
pretty much kept it together and there even though you know,
I went through some heavy duty therapy and found out
(08:23):
stuff I hadn't known that was causing different behaviors in
me that I didn't have control of. That basically, there
was a core there that stayed on track. When did
you first start doing therapy, Hope? You know, I mean
a lot of therapists. When I was fifteen, I started
getting help from different doctors. Yeah, and that went right
(08:44):
on through. And I started the deep stuff when I
was fifty, and you know, that was a different kind
of therapy that was saying, Okay, there's something in here,
I'm going to dig it out. And you know, obviously
I can't talk about the details, but the fact was
there was therapy that helped me stay together, and there
was therapy that helped me fall apart and put the
(09:04):
pieces back together. So wow, beautiful, Yeah, beautiful. I'm glad.
I'm glad that you found you found help through those
through that work. It's it's it's a miracle when you
find the right you know, the right connection and when
you see where it can go, it's an amazing thing.
And you know, I think I felt the way A
(09:25):
lot of people, maybe most people feel that you can changes,
you can switch that, but basically nothing ever changes, and
that for me anyway, has not been true. I mean,
the change was was just transformative. It tooks a long
time and a lot of work, but I don't have
to go through the stuff that I did. You know
(09:45):
back then, do you have or have you ever had
a spiritual practice? You know, I've always either invented my
own or dipped into different people's for a while. And
the one that makes the most sense to me, but
also takes a discipline that I little short of, is
just Buddhist practice, you know, just trying to be mindful
(10:07):
and aware. And I always I mean parents were became
Quakers when I was eight, and so that brought in
the whole nonviolence and in the active part of Quakerism,
which is American Friends Service Committee, you get involved in
people in the world who need more than we have,
(10:29):
and so that was a way way back seeing wherever
the spirit wove in and out of that. I mean,
my father, his father's father was Catholic, and my father's
father was a Methodist minister, which means he left Catholicism
in Mexico, and that was not exactly the thing to
do in those days. And my father preached in his church. Oh,
(10:52):
my father was eighteen. They were Presbyterian in New York.
My mother's father was an Episcopalian minister who preached at
that beautiful church in the middle. I didn't know this.
I was visiting Edinburgh and that gorgeous little church that
writes back in the middle of town. You can't get
pictures of it because it's too big. You can't back
(11:13):
off far enough. That's where he preached. So there was
always a whole line of preachers. Amazing, amazing. Do you
feel like that that the preaching in your blood worked
its way into the music, both since it worked my
(11:33):
way into by talking too much and people in the
hall saying, why don't you shut up and sing? I
mean I heard that more than once, really, and I
get it, you know that. I was so intent on
saying what I felt no people should hear, or what
it was on my mind or politically or spiritually, and
so I would just, you know, damn the torpedoes and
(11:57):
say what I needed to say. Tell me more about
the Quaker faith. I know very little. The only you're
the first person to ever tell me about about Quakerism.
And is it called Quakerism, Yeah, that's Quakerism. Basically, the
Quakers are just about the only religion, formal religion that
really will not condone violence. I mean, not World War two,
(12:20):
the favorite wars. You really have to find another way
to live, and it's pretty much a constant challenge, especially
you know, in days like this and a world like this,
a country like this, and so it's an attempt to
live with through and by non violence. Meaning the bottom
line is that you are willing to accept suffering but
(12:42):
not inflicted. So that really determines how you behave publicly
and personally. And it's very challenging and there are times
that I am just impossible that you lose track of that. Yeah,
let's talk about the world that you came into as
a musician. Tell me about what the world was like
when you first started making music. We know I was
(13:04):
already politicized. But what happened was I moved to came
Bridge and I had heard Odetta and Pete Seeger and
Harry Bellafonti, and those are my introduction, and I heard
the Kingston Trio and I wouldn't admit that to anybody
because they were supposed to be commercial, but I loved them.
And then it moved to Cambridge and I the only
(13:25):
school that accepted me because my grades were terrible and
I had no interest in going to school, was Boston
University Fine Arts. So I was kind of halfway there.
And then I was fell in love with a guy
from Harvard, and I wandered around Harvard Square and started
playing in the coffee shops and so at that point
the politics all kind of shriveled up for a while
(13:46):
because I was just busy being in love. And that
went on for two years, and that's where all those
early Ballots came from. I mean, the political music didn't
start showing up until it was think it was actually gone.
On my side was probably the second or third album,
but the first one was just strictly Ballots. So the
scene around me was coffee shop, you know people. And
(14:08):
I wasn't in New York. People think I was in
New York. I was mostly in Cambridge at the club
forty seven, and so I was in this I remember
walking past one of these coffee shops. My father regretted
it forever, but he had never seen coffee shop activity
and students sitting around with somebody performing, So he took
his three daughters and his wife to see this phenomenon.
(14:30):
And I looked in one coffee shop, Tula's Coffee Shop,
and I saw a guy sitting and was playing Plasier
mur And that was it. I mean, that was just it.
That's why I wanted to be and what I wanted
to do. It was it mostly music or was there
also poetry? And tell me about the coffee shop scene. Well,
a coffee shop scene where I was in Cambridge was
(14:53):
not so much poetry to my memory, it was music.
The coffee shop Club forty seven, where I ended up
singing a few days a week ten dollars a night
to start with, it was a big money for me,
had been a jazz club and the women who ran
it were hip enough to see this folk boom coming
(15:15):
into play, so they took two nights a week and
made it a folk club, and eventually that's what it
was completely And I was a steady I at the
very beginning of that, I was I guess tuesdays. To
begin with, I sang every Tuesday, and then pretty soon
people songwriters came in, some known, some not known, Eric
(15:36):
von Schmidt, very unknown types, a lot of them. That's
where I got, you know, they were not famous people
I learned the songs from. Was it hard finding songs
back then? Well, because everywhere, because I'm a good robber,
you know, And all I had to do is I
(15:57):
mean for those ballots, because that's what I loved. They
were everywhere and you could find Geane Ritchie give you
a whole album's worth of gorgeous old ballots. After a
quick break, we'll be right back with Joan Bayass. We're
back with more from Joan Bayaz and Rick Ruby. So
(16:19):
you're singing in the coffee shop world. And then when
do protest songs make their appearance? Well, you know, before
this little love affair I had with my Harvard boyfriend,
I had already sung, say, I learned the first Emmett
Till that came out, I mean I was already there
in my head. And then there was a kind of
(16:40):
a dip, and then I wanted desperately to have the
songs that could express some of these feelings and the
obviously when Dylan came along, it was pretty early in
the game, but that feel that, you know, That's what
was missing, was that kind of well. He generated so
many of them, and they were so good and up
(17:02):
till then I had sung that we shall overcomes, and
I can't remember them right now, but I was certainly
already known as a protest singer or protest type. What
was the first song of his that you heard? Do
you remember? I think it was hard Rain, he said
of somebody's house, and I think that's what it was.
And soon after that was Got on my Side. Got
(17:24):
on my Side is the first one that I sang
of his. And we were somewhere probably in the South.
It was boiling hot, and I remember I don't sweat much,
but the back of my legs it was dripping down
from behind my knees, and I had the words out
there because I've never sung it before. And I think
Bob was off the side of the stage and wherever
(17:48):
I sang God on my Side. And later at some
point he and I were doing concerts together and we
sang William z and Zinger killed Poor Hetty Carroll, The
Lonesome Death of Hetty Carroll, And the story is about,
you know, a rich guy basically kills his maid because
he gets ticked off, it throws his cane across the room. Well,
(18:08):
we sang it in the area where that guy lived,
and we suddenly thought, you know, we better get out
of here in a hurry. So that's apropos of not
much except that those were extraordinary days musically. Have you
ever had an issue with censorship? Like? Was where is
(18:29):
your music ever banned? Or were you ever asked not
to perform somewhere because of what you were saying? Now,
the first incomes to mind was performing with Pizza or
when I was really really young and we realized as
we got into our cars to take off, we thought
the police were escorting us, they were chasing us. I mean,
(18:51):
they did not want us. I don't remember, somewhere in
the East Coast because he was a pink o comy
and I was his upstart, you know, so starting pretty young.
The answer is yeah, and they're you know, they're countries
where my songs have been banned and I've been banned,
and it's sort of a badge of honor. Really. I
mean I went to visit Latin America. It was Pinochet
(19:15):
was still in control, but exiles my exile friends here said,
you know, there's this chance that they're opening up down there.
This is a good time to go and sing and
do what it is you do. It was too early,
and I was banned in Argentina, Chile and Brazil, and so,
I mean to know, came to the hotel door and
(19:36):
with a piece of paper saying listen, don't get any
more than X number of feet from the microphone or
you'll be arrested. So yeah, again, that's a badge of
honor in one of those countries. Yeah, tell me about
Pete Seeger. Pete Seeger first influence. So I don't remember this,
but my aunt said that she took me to a
(19:57):
Seeger concert and my parents were frantic because all I
was listening to was rhythm and blues. I have a
little plastic gray radio at night. I listened as late
as I in the night, rhythm and blues, all the
black groups. And they thought I'd never go beyond that.
And so she took me to a Pete Seeger concert,
and they said it took like a good vaccine. You
(20:20):
know that I got it that he was my kind
of guy, because I was already you know, socially conscious,
and this guy was doing it both doing it all,
you know. And I'm happy to say that when he
was banned from radio and TV that I had a
chance to do my bit for him when this Hoot
(20:40):
and Nanny show invited me on and I said, I'll
come on as soon as you have Pete back on,
and they did. Said was there a particular song that
he was banned for? I don't think so. I think
it was the whole thing, you know. I'm not sure,
but he was banned. He couldn't say anything anywhere. Do
you think it was specifically for speaking out against war?
(21:04):
He was at that time period when you were either
a pink or you weren't, you know, were you a communist?
And he wouldn't say one way or another. You don't so. No,
it was during those years of McCarthy, just before, just
after ording, and he wouldn't say the things you're supposed
to say or name anybody else. Did you like being
(21:28):
around him? Like spending time with him? He's a funny man.
He was so shy. He was so shy when I
sang for him at the Kennedy Center Awards and afterwards
it was a big gathering and dinner and it's dancing
and I went up to him. I said, hey, Pete, congratulations.
He said, Joan, Joan, joan, and that's all I said, Pete, Pete,
(21:55):
and I went off and danced with Walter Cronkite. Clearly
Pete was not gonna dance. He was just shy. In
his way of saying hello. Also was to put a
banjo between you and him, and he say, I'm at
a a meta guy in guatemal He started plunking on
the on the banger. That way, he didn't have to
deal with anybody. That's what I think beautiful. And it
(22:16):
was a sweetheart. No, he was the big sweetheart. And
he died in the wool to his dying day. Did
not like having drums. Why do you have to have
drums in your band? Why do you have to have percussion?
And so he stayed. He hung in there as a
you know, a diehard purist. Tell me about first you're
The first record company round was Vanguard Records, which was
(22:39):
known for folk music mainly would you say classical and
then folk? Were you one of the early folk artists
on the label. Pete Seeger was there and the Weavers
were there, but I was the first major. Pete Seeger
was a major artist, but this brought it on one
level closer to culture as opposed to just counterculture. Yeah yeah,
(23:01):
I mean that's a fun story too. I just I
was well Albert Grossman, who was the guy who managed
everybody back then eventually was Dylan and Peter Paul and
Mary and Janice Joplin and so on, and so Albert
wanted me to sign with Columbia, which had all these
(23:21):
artists and which was the biggest and the place to go,
and that always frightened me. You know, I was looking
for something where I felt more at home, and classical
music is what was played in my house. And al
took me to New York City and he wanted me
to go to Columbia first. And when we were in Columbia,
(23:41):
he tried literally try to get me to sign a
contract there on the spot. And then I said, well,
you know, now I want to go to Vanguard. He
really didn't want me to go there, but I did.
I liked the guy I could. You know. It wasn't
the showbiz stuff. They didn't have gold albums on the wall,
they didn't have any gold albums, you know. And I
was comfortable there and it was clear that. I mean,
(24:04):
I spent a week trying to trying to figure it
out because everybody except my parents said, you know, honey,
you should really go with Columbia and and I didn't.
And you know, I probably would have sold more albums
and so on, but I've never regretted, you know, the
decision I made. Tell me about Albert Albert Albert Grossman. Yes, Oh,
(24:30):
he was just you know, he was a big manager guy,
and he would make fun of me for not, you know,
for not having somebody cooler and more in the fast lane.
And he says something like, who do you want? Who
do you want? You want brando? I'll get your brando.
I'd say, al You're not winning me over with this,
you know. Then with his stuff. On the other hand,
(24:52):
he was a generous man. He was generous with people
with his money. But he was just in that fast
lane where I was not going to be comfortable. Ever.
Do you think that he really appreciated the music? Actually
I do. Yeah. I think. So It's easy for that
to get lost when you're starting to make the money
at the same time, but I think he did. Yeah.
(25:14):
When was the first time when you were performing and
you thought, wow, this is really getting to be a
big like this is a big deal. You know, when
I was in high school and I was singing and
I started singing of the you know, the talent shows
and stuff, and my friends were saying, oh boy, you
think you're going to be famous someday. I didn't know
what they were talking about. My idea of the future
(25:35):
was the following week. I mean, I didn't look ahead
to that, and so it probably saved me a lot
of trouble. And then I thought, when I was really
seriously in the public eye, I wouldn't use the word famous.
I'd say, well, I'm well known. I'm well known, but
I mean by then, I mean the fuck I was
internationally famous. But I just didn't want to get into
(25:57):
that aura. But with their particular performances where you just
felt like, I don't know, the first time you played
Carnegie Hall or the first time you played any of
those moments where it just felt like, wow, this is
it's grown into something where you have to almost pinch
yourself if this is happening. Did you have those moments
(26:17):
along the way, you know, maybe early on Carnegie something
like Carnegie Hall, I think it was probably too busy
being nervous then thinking about how you know what level
I've reached in the in the ladder of things. I
remember certain certain concerts that will always stand out to me,
like it's Stumble. It wasn't a stumble. It was south
(26:39):
of a Stumble, but in an outdoor two thousand year
old amphitheater, and it was just as far as the beauty.
Around me was a whole city that had been underwater
at one point, so it was all white stones, Ephesus,
and I just was in heaven. They asked me back,
and I said, I'll come back in a full moon
if you'll get the city there to walk through there
(27:02):
in the full moon, and they did. Yeah. It was
a big wall that sounds in edible, so beautiful. When
you would be on stage and when you'd be singing,
are you thinking about the words? Are you thinking about
the story of the song, are you thinking about what
you're doing? Are you taking in what's around you? Are
(27:25):
you hearing the audience? Do you disappear? What's the feeling
that's going on inside during a concert? All of the above, Rick,
All of the above. I mean sometimes I'm thinking about
the words because I have to, because I don't know
them that well, or they're in a foreign language. Sometimes
I feel very much with the audience for doing a
(27:46):
song together, and then I have to say that there
were times when the audience is so lousy that I
am planning what I'm going to wear to bed on
the bus and I didn't want to tell people that,
but I can now because it's all over. But there
are those moments when you're doing your grocery list. But
for the most part, like ninety eight percent of the time,
(28:08):
you're there and watching and being with I had an
un unfortunate characteristic of seeing everything, absolutely everything. If I
see him, somebody tilt their wrist, I know they're looking
at their watch, and I'm thinking, oaks. I wonder if
I'm going on too long, you know, so I caught
(28:28):
everything and somebody stifling a yawn, I would think the
same thing, Oh dear, I've gone on long and so on.
We'll be back with more from Joan Bayass. We're back
with the rest of Rick Ruban's conversation with Joan Byass.
How would you say activism has changed over the course
(28:50):
of your life from how did you see it when
you were fifteen and how do you see it now. Well,
in some ways it's absolutely consistent. You know, when I
was fifteen, was the first activism I did was on
my own, and I stayed in school during an air raid.
Drill was all, you know, sound goes off. Also was
(29:12):
to run home or have your parents pick you up
before the bomb gets here from Russia, you know. And
I asked my father, who's a physicist, how long it
would take a missile to get from Moscow to Palo
alto high school. And it was clear to me that
it was all just ridiculous. So as a you know, protest,
I stayed in class. And it's pretty fascinating. I mean
(29:36):
I went down to the office and pink slip or
whatever and talked to the secretaries, the principle vice. Principally,
I had no idea, you know, about what we were
really doing on that day, So I started started early.
And in some ways that the kind of protests you
do on your own, and you know, and as some
(29:58):
of the some of the things I admire so much,
like you know, Gretta said Gretat Thumberg sitting in front
of Parliament all by herself, Kaepernick taking a knee all
by himself. You kind of cross your fingers and hope
somebody will join you, but you do it anyway. So
that part remains the same. And I think trying to
find a way to explain how it is we want
(30:21):
to explain it, how we want people to hear us
is just it's different now. And it's different partly in
my mind because there was a period. There was a
time period when, as one young kid told me after
that period said, you know, you guys had everything. You
had the political reason to be on the streets, you
had the music, you had the songwriters, you had the glue.
(30:45):
And what we're missing is the glue. I think that
the feeling that we're all together in this. And I
can say that for young people who never experienced that.
We all got to experience it when Obama was running
for office and it was a high five strangers on
the subway. That can't continue. I don't think when you're
(31:05):
in office it didn't. But everybody that I know was
aware enough to say, oh my god, this is what
it could feel like. And we don't have that feeling now.
We have lots of good things happening, we have people
taking risks. We don't have that cohesive stuff that makes
us feel like a movement and be a movement. Have
(31:26):
you seen protests any particular protest songs change in meaning
over the years, Like when you first heard them, they
meant one thing, and then over time either the meaning
is changed or the context is change in a way
where either the song becomes obsolete or it takes on
a whole new interpretation. I have to tell you this
(31:50):
is a fun story too. I was in Brazil and
I was not allowed to sing anywhere officially. So I
got into a big audience. This was the plan, or
to friends, who got me in the middle of an
audience and at a certain point the singer I was
supposed to sing, but they wouldn't let me. So the
person performing that night would stop and it would have
(32:10):
said something, and I would stand up by myself in
the middle of this auditorium and sing. So I sang
a couple of songs, wonderful response. And then I sang
a song. This probably the most famous song I've ever sung,
but it's in Europe. It's Here's to You. It's about
Saco and Vinzetti, and I sang this it's a little
(32:31):
kind of a little chant and it's so popular in
Spain and Italy and France. It's what they wait for
at the end of the concert. And it's a protest song.
And I sang this, there was this dead silence. It
had been taken to be used as a recruiting song
for the army. So yeah, that's exactly what you're talking about.
(32:52):
And that's amazing. It's amazing how these things can happen,
either with us watching them or without us knowing. We're
just like, oh, the whole context just changed. That's amazing.
You got to test it out ahead of time, is
what I learned from that. So you were allowed to
physically be in Brazil, you just weren't allowed to sing
in front of an audience, you know. I was allowed
(33:13):
to have a press conference every morning, which I did,
but it was the singing. They didn't want me singing.
And I talked to the press about it. I said,
why is this going on? And they said something about, well,
Brazilians are very emotional and that if they would be
moved not by the words but by the music, that
was the only explanation everybody gave me. That this is
(33:36):
a country where the music is what moves people to do.
One thing and another and that that would be not
desirable by the government. Tell me how you see protest
songs functioning in society, that, what they do, what they
don't do that, how does it work? Do you mean?
Now ever? Ever? Oh, I suppose it is the emotional factor.
(34:03):
And I mean you can listen to somebody talk forever,
speeches forever, but the music literally literally crosses the barriers
one country to another from one. I mean, I remember
when I was second album came out, and there was
a guy. They told me about it later in the
record stores. My records were all piled up like that,
(34:25):
and this guy wanted to buy one, but he didn't
want to buy one, but he did, and apparently he
paced back and forth and then he said that bitch
Shirken sing he was a Republican, couldn't stand my politics,
and he bought the album. No, he does had Tony.
That's ridiculous. So it crossed whatever that barrier. Unbelievable for
(34:51):
a protest song to work. Does the song have to
be great regardless of the content. I don't think so.
I first of all, I think it's about context. I
mean I used to saying green grass of Home, which
has nothing to do with politics, and I would dedicate
it to my husband who was in jail for draft resistance,
and so it had we just take a song that
(35:14):
hasn't nothing to do with politics, and you put it
in that and then you've made your point and everybody's
enjoyed the song, and it's kind of a win win.
What do you think is the greatest protest song I've
ever written? Or what's or should I say, what's your
favorite protest song? Made better question? Oh? I think, um, well,
there's the Italian when I was talking about, but that's
(35:35):
not known. I would think that probably blowing in the Wind,
because I've heard it in every language. I've heard boy
scouts in Germany on the beach singing blowing in the wind,
blowing as the wind, you know. And it's just partly
because it's known most songs. You learn the hook and
learn a bit of the course. People all around the
(35:58):
world know every word to blowing in the wind, So
it's a joy to sing beautiful. Can you I feel
uncomfortable asking this, but I want to know the song
that you're talking about that's not known. Is there a
way you could demonstrate it without feeling like I'm asking
for anything that goes against what you're doing. It just
(36:19):
says it was written by Morticone. It was a film
about Saco and Vinzetti, and they came to me. I
was in my hotel room in Rome, and said will
you write the music for this movie? And I said
I couldn't possibly, but he gave me these gave me
the music and they wanted three ballads written, and I did,
(36:40):
wrote one a day and then that was done, and
then he said, oh, this one more thing. I want
to put a tag at the end of the song.
It was just catchy, little brief melody and what I
write the words, and I just said, here's to you,
Nicola and Bart, rest forever in our hearts. The last
(37:01):
and final moment is yours. This agony is your triumph.
And I have to say that it was a combination
of the words and the little melody and whatever happened happened.
And if you'll find it under Nicola and Bart amazing, amazing,
And that's and that has lived. It has taken on
a life of its own forever, and every summer it
(37:25):
comes out again in Italy. It's a big hit. And
if I had taken the royalties for that, I wouldn't
have had to ever do anything else. But I wouldn't
because I figured Saco and Vinzetti is sacred territory. I
didn't have any right taking money for that. We're just
kind of ridiculous because the record company did. But it
(37:45):
was my stuffy way of I'm turning down more money.
You've been good at that over your career, I've been
really good at that. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever had
a relationship with gospel music? Yeah? I have. First of
all in the South fifty nine sixty well sixty two
or sixty three, and the black churches down there and
(38:07):
working with King and his people and all of us.
And I would end up in gospel and the churches.
And I remember that one of the churches that people
had already it was a hot day, I think it
was in Mississippi, and people were they called it getting happy,
you know, they're going stiff and being carried out by
the women in the white dresses. And I heard the
(38:30):
preachers saying, a good friend from the north is here
today to sing for us. I thought, oh my god,
that means me. And I went and sang break bread
together and a couple of people went got happy. I thought,
you know what, I just got my strives. Wow, and
everybody sang with me. Yeah. So that would be a
(38:51):
genuine relationship with with gospel incredible. And then later on
I had a producer, Alan Abrahams, who produced three albums
and mostly what he does is gospel beautiful. Let's talk
about when folk music and rock music joined together. What
is the feeling in the air when that was going on. Well,
(39:12):
I was still a snotty purist. So the famous time
of Dylan coming to Newport and going electric, I was
just like Pete Seeger, how can he do this to us,
you know, our golden boy? And so I was really behind,
you know, I was on the slow freight, as my
mother would say. And then you know, sort of watching
(39:37):
what Dylan meant to the Beatles and vice versa when
they came to the States. I think whatever it was
in me that had a problem sort of wore off
because the music was good. You know, did you get
to spend time with the Beatles at all? And a
funny evening with I have these stories, you know, I
guess that's what life is about. You're my age. It
(40:00):
is mostly stories. M Yeah. When the first time they
came to the States, I had sung in the Red
Rocks Amphitheater and they were the the next night, and
I had the next night off, so I stayed and
I was in there. They have a labyrinth for the
press down under the stage, and I was down there
with I swear two hundred press and somebody came and said,
(40:23):
the Beatles would like to meet you. And I went
to their dressing room and I said, Hi, I'm Joan,
and one by what was it, Hello, I'm Ringo, Hello,
I'm John. I said, listen, you guys are in the
cover of every newspaper magazine in the world. I know
who you are. Yeah. And then I traveled with them
out to California and watched some more of their shows,
(40:46):
and it was It's something I'd never experienced before. I mean,
when they came out on stage at Red Rocks, it
would be like standing in back of a jet and
the sky lit up with the cameras. It was bright,
and there was just screaming. Was you didn't hear them
at all. You didn't hear them unless your head was
in one of the speakers. And a few years later,
(41:08):
there is that Epstein was he still with them, their manager,
whoever it was. They were playing somewhere in San Francisco,
and I was there, and there was this little second
of time when the screaming stopped. He said, this is
our last tour in the States. That was their last show,
that San Francisco is their last show. This is it,
(41:29):
We're not coming back. Did you have any you talked
about paying attention to the audience, always being with them, seeing,
noticing if things were going well or not. Yeah, did
you have any tricks if you felt like things were
starting to go south at a show that you could
do to get the audience back. Mostly what I did
(41:52):
when it really got rough was because I've had something
of a band for many, many years. We'd look at
each other, you know, and just a little wink or
a little cross eye meant we had each other. So
it didn't matter so much about trying to get somebody
if they weren't really gettable. But I mean, I would
say that was so rare that we really wanted to
(42:14):
chuck it in. Yeah, I feel like people would come
to see you because they loved you. That seems like
we always thought so too. Once in a while, you know,
like a like a resort town or something. They're coming
because that's the only game in town, and they've been
out on the beach getting too much sun and drinking.
So you know, there's just so much you can do
(42:37):
in that situation. Yeah, tell me how you started painting. Well,
all my life, I've sketched, you know. When I was
in second grade, I I sketched a Mickey Mouse and
sold it for three cents. And Bambi and then I
sketched because they had an eye for likenesses like a draw.
(42:59):
And then in junior high school, I started drawing Jimmy
Deane and then members of the class, and I sold
some of them, as I remember, that's very funny. And
then just undisciplined different kinds of painting. During my recovery work,
I did dreams of recovery painting, you know. But this
(43:19):
the portrait started, I mean, this journey into portraiture started
about nine years ago and I just all of a sudden,
it was an all of a sudden, passed the frame
shop and looked in. I thought, hmmm, I think I'll
get my hands into this one. And I started and
it never stopped that, you know, the first for the
(43:40):
first year and a half. I think I did mostly
collages and then I thought, you know what, I really
would like to do a portrait. I'll bet that's really difficult.
And guess what it wasn't And I didn't have to
go to school. I get tricks from different people. How
do you paint eyeglasses? So you know, somebody tells me
a little trick. That's all I needed. I'm sure there's
(44:01):
a lot that I could be learning, and I just
don't want to leave my own studio and go to school.
You know, how much time do you spend painting? Typically, well,
in a time like when getting ready for that last show,
and when I'm in the cycle of doing paintings, it
could be a few hours a day, a few three
or four hours a day. And like now, since the
(44:24):
last painting, which was Stacey Abrams, that's a few months ago,
I haven't done anything. I just started. This is the
first day I've been back in the studio and I
started painting. There was a photograph of one of the
policemen who was being beaten. It's an extraordinary It's a
profile of him and this panicky look and you can't
(44:49):
see any of the details, just this face and I thought, well,
you know, there's probably an entire exhibit from the insurrection.
I would love to see those. Any relationship between interpretive
singing and interpreting in paint, Oh my, I guess I
(45:09):
don't know if there's a relationship. There are similarities, you know,
they just sort of refusal to get any formal education
about it that it just has to come. I know
that it's as you know, it's a mystery to me
where the voice came from and how it worked. And
it's equally it's a mystery to me how these paintings
(45:30):
are showing up. And then we talked a little bit
on the show the other night about upside down drawings.
They're just fascinating to me. I literally draw the thing
upside down, and sometimes I know what I'm going to draw.
Sometimes I don't. I just start in and then I
turn it background, and I see what it looks like,
(45:52):
and I see what it's saying to me, and usually
a pun or something silly. Turn it background and I
write what I you know, what came to my mind
and all of that's insane, and I know that the
something happens in the brain that allows that to happen.
I don't know what it is. I don't really care.
It's beautiful. I imagine. It's not so different than the
(46:14):
way many people I know write songs, which is almost
like a form of automatic writing. You know. It's it's
not sitting down to write a particular thing. It's more
almost through improvisation, words appear and then looking at what
those words are, trying to say that the song reveals itself.
(46:36):
That sounds like a good possibility. I haven't written anything
for thirty years except that snarky song about Trump that
I just quit. So my granddaughter writes. And she was
sitting at the piano and she was singing this song
and then it got quiet. I looked at her, she
staring up at the ceiling, and when she stopped, I said,
(46:56):
were you just writing? And she said, yeah, the word
I was singing the words. Thank you so much for
talking and it's great seeing you again. And I'm glad
you're so well. You look great. Thanks Rick, cheers. Thanks
to Joan Baiez for sharing so many fascinating stories from
her life. You can hear all of our favorite Joan
(47:17):
Baias songs on my playlist at Broken record podcast dot
com and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel
at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you
can find extended cuts of new and old episodes, and
you can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
Record is produced with helpful Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez,
Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafey.
(47:42):
Our executive producer is Nei La Belle. Broken Record is
a production of Pushkin Industries and it's like a show.
Please remember to share, rate, review us on your podcast at.
Our theme music by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond, bas
Pushkin. Joan Baez has always used her voice as a
tool for social change. Show me the Prison, show me
(00:37):
the jan show me the Prisoners Lie. At the height
of her career in the nineteen sixties, Joan was known
the world over as the Queen of Folk. She used
her fame to help spread the tenets of non violence
(00:57):
and was a close ally to doctor Martin Luther King Junior.
Joan also helped introduce Bob Dylan to the world by
giving them stage time at her shows when she was
the biggest ticket in town and he was a complete unknown.
In this conversation with Rick Rubin, Joan explains why, after
performing for over sixty years, she recently made the decision
(01:18):
to stop singing. She also talks about the time she
and Pete Seeger were run out of town by local
cops after a performance, and how is a badge of honor?
When the Brazilian government banned her music because they felt
it made people too emotional. This is broken record liner
notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmontain. You're a
(01:45):
Rick Rubin and Joan Bias. How are you hey, mountain man.
Nice to see you, Nice to see you. Everything well,
it's been a minute. It's been a minute. Everything's just
as good as it can be, Beautiful, Tell what's been
going on? What's been going on? Let me think. Well,
(02:06):
I made the decision and quit touring, as you know,
and on New Year's Eve, I made the decision to
not sing at all. So people can't say it, would
you just do this one? Just that's it. You know,
I'm ready to do other things and don't want to
put the effort into making this voice sound right, and
it doesn't anyway, So so I'm free of that, which
(02:27):
is wonderful, beautiful. What tell me a little bit about
the work that would go into keeping your voice working
in the way that you wanted at work? Well, first
of all, I had was just hanging on to old
recordings of the last teacher I had, and that went
back about a year, and I was just doing a
couple of hers just to get through. I didn't bother
(02:48):
anything new. And then my granddaughter started studying with Max
and Lewis. She was an I cat back in the day,
and she teaches and she's wonderful and was working well
for Jasmine, and I thought, well, I'd like to sing
with Jasmine a little bit before I stop all this,
and so I started working with Max Sam was totally
(03:11):
different from anybody else, but one way or another, it
involves conscientious work. You know, it should be five days
of weeks, even if it's twenty minutes a sec. That
concentrated takes you away from everything else. And honestly, if
I if the voice sounded more like what I really
wanted to sound like, I made a stuck with it.
But it won't matter how hard I work. Now you
(03:34):
know they're a muscle in there is not going to
be what it was, and I'd rather let it all
go interesting. It's I got to work with Johnny Cash
at the end of his career and his voice was
definitely failing at the end, and it was really it
really impacted him emotionally in a great way, in a
(03:57):
terrible way, exactly, and we found a way through the
emotion of the words that he was singing to not
have it being negative but be positive that it wasn't
that his voice was failing. It's that the things that
he was singing about were so difficult that it made
(04:19):
sense for to have difficulty in the words coming out.
So I don't know, it was at least there was
a method that worked. If you ever decide to try
it again, if you ever get the mood that you
can make it work for you instead of against you.
I think because my saying was this voice, you know,
I mean, yeah, good wine and so on up to
(04:40):
a certain point, and then you I mean, and Johnny
because of the nature of himself and his work and
his voice and his songs, he didn't have to do
that stuff. He just bared his soul. And that's why
those last albums were so gorgeous. He was apparently happy
with what was coming out of him. Yeah, he was,
but he during I will say, during the period, he
(05:02):
was very uncomfortable with his voice, yeah, and really questioned it.
And he would say that his voice was the one
thing that he could always rely upon and now he
couldn't rely upon that anymore, and it really it made
him uncomfortable. And we all go through I mean, anybody
who sings that. You don't know that when you're young,
(05:23):
there's no way to know it. But it's a certain point.
The muscles are like a tennis player just gonna start giving,
you know, So at any rate, that was New Year's Eve,
So yeah, tell me about the very what was the
very last performance in front of an audience, your last concert?
It was in Spain. It was in Madrid, and it
(05:45):
was glorious. I mean there was a big concert hall.
It was beautiful. It was filled with people. And I
had Emanciato Prava, a guitar songwriter, singer, famous, you know
the kind everybody goes ah when he walks on the stage.
And he and I worked on a song together and
sang it together and it was a big emotional moment
(06:07):
for everybody. And then I sang and that was basically it.
And I got an encore and I sang what I
had been singing, which was if I had wings, and
said goodbye that way. Yeah. What was the emotion of
the feeling like this is it? Well, I was already
(06:29):
feeling what was coming, and it was a relief. And
I wondered, often, is this something I'm going to really
wish that I know? Everybody says, oh yeah, I'll be
back on the road, and I thought, well, maybe to
be fair, I should leave that open. But I had
never a second. It was my people and the bus,
my friends, my co workers, the engineer, sound likes. That's
(06:52):
what I missed, but not being on the stage, not
all that stuff. It just I mean, and partly I
think is I walked right into the painting. You know,
it was like shifting or shifting into another gear, and
so I just something final and wonderful about it. We
were all exhausted because it was the end of it
(07:14):
was the end of our emotions too. I mean, we're
all wiped out with that. Yeah. Interesting that so many people,
we think of, so many artists, have a difficult time
walking away from it. Yeah. But for some reason, I
get the sense that you've always had as much of
a life outside of performance, where so many artists that's all,
(07:36):
that's all they have, So it seems like you've always
had an inner life to come back to. I think
that's true. I think partly at the very beginning, when
I was so disciplined and stiff, and this is you know,
traditional songs and everything else was commercial, it set me
on a path where I had to I had to
(08:01):
keep my spiritual life in order. I'd keep my body
in order. But I didn't fall into a lot of stuff,
but a lot of my friends did. I never did
the drugs. I'm sure I missed out on a lot
of stuff. I'm sure that I did. But yeah, I
pretty much kept it together and there even though you know,
I went through some heavy duty therapy and found out
(08:23):
stuff I hadn't known that was causing different behaviors in
me that I didn't have control of. That basically, there
was a core there that stayed on track. When did
you first start doing therapy, Hope? You know, I mean
a lot of therapists. When I was fifteen, I started
getting help from different doctors. Yeah, and that went right
(08:44):
on through. And I started the deep stuff when I
was fifty, and you know, that was a different kind
of therapy that was saying, Okay, there's something in here,
I'm going to dig it out. And you know, obviously
I can't talk about the details, but the fact was
there was therapy that helped me stay together, and there
was therapy that helped me fall apart and put the
(09:04):
pieces back together. So wow, beautiful, Yeah, beautiful. I'm glad.
I'm glad that you found you found help through those
through that work. It's it's it's a miracle when you
find the right you know, the right connection and when
you see where it can go, it's an amazing thing.
And you know, I think I felt the way A
(09:25):
lot of people, maybe most people feel that you can changes,
you can switch that, but basically nothing ever changes, and
that for me anyway, has not been true. I mean,
the change was was just transformative. It tooks a long
time and a lot of work, but I don't have
to go through the stuff that I did. You know
(09:45):
back then, do you have or have you ever had
a spiritual practice? You know, I've always either invented my
own or dipped into different people's for a while. And
the one that makes the most sense to me, but
also takes a discipline that I little short of, is
just Buddhist practice, you know, just trying to be mindful
(10:07):
and aware. And I always I mean parents were became
Quakers when I was eight, and so that brought in
the whole nonviolence and in the active part of Quakerism,
which is American Friends Service Committee, you get involved in
people in the world who need more than we have,
(10:29):
and so that was a way way back seeing wherever
the spirit wove in and out of that. I mean,
my father, his father's father was Catholic, and my father's
father was a Methodist minister, which means he left Catholicism
in Mexico, and that was not exactly the thing to
do in those days. And my father preached in his church. Oh,
(10:52):
my father was eighteen. They were Presbyterian in New York.
My mother's father was an Episcopalian minister who preached at
that beautiful church in the middle. I didn't know this.
I was visiting Edinburgh and that gorgeous little church that
writes back in the middle of town. You can't get
pictures of it because it's too big. You can't back
(11:13):
off far enough. That's where he preached. So there was
always a whole line of preachers. Amazing, amazing. Do you
feel like that that the preaching in your blood worked
its way into the music, both since it worked my
(11:33):
way into by talking too much and people in the
hall saying, why don't you shut up and sing? I
mean I heard that more than once, really, and I
get it, you know that. I was so intent on
saying what I felt no people should hear, or what
it was on my mind or politically or spiritually, and
so I would just, you know, damn the torpedoes and
(11:57):
say what I needed to say. Tell me more about
the Quaker faith. I know very little. The only you're
the first person to ever tell me about about Quakerism.
And is it called Quakerism, Yeah, that's Quakerism. Basically, the
Quakers are just about the only religion, formal religion that
really will not condone violence. I mean, not World War two,
(12:20):
the favorite wars. You really have to find another way
to live, and it's pretty much a constant challenge, especially
you know, in days like this and a world like this,
a country like this, and so it's an attempt to
live with through and by non violence. Meaning the bottom
line is that you are willing to accept suffering but
(12:42):
not inflicted. So that really determines how you behave publicly
and personally. And it's very challenging and there are times
that I am just impossible that you lose track of that. Yeah,
let's talk about the world that you came into as
a musician. Tell me about what the world was like
when you first started making music. We know I was
(13:04):
already politicized. But what happened was I moved to came
Bridge and I had heard Odetta and Pete Seeger and
Harry Bellafonti, and those are my introduction, and I heard
the Kingston Trio and I wouldn't admit that to anybody
because they were supposed to be commercial, but I loved them.
And then it moved to Cambridge and I the only
(13:25):
school that accepted me because my grades were terrible and
I had no interest in going to school, was Boston
University Fine Arts. So I was kind of halfway there.
And then I was fell in love with a guy
from Harvard, and I wandered around Harvard Square and started
playing in the coffee shops and so at that point
the politics all kind of shriveled up for a while
(13:46):
because I was just busy being in love. And that
went on for two years, and that's where all those
early Ballots came from. I mean, the political music didn't
start showing up until it was think it was actually gone.
On my side was probably the second or third album,
but the first one was just strictly Ballots. So the
scene around me was coffee shop, you know people. And
(14:08):
I wasn't in New York. People think I was in
New York. I was mostly in Cambridge at the club
forty seven, and so I was in this I remember
walking past one of these coffee shops. My father regretted
it forever, but he had never seen coffee shop activity
and students sitting around with somebody performing, So he took
his three daughters and his wife to see this phenomenon.
(14:30):
And I looked in one coffee shop, Tula's Coffee Shop,
and I saw a guy sitting and was playing Plasier
mur And that was it. I mean, that was just it.
That's why I wanted to be and what I wanted
to do. It was it mostly music or was there
also poetry? And tell me about the coffee shop scene. Well,
a coffee shop scene where I was in Cambridge was
(14:53):
not so much poetry to my memory, it was music.
The coffee shop Club forty seven, where I ended up
singing a few days a week ten dollars a night
to start with, it was a big money for me,
had been a jazz club and the women who ran
it were hip enough to see this folk boom coming
(15:15):
into play, so they took two nights a week and
made it a folk club, and eventually that's what it
was completely And I was a steady I at the
very beginning of that, I was I guess tuesdays. To
begin with, I sang every Tuesday, and then pretty soon
people songwriters came in, some known, some not known, Eric
(15:36):
von Schmidt, very unknown types, a lot of them. That's
where I got, you know, they were not famous people
I learned the songs from. Was it hard finding songs
back then? Well, because everywhere, because I'm a good robber,
you know, And all I had to do is I
(15:57):
mean for those ballots, because that's what I loved. They
were everywhere and you could find Geane Ritchie give you
a whole album's worth of gorgeous old ballots. After a
quick break, we'll be right back with Joan Bayass. We're
back with more from Joan Bayaz and Rick Ruby. So
(16:19):
you're singing in the coffee shop world. And then when
do protest songs make their appearance? Well, you know, before
this little love affair I had with my Harvard boyfriend,
I had already sung, say, I learned the first Emmett
Till that came out, I mean I was already there
in my head. And then there was a kind of
(16:40):
a dip, and then I wanted desperately to have the
songs that could express some of these feelings and the
obviously when Dylan came along, it was pretty early in
the game, but that feel that, you know, That's what
was missing, was that kind of well. He generated so
many of them, and they were so good and up
(17:02):
till then I had sung that we shall overcomes, and
I can't remember them right now, but I was certainly
already known as a protest singer or protest type. What
was the first song of his that you heard? Do
you remember? I think it was hard Rain, he said
of somebody's house, and I think that's what it was.
And soon after that was Got on my Side. Got
(17:24):
on my Side is the first one that I sang
of his. And we were somewhere probably in the South.
It was boiling hot, and I remember I don't sweat much,
but the back of my legs it was dripping down
from behind my knees, and I had the words out
there because I've never sung it before. And I think
Bob was off the side of the stage and wherever
(17:48):
I sang God on my Side. And later at some
point he and I were doing concerts together and we
sang William z and Zinger killed Poor Hetty Carroll, The
Lonesome Death of Hetty Carroll, And the story is about,
you know, a rich guy basically kills his maid because
he gets ticked off, it throws his cane across the room. Well,
(18:08):
we sang it in the area where that guy lived,
and we suddenly thought, you know, we better get out
of here in a hurry. So that's apropos of not
much except that those were extraordinary days musically. Have you
ever had an issue with censorship? Like? Was where is
(18:29):
your music ever banned? Or were you ever asked not
to perform somewhere because of what you were saying? Now,
the first incomes to mind was performing with Pizza or
when I was really really young and we realized as
we got into our cars to take off, we thought
the police were escorting us, they were chasing us. I mean,
(18:51):
they did not want us. I don't remember, somewhere in
the East Coast because he was a pink o comy
and I was his upstart, you know, so starting pretty young.
The answer is yeah, and they're you know, they're countries
where my songs have been banned and I've been banned,
and it's sort of a badge of honor. Really. I
mean I went to visit Latin America. It was Pinochet
(19:15):
was still in control, but exiles my exile friends here said,
you know, there's this chance that they're opening up down there.
This is a good time to go and sing and
do what it is you do. It was too early,
and I was banned in Argentina, Chile and Brazil, and so,
I mean to know, came to the hotel door and
(19:36):
with a piece of paper saying listen, don't get any
more than X number of feet from the microphone or
you'll be arrested. So yeah, again, that's a badge of
honor in one of those countries. Yeah, tell me about
Pete Seeger. Pete Seeger first influence. So I don't remember this,
but my aunt said that she took me to a
(19:57):
Seeger concert and my parents were frantic because all I
was listening to was rhythm and blues. I have a
little plastic gray radio at night. I listened as late
as I in the night, rhythm and blues, all the
black groups. And they thought I'd never go beyond that.
And so she took me to a Pete Seeger concert,
and they said it took like a good vaccine. You
(20:20):
know that I got it that he was my kind
of guy, because I was already you know, socially conscious,
and this guy was doing it both doing it all,
you know. And I'm happy to say that when he
was banned from radio and TV that I had a
chance to do my bit for him when this Hoot
(20:40):
and Nanny show invited me on and I said, I'll
come on as soon as you have Pete back on,
and they did. Said was there a particular song that
he was banned for? I don't think so. I think
it was the whole thing, you know. I'm not sure,
but he was banned. He couldn't say anything anywhere. Do
you think it was specifically for speaking out against war?
(21:04):
He was at that time period when you were either
a pink or you weren't, you know, were you a communist?
And he wouldn't say one way or another. You don't so. No,
it was during those years of McCarthy, just before, just
after ording, and he wouldn't say the things you're supposed
to say or name anybody else. Did you like being
(21:28):
around him? Like spending time with him? He's a funny man.
He was so shy. He was so shy when I
sang for him at the Kennedy Center Awards and afterwards
it was a big gathering and dinner and it's dancing
and I went up to him. I said, hey, Pete, congratulations.
He said, Joan, Joan, joan, and that's all I said, Pete, Pete,
(21:55):
and I went off and danced with Walter Cronkite. Clearly
Pete was not gonna dance. He was just shy. In
his way of saying hello. Also was to put a
banjo between you and him, and he say, I'm at
a a meta guy in guatemal He started plunking on
the on the banger. That way, he didn't have to
deal with anybody. That's what I think beautiful. And it
(22:16):
was a sweetheart. No, he was the big sweetheart. And
he died in the wool to his dying day. Did
not like having drums. Why do you have to have
drums in your band? Why do you have to have percussion?
And so he stayed. He hung in there as a
you know, a diehard purist. Tell me about first you're
The first record company round was Vanguard Records, which was
(22:39):
known for folk music mainly would you say classical and
then folk? Were you one of the early folk artists
on the label. Pete Seeger was there and the Weavers
were there, but I was the first major. Pete Seeger
was a major artist, but this brought it on one
level closer to culture as opposed to just counterculture. Yeah yeah,
(23:01):
I mean that's a fun story too. I just I
was well Albert Grossman, who was the guy who managed
everybody back then eventually was Dylan and Peter Paul and
Mary and Janice Joplin and so on, and so Albert
wanted me to sign with Columbia, which had all these
(23:21):
artists and which was the biggest and the place to go,
and that always frightened me. You know, I was looking
for something where I felt more at home, and classical
music is what was played in my house. And al
took me to New York City and he wanted me
to go to Columbia first. And when we were in Columbia,
(23:41):
he tried literally try to get me to sign a
contract there on the spot. And then I said, well,
you know, now I want to go to Vanguard. He
really didn't want me to go there, but I did.
I liked the guy I could. You know. It wasn't
the showbiz stuff. They didn't have gold albums on the wall,
they didn't have any gold albums, you know. And I
was comfortable there and it was clear that. I mean,
(24:04):
I spent a week trying to trying to figure it
out because everybody except my parents said, you know, honey,
you should really go with Columbia and and I didn't.
And you know, I probably would have sold more albums
and so on, but I've never regretted, you know, the
decision I made. Tell me about Albert Albert Albert Grossman. Yes, Oh,
(24:30):
he was just you know, he was a big manager guy,
and he would make fun of me for not, you know,
for not having somebody cooler and more in the fast lane.
And he says something like, who do you want? Who
do you want? You want brando? I'll get your brando.
I'd say, al You're not winning me over with this,
you know. Then with his stuff. On the other hand,
(24:52):
he was a generous man. He was generous with people
with his money. But he was just in that fast
lane where I was not going to be comfortable. Ever.
Do you think that he really appreciated the music? Actually
I do. Yeah. I think. So It's easy for that
to get lost when you're starting to make the money
at the same time, but I think he did. Yeah.
(25:14):
When was the first time when you were performing and
you thought, wow, this is really getting to be a
big like this is a big deal. You know, when
I was in high school and I was singing and
I started singing of the you know, the talent shows
and stuff, and my friends were saying, oh boy, you
think you're going to be famous someday. I didn't know
what they were talking about. My idea of the future
(25:35):
was the following week. I mean, I didn't look ahead
to that, and so it probably saved me a lot
of trouble. And then I thought, when I was really
seriously in the public eye, I wouldn't use the word famous.
I'd say, well, I'm well known. I'm well known, but
I mean by then, I mean the fuck I was
internationally famous. But I just didn't want to get into
(25:57):
that aura. But with their particular performances where you just
felt like, I don't know, the first time you played
Carnegie Hall or the first time you played any of
those moments where it just felt like, wow, this is
it's grown into something where you have to almost pinch
yourself if this is happening. Did you have those moments
(26:17):
along the way, you know, maybe early on Carnegie something
like Carnegie Hall, I think it was probably too busy
being nervous then thinking about how you know what level
I've reached in the in the ladder of things. I
remember certain certain concerts that will always stand out to me,
like it's Stumble. It wasn't a stumble. It was south
(26:39):
of a Stumble, but in an outdoor two thousand year
old amphitheater, and it was just as far as the beauty.
Around me was a whole city that had been underwater
at one point, so it was all white stones, Ephesus,
and I just was in heaven. They asked me back,
and I said, I'll come back in a full moon
if you'll get the city there to walk through there
(27:02):
in the full moon, and they did. Yeah. It was
a big wall that sounds in edible, so beautiful. When
you would be on stage and when you'd be singing,
are you thinking about the words? Are you thinking about
the story of the song, are you thinking about what
you're doing? Are you taking in what's around you? Are
(27:25):
you hearing the audience? Do you disappear? What's the feeling
that's going on inside during a concert? All of the above, Rick,
All of the above. I mean sometimes I'm thinking about
the words because I have to, because I don't know
them that well, or they're in a foreign language. Sometimes
I feel very much with the audience for doing a
(27:46):
song together, and then I have to say that there
were times when the audience is so lousy that I
am planning what I'm going to wear to bed on
the bus and I didn't want to tell people that,
but I can now because it's all over. But there
are those moments when you're doing your grocery list. But
for the most part, like ninety eight percent of the time,
(28:08):
you're there and watching and being with I had an
un unfortunate characteristic of seeing everything, absolutely everything. If I
see him, somebody tilt their wrist, I know they're looking
at their watch, and I'm thinking, oaks. I wonder if
I'm going on too long, you know, so I caught
(28:28):
everything and somebody stifling a yawn, I would think the
same thing, Oh dear, I've gone on long and so on.
We'll be back with more from Joan Bayass. We're back
with the rest of Rick Ruban's conversation with Joan Byass.
How would you say activism has changed over the course
(28:50):
of your life from how did you see it when
you were fifteen and how do you see it now. Well,
in some ways it's absolutely consistent. You know, when I
was fifteen, was the first activism I did was on
my own, and I stayed in school during an air raid.
Drill was all, you know, sound goes off. Also was
(29:12):
to run home or have your parents pick you up
before the bomb gets here from Russia, you know. And
I asked my father, who's a physicist, how long it
would take a missile to get from Moscow to Palo
alto high school. And it was clear to me that
it was all just ridiculous. So as a you know, protest,
I stayed in class. And it's pretty fascinating. I mean
(29:36):
I went down to the office and pink slip or
whatever and talked to the secretaries, the principle vice. Principally,
I had no idea, you know, about what we were
really doing on that day, So I started started early.
And in some ways that the kind of protests you
do on your own, and you know, and as some
(29:58):
of the some of the things I admire so much,
like you know, Gretta said Gretat Thumberg sitting in front
of Parliament all by herself, Kaepernick taking a knee all
by himself. You kind of cross your fingers and hope
somebody will join you, but you do it anyway. So
that part remains the same. And I think trying to
find a way to explain how it is we want
(30:21):
to explain it, how we want people to hear us
is just it's different now. And it's different partly in
my mind because there was a period. There was a
time period when, as one young kid told me after
that period said, you know, you guys had everything. You
had the political reason to be on the streets, you
had the music, you had the songwriters, you had the glue.
(30:45):
And what we're missing is the glue. I think that
the feeling that we're all together in this. And I
can say that for young people who never experienced that.
We all got to experience it when Obama was running
for office and it was a high five strangers on
the subway. That can't continue. I don't think when you're
(31:05):
in office it didn't. But everybody that I know was
aware enough to say, oh my god, this is what
it could feel like. And we don't have that feeling now.
We have lots of good things happening, we have people
taking risks. We don't have that cohesive stuff that makes
us feel like a movement and be a movement. Have
(31:26):
you seen protests any particular protest songs change in meaning
over the years, Like when you first heard them, they
meant one thing, and then over time either the meaning
is changed or the context is change in a way
where either the song becomes obsolete or it takes on
a whole new interpretation. I have to tell you this
(31:50):
is a fun story too. I was in Brazil and
I was not allowed to sing anywhere officially. So I
got into a big audience. This was the plan, or
to friends, who got me in the middle of an
audience and at a certain point the singer I was
supposed to sing, but they wouldn't let me. So the
person performing that night would stop and it would have
(32:10):
said something, and I would stand up by myself in
the middle of this auditorium and sing. So I sang
a couple of songs, wonderful response. And then I sang
a song. This probably the most famous song I've ever sung,
but it's in Europe. It's Here's to You. It's about
Saco and Vinzetti, and I sang this it's a little
(32:31):
kind of a little chant and it's so popular in
Spain and Italy and France. It's what they wait for
at the end of the concert. And it's a protest song.
And I sang this, there was this dead silence. It
had been taken to be used as a recruiting song
for the army. So yeah, that's exactly what you're talking about.
(32:52):
And that's amazing. It's amazing how these things can happen,
either with us watching them or without us knowing. We're
just like, oh, the whole context just changed. That's amazing.
You got to test it out ahead of time, is
what I learned from that. So you were allowed to
physically be in Brazil, you just weren't allowed to sing
in front of an audience, you know. I was allowed
(33:13):
to have a press conference every morning, which I did,
but it was the singing. They didn't want me singing.
And I talked to the press about it. I said,
why is this going on? And they said something about, well,
Brazilians are very emotional and that if they would be
moved not by the words but by the music, that
was the only explanation everybody gave me. That this is
(33:36):
a country where the music is what moves people to do.
One thing and another and that that would be not
desirable by the government. Tell me how you see protest
songs functioning in society, that, what they do, what they
don't do that, how does it work? Do you mean?
Now ever? Ever? Oh, I suppose it is the emotional factor.
(34:03):
And I mean you can listen to somebody talk forever,
speeches forever, but the music literally literally crosses the barriers
one country to another from one. I mean, I remember
when I was second album came out, and there was
a guy. They told me about it later in the
record stores. My records were all piled up like that,
(34:25):
and this guy wanted to buy one, but he didn't
want to buy one, but he did, and apparently he
paced back and forth and then he said that bitch
Shirken sing he was a Republican, couldn't stand my politics,
and he bought the album. No, he does had Tony.
That's ridiculous. So it crossed whatever that barrier. Unbelievable for
(34:51):
a protest song to work. Does the song have to
be great regardless of the content. I don't think so.
I first of all, I think it's about context. I
mean I used to saying green grass of Home, which
has nothing to do with politics, and I would dedicate
it to my husband who was in jail for draft resistance,
and so it had we just take a song that
(35:14):
hasn't nothing to do with politics, and you put it
in that and then you've made your point and everybody's
enjoyed the song, and it's kind of a win win.
What do you think is the greatest protest song I've
ever written? Or what's or should I say, what's your
favorite protest song? Made better question? Oh? I think, um, well,
there's the Italian when I was talking about, but that's
(35:35):
not known. I would think that probably blowing in the Wind,
because I've heard it in every language. I've heard boy
scouts in Germany on the beach singing blowing in the wind,
blowing as the wind, you know. And it's just partly
because it's known most songs. You learn the hook and
learn a bit of the course. People all around the
(35:58):
world know every word to blowing in the wind, So
it's a joy to sing beautiful. Can you I feel
uncomfortable asking this, but I want to know the song
that you're talking about that's not known. Is there a
way you could demonstrate it without feeling like I'm asking
for anything that goes against what you're doing. It just
(36:19):
says it was written by Morticone. It was a film
about Saco and Vinzetti, and they came to me. I
was in my hotel room in Rome, and said will
you write the music for this movie? And I said
I couldn't possibly, but he gave me these gave me
the music and they wanted three ballads written, and I did,
(36:40):
wrote one a day and then that was done, and
then he said, oh, this one more thing. I want
to put a tag at the end of the song.
It was just catchy, little brief melody and what I
write the words, and I just said, here's to you,
Nicola and Bart, rest forever in our hearts. The last
(37:01):
and final moment is yours. This agony is your triumph.
And I have to say that it was a combination
of the words and the little melody and whatever happened happened.
And if you'll find it under Nicola and Bart amazing, amazing,
And that's and that has lived. It has taken on
a life of its own forever, and every summer it
(37:25):
comes out again in Italy. It's a big hit. And
if I had taken the royalties for that, I wouldn't
have had to ever do anything else. But I wouldn't
because I figured Saco and Vinzetti is sacred territory. I
didn't have any right taking money for that. We're just
kind of ridiculous because the record company did. But it
(37:45):
was my stuffy way of I'm turning down more money.
You've been good at that over your career, I've been
really good at that. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever had
a relationship with gospel music? Yeah? I have. First of
all in the South fifty nine sixty well sixty two
or sixty three, and the black churches down there and
(38:07):
working with King and his people and all of us.
And I would end up in gospel and the churches.
And I remember that one of the churches that people
had already it was a hot day, I think it
was in Mississippi, and people were they called it getting happy,
you know, they're going stiff and being carried out by
the women in the white dresses. And I heard the
(38:30):
preachers saying, a good friend from the north is here
today to sing for us. I thought, oh my god,
that means me. And I went and sang break bread
together and a couple of people went got happy. I thought,
you know what, I just got my strives. Wow, and
everybody sang with me. Yeah. So that would be a
(38:51):
genuine relationship with with gospel incredible. And then later on
I had a producer, Alan Abrahams, who produced three albums
and mostly what he does is gospel beautiful. Let's talk
about when folk music and rock music joined together. What
is the feeling in the air when that was going on. Well,
(39:12):
I was still a snotty purist. So the famous time
of Dylan coming to Newport and going electric, I was
just like Pete Seeger, how can he do this to us,
you know, our golden boy? And so I was really behind,
you know, I was on the slow freight, as my
mother would say. And then you know, sort of watching
(39:37):
what Dylan meant to the Beatles and vice versa when
they came to the States. I think whatever it was
in me that had a problem sort of wore off
because the music was good. You know, did you get
to spend time with the Beatles at all? And a
funny evening with I have these stories, you know, I
guess that's what life is about. You're my age. It
(40:00):
is mostly stories. M Yeah. When the first time they
came to the States, I had sung in the Red
Rocks Amphitheater and they were the the next night, and
I had the next night off, so I stayed and
I was in there. They have a labyrinth for the
press down under the stage, and I was down there
with I swear two hundred press and somebody came and said,
(40:23):
the Beatles would like to meet you. And I went
to their dressing room and I said, Hi, I'm Joan,
and one by what was it, Hello, I'm Ringo, Hello,
I'm John. I said, listen, you guys are in the
cover of every newspaper magazine in the world. I know
who you are. Yeah. And then I traveled with them
out to California and watched some more of their shows,
(40:46):
and it was It's something I'd never experienced before. I mean,
when they came out on stage at Red Rocks, it
would be like standing in back of a jet and
the sky lit up with the cameras. It was bright,
and there was just screaming. Was you didn't hear them
at all. You didn't hear them unless your head was
in one of the speakers. And a few years later,
(41:08):
there is that Epstein was he still with them, their manager,
whoever it was. They were playing somewhere in San Francisco,
and I was there, and there was this little second
of time when the screaming stopped. He said, this is
our last tour in the States. That was their last show,
that San Francisco is their last show. This is it,
(41:29):
We're not coming back. Did you have any you talked
about paying attention to the audience, always being with them, seeing,
noticing if things were going well or not. Yeah, did
you have any tricks if you felt like things were
starting to go south at a show that you could
do to get the audience back. Mostly what I did
(41:52):
when it really got rough was because I've had something
of a band for many, many years. We'd look at
each other, you know, and just a little wink or
a little cross eye meant we had each other. So
it didn't matter so much about trying to get somebody
if they weren't really gettable. But I mean, I would
say that was so rare that we really wanted to
(42:14):
chuck it in. Yeah, I feel like people would come
to see you because they loved you. That seems like
we always thought so too. Once in a while, you know,
like a like a resort town or something. They're coming
because that's the only game in town, and they've been
out on the beach getting too much sun and drinking.
So you know, there's just so much you can do
(42:37):
in that situation. Yeah, tell me how you started painting. Well,
all my life, I've sketched, you know. When I was
in second grade, I I sketched a Mickey Mouse and
sold it for three cents. And Bambi and then I
sketched because they had an eye for likenesses like a draw.
(42:59):
And then in junior high school, I started drawing Jimmy
Deane and then members of the class, and I sold
some of them, as I remember, that's very funny. And
then just undisciplined different kinds of painting. During my recovery work,
I did dreams of recovery painting, you know. But this
(43:19):
the portrait started, I mean, this journey into portraiture started
about nine years ago and I just all of a sudden,
it was an all of a sudden, passed the frame
shop and looked in. I thought, hmmm, I think I'll
get my hands into this one. And I started and
it never stopped that, you know, the first for the
(43:40):
first year and a half. I think I did mostly
collages and then I thought, you know what, I really
would like to do a portrait. I'll bet that's really difficult.
And guess what it wasn't And I didn't have to
go to school. I get tricks from different people. How
do you paint eyeglasses? So you know, somebody tells me
a little trick. That's all I needed. I'm sure there's
(44:01):
a lot that I could be learning, and I just
don't want to leave my own studio and go to school.
You know, how much time do you spend painting? Typically, well,
in a time like when getting ready for that last show,
and when I'm in the cycle of doing paintings, it
could be a few hours a day, a few three
or four hours a day. And like now, since the
(44:24):
last painting, which was Stacey Abrams, that's a few months ago,
I haven't done anything. I just started. This is the
first day I've been back in the studio and I
started painting. There was a photograph of one of the
policemen who was being beaten. It's an extraordinary It's a
profile of him and this panicky look and you can't
(44:49):
see any of the details, just this face and I thought, well,
you know, there's probably an entire exhibit from the insurrection.
I would love to see those. Any relationship between interpretive
singing and interpreting in paint, Oh my, I guess I
(45:09):
don't know if there's a relationship. There are similarities, you know,
they just sort of refusal to get any formal education
about it that it just has to come. I know
that it's as you know, it's a mystery to me
where the voice came from and how it worked. And
it's equally it's a mystery to me how these paintings
(45:30):
are showing up. And then we talked a little bit
on the show the other night about upside down drawings.
They're just fascinating to me. I literally draw the thing
upside down, and sometimes I know what I'm going to draw.
Sometimes I don't. I just start in and then I
turn it background, and I see what it looks like,
(45:52):
and I see what it's saying to me, and usually
a pun or something silly. Turn it background and I
write what I you know, what came to my mind
and all of that's insane, and I know that the
something happens in the brain that allows that to happen.
I don't know what it is. I don't really care.
It's beautiful. I imagine. It's not so different than the
(46:14):
way many people I know write songs, which is almost
like a form of automatic writing. You know. It's it's
not sitting down to write a particular thing. It's more
almost through improvisation, words appear and then looking at what
those words are, trying to say that the song reveals itself.
(46:36):
That sounds like a good possibility. I haven't written anything
for thirty years except that snarky song about Trump that
I just quit. So my granddaughter writes. And she was
sitting at the piano and she was singing this song
and then it got quiet. I looked at her, she
staring up at the ceiling, and when she stopped, I said,
(46:56):
were you just writing? And she said, yeah, the word
I was singing the words. Thank you so much for
talking and it's great seeing you again. And I'm glad
you're so well. You look great. Thanks Rick, cheers. Thanks
to Joan Baiez for sharing so many fascinating stories from
her life. You can hear all of our favorite Joan
(47:17):
Baias songs on my playlist at Broken record podcast dot
com and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel
at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you
can find extended cuts of new and old episodes, and
you can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
Record is produced with helpful Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez,
Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafey.
(47:42):
Our executive producer is Nei La Belle. Broken Record is
a production of Pushkin Industries and it's like a show.
Please remember to share, rate, review us on your podcast at.
Our theme music by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond, bas
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