Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Baezis an American folk singer, songwriter, musician, and activist whose contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest or social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 55 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish as well as in English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages. She is regarded as a folk singer, although her music has diversified since the counterculture days of the 1960s and now encompasses everything from folk rock and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth9 January 1941
CountryUnited States of America
The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.
I wish it was clear for me how it happened [stop writing songs], then maybe I could start writing again. But it's kind of an "it." It just submerged itself. Because the way I had always written was just that it came out. It just happened.
If it came back I would be thrilled. I would be delighted to write more songs. I need them now because I want to make an album and I have to depend on other people's music, which I've done for years. But still, it'd be really nice to be able to sprinkle it with my own.
I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things.
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.
I was writing "Diamonds and Rust' and it had nothing to do with what it turned out to be. I don't remember what it is, but I think I was writing a song. It was literally interrupted by a phone call, and it just took another curve and it came out to be what it was.
I spend a lot of time with Buddhists. I'm not a Buddhist, but their relationship with death interests me.
I've never had a humble opinion in my life. If you're going to have one, why bother to be humble about it?
Dylan made it pretty clear he didn't want to do all that other stuff,
I think Cindy and the women have impeccable credentials -- no matter how hard people try to slander and assassinate their personalities, it is impeccable credentials. I think they simply can't be not listened to.
You can even hear me go flat in places, ... It's all over that recording. The audience was in a dark depression. We didn't even include all of their responses, as you might imagine.
I thought it was monumentally well run and I had a marvelous time playing it.
free of any major label associations in the United States.
I don't know to this day what he's all about. All I know is what he gave us.