Joan Baez Reveals She’s Only Ever Done One Interview That Didn’t Mention Bob Dylan
Joan Baez is many things: a celebrated singer-songwriter, poet, musician and activist. However, many people also know her as Bob Dylan‘s ex, as the two folk musicians dated on and off in the 1960s — a fact that often becomes a focus in interviews with Baez, rather than her own work. With all of the buzz surrounding the recent Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet as Dylan and Monica Barbaro as Baez, the singer has once again been dreading having to discuss her former paramour in interviews. And all the attention, she joked to Vanity Fair, has made her fondly remember the only time an interviewer didn’t ask her about Dylan.
She explained to Vanity Fair, ““I was hoping the first question would not even have his name. I understand you can’t help it. I know I can’t. Once in my life, I had an interview that was just me. It was a German guy, and he gave a whole interview, and he never brought up the name. When we were finished, I said, hallelujah.”
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Baez continued, “I had an interview with Rolling Stone the other day, and they said, ‘Did Bob reach out to you [about the movie]?’ And I said, ‘You’ve been working at Rolling Stone long enough to know the answer to that question.’ He doesn’t reach out to anybody.”
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These days, the 84-year-old is still trying new things: she recently released a book of poems and prose called When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance. While she is traveling to promote the book, she admitted that she doesn’t want to tour anymore. She explained, “Too tiring. The tour bus, the transfers — I can’t do it anymore. But writing? Writing is still a way to endure.” Baez said that it provides her with a different type of therapy, which helps her get past trauma from her younger years.
What else has Baez been up to? Crashing cars, apparently. She laughed about crashing her newly-bought Tesla and said, “God was speaking to me, because I got this car — literally, I was trying it out. I drove for 45 minutes, I drove home—boom: I backed into a big tree and it was destroyed.”
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Pop Music Legends
August 2017
Dedicated to the sights, sounds and stories of the golden age of pop.
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