Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on demand, I am grateful you're here. Whether you're a regular listener or someone joining us today because of the holiday, we do have some great programming for Indigenous People's Day.

We'll talk about Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery, that's now on display at the Met. We'll also hear about a book that flips the coming to the new world narrative and instead documents Indigenous people who traveled to Europe in the 16th century. We'll speak with the co-directors of the new HBO original documentary series, Navajo Police: Class 57, about the struggle to staff the Navajo Nation police force.

That is the plan for today. Let's get this started with someone we're very excited to have in the studio today, Joan Baez.

[MUSIC - Joan Baez: Diamonds and Rust]

Alison Stewart: Joan Baez played in Carnegie Hall before she was 18. She was on the cover of Time Magazine by 21. It was Baez who helped introduce the world to an up-and-comer named Bob Dylan. Her long and productive career as an artist and activist has been well documented, but in a new film, Joan Baez I Am a Noise, we learned so much about the intersection of her mental health and her creativity and the strains on both. Framed by the legendary singer-songwriter's final Fare Thee Well Tour, which ran through 2019, the film finds Baez reflecting on her career, but at many points, the documentary's focus turns inward and toward her family.

Woven throughout the film is the internal turmoil and darkness that Baez felt and dealt with since childhood. Periods in between tours would find her sometimes emotionally low. At 16, she began going to therapy. At 50, she returned to it and uncovered parts of herself she'd never realized were there, as well as some troubling memories that complicated her relationship with her parents. Joan Baez I Am a Noise is in theaters now with a wide release this Friday, October 13th. Joining me now in studio is Joan Baez. It is such a pleasure to meet you.

Joan Baez: It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you very much.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we are opening up the phone lines. Can you believe it? When did you become a fan of Joan Baez? How has her music been a soundtrack a part of your life? What does her music mean to you? What's your favorite Joan Baez song? Call in or text us. 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. People are already texting in without me even giving the number out. 212-433-WNYC. You can join us on air or you can text to us. Our social media is available as well, at All Of It WNYC.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, because, you know, the Internet. In the notes that I was reading or a piece I was reading, it noted that you did not have final approval on the final cut of this film, right?

Joan Baez: That is correct. People don't know that. You say those are the directors, they put the thing together. I do not have final say.

Alison Stewart: What made you agree to that? What made you go with that choice?

Joan Baez: What made me that crazy? Well, knowing the primary director, she'd been a friend for decades, and we had talked about this for quite some time and decided it just got closer and closer to the end of my 70s. Coming towards the last tour, I said, "Okay, let's dive in and do this." It took trust. I had to really trust Karen and the other two, Miri Navasky and Maeve O'Boyle, and then I just turned over the keys.

The film went from being a film about the tour and stuff from my past and pictures my father took eight-millimeter movies of us when I was three, and this travels through and we didn't really know that. I didn't really know all of that or the extent of it until I gave them the keys to my storage unit into which I had never been, and I walked into it in the film.

Alison Stewart: I was about to say, when you said, I turned over the keys, that wasn't a metaphor.

Joan Baez: No, it was--

Alison Stewart: That was literal.

Joan Baez: That was literal. Yes.

Alison Stewart: All of these that was the first time you'd actually walked into that storage?

Joan Baez: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: Oh, my gosh. As you started to look around, and we see it, they're hand-labeled, the boxes of everything, what was the first material that you gravitated towards?

Joan Baez: I think I was in a state of shock just walking in there because there was so much stuff. Then I probably looked for drawings, knowing that they would be prevalent. I just kind of wandered around in there, getting used to the idea that this was my life, and that realizing what the directors already knew, that my mother had kept absolutely every letter and every tape I made for them, and all of the movies and photographs from when we were little. It was mountains of stuff. Somebody said, "Oh, that's a director's dream." It was also a director's nightmare to go through all that stuff, but they did.

Alison Stewart: Yes, journal entries, photographs, as you said, films when you were a little one. Did you go through the material first or did you just let your directors have at it?

Joan Baez: They did the whole-- I didn't have any interest in going through that.

Alison Stewart: You didn't?

Joan Baez: I mean, I was happy to see things I hadn't seen before, especially from us when we were little and we were kids, and they're adorable photographs. When I turned the keys over, I was serious about that. In a sense, they do way more work than I do, particularly because of this mountain of archives. I watched from a distance, and then I would take part, and I guess seven years later had been through it all.

Alison Stewart: Was there a particular item or drawing or photo that sparked a joyous memory for you?

Joan Baez: Oh, there were a lot of joyous memories. There were a lot of things that made me laugh. Me in this cartoon-like thing racing long on a horse with a big banner saying, "Save the world. World peace." I had these illusions and delusions when I was as early as 14, 15 years old that that's what I wanted to do. Then that just got stronger as I got older.

Alison Stewart: We learn the film and we see in the film, you have a great deal of artistic talent as a painter and an illustrator. Did you ever consider that professionally or going to art school?

Joan Baez: Well, when I was in junior high school, at the end of the year, they predict what you're going to be. It was predicted that I would be a cartoonist because I had done sketches for everybody in the school and for myself and pictures of James Dean, and portraits of kids in my class. Then I charge them $5, and they would get this drawing. I think when I started saying I didn't have any plans, I thought the future was the following Wednesday. I just didn't look anywhere into the future. I'm not sure how many really young people do.

Alison Stewart: Do you have a sense of why your mom archived so much and kept so much?

Joan Baez: Oh, I never thought of that why she did. I don't know. We're just lucky that she did.

Alison Stewart: Let's take some calls. Matthew is calling in from Roosevelt Island. Hi, Matthew. Thank you for calling All Of It. You're on the air.

Matthew: Thank you. Joan Baez, I have adored you for the 60 years I've been playing the guitar.

Joan Baez: Oh, my goodness.

Matthew: I have included 10,000 Miles, Silver Dagger in my repertoires for many, many years. I was at your Fare Well concert tour at the Beacon Theater, and I heard two songs that I had never heard before, and now I've included them as well. One was Hard Times by Stephen Foster. The other was Zoe Mulford's, The President Sang Amazing Grace. Thank you so much.

Joan Baez: You're so welcome. I'm glad I added a little bit to your life.

Alison Stewart: Matthew, thank you for calling in. When you were thinking about the set list for the Fare Well tour, what did you want it to be like? What did you know you had to include? What were--

Joan Baez: It's always a little dance because you want to put some new material in. There's regular stuff I've done for years, and then the ones that people wanted to hear in the first place, and they have to be sparsely put in there. It really becomes a nostalgia tour, so we try to keep it current. The President Sang Amazing Grace had been written not that long ago, obviously, and then the classics, The Boxer and Imagine, and I love singing them. I love interacting with the audience on those songs. All in all, it was a win-win. That whole last tour was pretty wonderful.

Alison Stewart: In the film, we see you working with a vocal coach to make sure that your muscles stay as strong. What do you get out of those sessions? As someone who's been a professional performer for so long, what do you still learn?

Joan Baez: When I was in my 30s, I suddenly realized I was not a miss natural talent forever. That stuff was going on internally in my, that muscle you're talking about the vocal cords and oops, I'm going to have to work with them, which I did until the day I stopped. It was a battle. You see the beginning of the battle at the beginning of the film and I'm vocalizing happily, my dog is sitting next to me howling, which makes it a little less difficult for me to watch.

The voice got lower and lower and more and more difficult to enjoy. I really wanted that fluidity I'd had, and I could never really get it back. What I was slowly discovering was that the less I put effort into what I really couldn't do well, the higher notes, the more at ease I was. Then when I quit, I quit, I hung the guitar on the wall. It looks really pretty there and occasionally take it down, but it doesn't stay down for long. I have a lot of other things I'm doing.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Joan Baez. I Am A Noise is now in theaters in New York City. The wide release will be on October 13th. Kiltie is calling in from Manhattan. Hi, Kiltie, how are you?

Kiltie: I'm fine, thank you. Is this Joan?

Alison Stewart: No.

Joan Baez: Yes, it is now.

Kiltie: Oh, Joan, maybe you remember me from the very dim past, dark ages, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We had a mutual friend, his name was Keith Hyatt and you sang at my dining room table with my family when you were about 19.

Joan Baez: I'm going to interrupt you here. Do you have a question because a lot of people are going to want to call in? Maybe you have a question or--

Kiltie: I don't have a question. I just wanted you to know.

Alison Stewart: Wondered if you remembered it.

Joan Baez: Okay. Thank you. Thanks for calling in.

Alison Stewart: There's a text here, the Richmond County Orchestra from Staten Island, Joan's birthplace, says we love you [unintelligible 00:12:09]

Joan Baez: Thank you. Thanks. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: We learn a lot about your family history. Your father's from Mexico and you tell a story about being 13 and being called a dumb Mexican. Before that moment, what conversations had you had within the family about ethnicity or identity?

Joan Baez: I'm not sure where I stood on that. I apparently was going to stick to my own story, which was I'm a Mexican partly because to support the people around me who were Mexican kids who really didn't have much of a foothold in this country. I did identify with them. On the other hand, it was an identity crisis because I didn't speak Spanish and I wasn't a part of that group any more than I was a part of the white people.

I had to bash around in that until I created my own identity in that literally. I guess it was eighth grade. I would take a ukulele to school and sing at lunchtime and began developing it. At least people knew who I was and that's probably where I Am A Noise came from. I was trying to make myself known.

Alison Stewart: It sounds like that 13-year-old time was very important to you and fertile to you. You had a journal called What I Believe, your teen diaries. You were talking about philosophy in these. You were writing about that. You were talking about the size of the universe and how we're just specks in this whole wild universe. First of all, where did that come from? Was this imagination? Was this really the way you felt?

Joan Baez: Oh, first of all, yes, huge imagination, which probably both helped and hindered. Then, the dialogue of my family about social issues began when I was really young. I think our trip doesn't show up in the film, but we spent a year in Baghdad when I was 10. It does come up, but--

Alison Stewart: It's brief.

Joan Baez: Yes, it's very brief. I remember sending letters home to my classmates and never hearing anything back from them. There was no way for them to relate to that. I was always just on the fringe of things. Now I don't remember your question.

Alison Stewart: I think my question was what was that writing, those diary entries, that you felt the need to write this down? Was it out of your imagination or is it how you really felt in the world?

Joan Baez: It's how I felt in the world, I'm sure. I'm sure that came out in everything I did and the drawings and whether I knew it or not, that was how it was coming out.

Alison Stewart: When you first started as a performer, did the activism come along with you or did you grow into that?

Joan Baez: I think in some ways that the activism came first, it was the consciousness and possibly even to some moved along by our time in Baghdad that's where the speck comes from. There are all these millions of little specks, little people in the world. I saw them in their difficulties. I saw them and I knew that when I was that age, I knew I was privileged. In spite of whatever battles were going on, I knew I had more than most people in the world.

Alison Stewart: Someone texted in, been a fan since ten years old, lifelong fan of all her music and activism. I wanted to be here in my young teens. Her songs are still with me to this day. Let's talk to Esme calling in from Wilton, Connecticut, who has an interesting connection. Hi, Esme. Thank you for calling in.

Esme: Hi. Wow, I'm so excited. Joan Baez, I'm guessing you don't remember me. There's no way. My father is the artist who painted the portrait of you that was for the cover of Time Magazine while I sat watching because I was unbelievably unartistic and my parents couldn't believe it because my siblings were so good. They tried to teach me sculpture. They tried to teach me everything. I remember you sitting in the chair. You were barefoot. You have one leg up, one knee up, and that portrait, Time Magazine, donated it to the National Gallery. I can't tell you how--

Joan Baez: I saw it in the National Gallery. I saw it in there, actually.

Esme: I have taken so many friends there who are so excited, and they post a picture of it, and nobody quite understands what they're posting about. They say, "Oh, that's Joan Baez," and my friends are saying, "Yes, but I'm here with Esme."

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Esme, thank you for calling in. You had such enormous fame at such a young age, Joan. If you were to talk to, I'm thinking of some of the young women who write today and who people feel very close to, like Billie Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo, what would you tell them over coffee about that kind of fame that early?

Joan Baez: The person who's singing or the singer?

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's interesting.

Joan Baez: The person who's listening or the singer?

Alison Stewart: The singer. These young women who are experiencing an extraordinary amount of fame around the time you did.

Joan Baez: I'm lucky enough to be friends with a couple of them.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow.

Joan Baez: Lana Del Rey is very close to me. I just am curious about their lives and the direction they've taken. The ones I know and even the ones who are enormously well known are not particularly political, and that's fine. They have to be what they're going to be. I don't know what direction that all leads with their music and their words and their songs and their followings. Then I have to question where is a platform for them in this turbulent-

Alison Stewart: Time.

Joan Baez: -world we have, especially in this country, just trying to survive in this country. I would say, what I end up saying is when you can, go and make good trouble with your music, with your words, and with your life.

Alison Stewart: Follow Mr. John Lewis's words, make good trouble.

Joan Baez: Yes.

Alison Stewart: We found a little bit of a video on YouTube from the year 1960 when you released your first album, which the person who posted it claims it's your first TV appearance. Let's listen to a little bit of you.

[MUSIC - Joan Baez: Fare Thee Well]

Alison Stewart: When you began, and this might sound like a silly question, were you ever frightened on stage? It seems very young to me.

Joan Baez: Oh, God, I was a nervous wreck. I really was a nervous wreck starting from the very beginning. Started singing, I was fifteen singing at the Shriner's gathering and getting just immobilized by fear. You see some of that in the film. It's hard to describe, and also because I looked so calm, and I looked so peaceful. "Oh, you're so peaceful." I'm thinking, "Oh my God, there's turmoil going on inside there." I know I probably, in a way, was self-soothing by being up there. I like the sound of my own voice. I love hearing it back. I'm just astonished at it. I'm so far from being able to do any of those notes now, I look at and think, "Oh my God, how did she do that?" [laughs]

Alison Stewart: My guest is Joan Baez. The name of the film is Joan Baez I Am A Noise. We'll have a quick break and we'll have more with Joan. This is All Of It.

[music]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Joan Baez. The new film, Joan Baez I Am A Noise is now in theaters in New York. It opens nationwide on October 13th. In the film, we learned you opened a school called The Institute for the Study of Nonviolence. It ran about 10 years. It had a spinoff organization that still exists today, correct, Resource Center for Nonviolence?

Joan Baez: Yes.

Alison Stewart: How have you navigated your position as a performer, but also somebody who really has something to say? Also, I think people who know you know you don't pull any punches, you say what you mean.

Joan Baez: Yes, I do. I suppose somewhere in there comes risk because it's so important, and whatever reason, I was willing to take risks at the beginning and on through. I think people need to see the importance of that because there are many ways to approach social change. Eventually, you'll reach a point. Eventually, you'll come to where John Lewis came, and Martin Luther King came, that you have to take a risk or nothing really substantial is going to happen.

Nonviolence to me has been there for a long, long time. Went to Quaker meeting when I was little. When you are a Quaker, you know that human life is more important than a flag and more important than turf. I believe all that. You can say the hideous end result of refusing to see that comes out in Israel at the moment and in Palestine for years and years. That violence in our age now, it's the age of bullying, it's the age of hatred. In a sense, anywhere that there's a blow-up that's hideous, like the one we've just seen in Israel, it sounds like a trend.

There's a fascist trend. It opens it up to somehow or rather it's okay to bomb people. It's okay. That is part of the huge battle. As a nonviolent advocate, one side is the same as the other side, you can't condemn one without condemning the other's violence. That would be my position on that. It's not very helpful, but that's what my position is.

Alison Stewart: We learn in the film that you struggled with anxiety throughout your life and your career. You would have some dark moments, as would one of your sisters. You go to therapy as a teenager, but then again in your 50s, and you start to do some work that uncovers some suppressed memories. Some of them have to deal with your father and alleged abuse against your sister. It's really interesting in the film because it lets us go along with you as you process it and try to figure out, "What happened exactly? Did this happen the way I remember it? Did this happen the way Mimi?" Why did you want to go that route with your directors?

Joan Baez: I wanted to leave an honest legacy. Though even in the film I don't go into details.

Alison Stewart: No.

Joan Baez: I think that's important because they're too confusing for people. As it is, it's already hard to believe anybody else's trauma, but it was a part of my life. As you say, I went to therapists from a very early age, and they all helped me get over, and around, and under, but I knew there was something in there that really hadn't been gotten to. When I was 50, I started tackling it, and it really is left up to the viewer to figure out what they think really happened, and my parents have their say, which is important also.

I was 80, 79, when we really started the things at home. We opened up the vault when I was 79 and say, "I've got nothing to lose now. We're speaking the truth and speaking out." As it turns out, it's been very helpful to people. That wasn't the plan that I was going to go out making people feel better, but it has allowed other people to-- and a lot of people have expressed that already to deal with their own demons. I'm glad for that. I'm glad that we've been useful in some sense talking about my own issues.

Alison Stewart: Yes. You said a lot of this happened in your late 70s. Did you feel better after? Did something change about the way you moved in the world after you accessed these memories?

Joan Baez: Oh, yes. As much as a total change can be, and that's important for people to know too, because the therapy for years and years and years really was helpful, but there are certain issues that don't change until you really crack the core. I think that that's helped, even from things I've received from emails and texts, and friends, and through friends, that it's allowed them to think about the possibility of that.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Joan Baez. The name of the film is Joan Baez I Am A Noise. It's in New York now. You laugh when you hear it.

Joan Baez: Yes, I do. I laugh when I hear it.

Alison Stewart: Why do you laugh?

Joan Baez: It's just funny. Yes, I am a noise. Yes, I was a noise. I will be until I drop dead.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Let's not think about that part. Although, I guess it is part of life.

Joan Baez: It's part of it, yes.

Alison Stewart: It's part of life. Now that you, like you said, you've hung up your guitar, what have you been doing creatively? What do you do creatively now that you're not singing publicly, anyway?

Joan Baez: Right now, I've spent a huge amount of time and effort with the documentary and getting the documentary out. I also released a book recently called Am I Pretty When I Fly? It's of upside down drawings that I've done over the years, collected them all and put them in a book. They're hard to describe, but it doesn't mean I'm hanging from a jungle gym, it just means I draw upside down so the person sitting opposite me sees it right side up.

What comes out or what happens is that something it becomes available to me that wasn't available when I was trying to do it right side up. That's all I can say. These pictures end up being sweet, funny, political, and then they develop their own names.

Alison Stewart: I like that list, sweet, funny, and political. Let's talk to Heather from Freeport, Long Island. Hi, Heather. Thank you for calling in.

Heather: Hi. Thanks so much, Joan, an honor to speak with you. Joan, I am a middle head, and I was always interested in knowing how you felt about Judas Priest covering Diamonds and Rust.

Joan Baez: I loved it.

Heather: I remember hearing this song. Oh, fantastic. Oh, please tell me more.

Joan Baez: I was flattered. People don't really cover my songs for the most part. I thought, "Oh, this is very cool." It's a short bonding period with my son at the same time, so only flattered. Actually, I like their version of it.

Alison Stewart: Your son is a drummer?

Joan Baez: Yes. He's a percussion player, yes.

Alison Stewart: Yes, and you said it was a bonding moment?

Joan Baez: It was a laughing moment, but mom, you got to hear this. When we pulled in the very, very last tour, the very, very last place, we thought, "Okay, everybody gets to play a song in the bus," and that's what my son played.

Alison Stewart: Someone texted in, "Good gosh, I have never texted to WNYC. My most sustaining in-person forming record as a young teen was From Every Stage. I can see even now how much of it is still in my background, [unintelligible 00:29:12] Sweet Sir Galahad is one of my favorites, always. I still stop to listen whenever I hear it. Thank you so much.

Joan Baez: Oh, nice.

Alison Stewart: From a guy who's suddenly somehow 60.

[laughter]

Joan Baez: I don't know how that happens. I was suddenly somehow very quickly 80.

Alison Stewart: Are there new artists that you enjoy, if there's somebody? You said you were close with Lana Del Rey.

Joan Baez: Yes. Not well enough to say, "Oh yes, make a whole big list of them." I end up playing some of my own stuff. I dance constantly, so a lot of gypsy kings like music. Then there's classical that I got from my mom all of those years. She played opera. Jascha Heifetz was my violinist of choice. He had the same vibrato that I was in love with in singers and any instrument, and it's what I ended up with when I was really young. No, I can't say I'm very up on it, I guess.

Alison Stewart: We learned so much about you in the film. There's a great photo of you and James Baldwin and I think it's James Foreman on the other side.

Joan Baez: Yes, it is, yes.

Alison Stewart: We learned about your sister and one of them had bright blue eyes. There's just a lot of really interesting texture and detail in the whole film. When you saw it back, what is something that you learned about yourself or observed about yourself that you hadn't really picked up on before?

Joan Baez: Tons. Really tons. The important ones being my sisters and my son. I never heard their struggle from them because you don't really share. You try to make it not quite so painful by telling the truth, but they were able to say that, they were able to talk to Karen. Pauline would never get in front of the camera, never talk to anybody, and there she is saying how she really felt that she was eclipsed by her younger sister and that she moved away and became invisible and did extraordinary things. She doesn't go into it, but she built those houses into the hillside-

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Joan Baez: -by hand and they were amazing. Hearing Mimi say more clearly what she really felt, and then my son, I didn't really know the extent of his sadness when he was little. I knew it and he and I had already worked on that, but still, it was deeper when I saw the film.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film-- Is there anything someone has not asked you about this film that you've wanted to say before I let you go?

Joan Baez: Oh gosh, I'll have to think. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: I know you've done a lot of interviews, but I thought sometimes there's one thing you've wanted to say.

Joan Baez: No. If I was really pushing it, I would've found a way to say it.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: I believe you. I believe you. Joan Baez has been my guest. The name of the film is Joan Baez I Am A Noise. Thanks to everybody who called in, even folks who didn't get on the air, and for all the text. Joan, thank you for your time today.

Joan Baez: Thank you so much for a lovely interview.

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.