Of all the fallout - most of it positive – from James Mangold’s biopic of Bob Dylan, A Complete Unknown, perhaps the most poignant has been the fact that the spotlight has not so much shined on the central character himself, but more so another artist featured profoundly in the acclaimed movie.
Yes, it is folk legend and activist Joan Baez. For during the period (1961-65) of Dylan’s life covered in the film, she would prove a central figure, not only performing with him, but interpreting and promoting his work to a worldwide audience. And - probably the most important for the movie’s dramatic purposes - she would, at this time, have an on-again-off-again romantic relationship with the man who was to become a Nobel Laureate.
In fact, A Complete Unknown largely revolves around three artists – Dylan, Baez and folk pioneer Pete Seeger. And such was the perceived accuracy of their dramatic portrayal by actors Timothee Chalamet (Dylan), Monica Barbaro (Baez) and Edward Norton (Seeger) that the trio’s work of 60-more years has suddenly found favour with a new generation of fans, if judged only by the huge increase in streaming of their songs.
And, most importantly for many, the movie fanfare has seen the 84-year-old Baez perform live again, something she has rarely done since retiring from touring in 2019. Dylan, who turns 84 in May, still tours, while Seeger died in 2014, aged 94.
Baez’s somewhat surprising performance came in San Francisco on February 8 when she obviously found it difficult to turn down an invitation to be guest of honour at a concert to celebrate 30 years of the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, a charity the long-time social activist has supported for many years. The event raised more than $600,000 and this achievement was no doubt due to the attendance of the most adored female troubadour in modern music.
In fact, there is one back-stage moment at the event which truly reflects the true extent of this adoration. It is a somewhat casual photo which has seen thousands of views since Baez posted it on her Facebook site. For it features her flanked by six of the finest female singers-songwriters in her mixed musical genre – Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt,Rosanne Cash, Lucinda Williams, Bonnie Raitt and Margo Price. All, but the wheelchair-confined Ronstadt, would feature in the charity concert. And Baez was her usual humble self about it all. “I’m just happy to be the excuse that’s brought all these people together,” she said.
And many of these such people would take the opportunity to attribute their very own success to Baez. None better than Harris, undoubtedly the Queen of Americana music. She told a captured audience that Baez was “the reason I picked up a guitar and learned three cords.”
In a 2021 interview with The Guardian, Harris was more expansive: “She’s an iconic artist who changed music and the heart of America by giving voice to the civil rights movement, and her continued support for any struggle for democracy represents the best of what America stands for.”
She added: “I’ve been able to sing with a lot of my heroes, but one time Mary Chapin-Carpenter and I had to sing in front of Joan. It was the first time I’d been nervous since I’d fronted my own band, but she was incredibly gracious. Then a few years ago Jackson Browne and I sang with her at a fundraiser in San Jose. We were considered compatriots of the stage, but I still had a goddess complex about Joan.”
Browne too performed at the San Francisco event and also acknowledged the folk legend: “When I was 14, the first record I ever bought with own money was a Joan Baez record.”
When it was the turn of the guest superstar to perform, Baez again demonstrated her beautiful life-long soprano tones. To the delight of all - audience and fellow-performers - she delivered her most famous composition “Diamonds & Rust,” the title track off her wonderful 1975 album. The song is even more significant in the current era, given that it is a meditation on the somewhat acrimonious breakup of her relationship with Dylan back in those most traveled times of A Complete Unknown.
Over the years, Baez has used the lyrics to poke fun at herself and, indeed, Dylan.
The original closing stanza goes:
If you’re offering me diamonds and rust
I’ve already paid
She’s changed that ending many times, the most inventive being:
If you’re offering me diamonds and rust
I’ll take the Grammy
Then in San Francisco, it changed again:
If you’re offering me diamonds and rust
I’ll take the diamonds
And after rapturous applause, she quipped: “I’m still waiting for the diamonds.”
A recent critic of what she described on Netflix as the “really incompetent billionaires” running the country - and, of course, a long-time advocate for the under-privileged – she also used the fund-raising event to comment on the fractious state of America: “Tomorrow, go out and find one thing you can do. Maybe that’s protecting your local library, or supporting your Latino gardener, but this is not the time to be comfortable.”
To no surprise, Barbaro was in the audience as Joan’s special guest. The pair would pose together, though it was not the first time they had been in contact. And the 34-year-old actor’s impersonation – both dramatically and musically – of Baez in her early twenties has clearly impressed the folk legend.
“I loved what she (Barbaro) did in the film,” Baez told the Marin Independent Journal. “If I didn’t think she was good at it, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it in general. But she looked enough like me and she had my gestures down. You could tell who it was. She worked so hard. Kudos to her for taking the role on.”
As might be expected, the record industry has not been slow in trying to cash in on the immense publicity surrounding A Complete Unknown. Shortly after its premiere, yet another Baez compilation album was released. And yes, it featured her live performances over the years at the Newport Folk Festival – the focal point of the movie.
While titled The Newport Era, it is not the first album of her Newport output, with Live At Newport being released nearly 20 years ago. Only four songs are shared on both albums, including “Farewell Angelina,” the song Dylan gave her before releasing himself. Her version is now considered the greatest solo cover of his work. It should be remembered that Baez was only 18 when she appeared at the inaugural Newport Folk Festival in 1959, two years before Dylan - guitar-in-hand - even arrived in New York!
Of course, the central theme of A Complete Unknown is Dylan’s controversial transition from acoustic to electric, personified in the movie climax of him performing “Maggie’s Farm” at the 1965 Festival, with electric Fender Stratocaster guitar and a full rock ‘n roll accompaniment. It would horrify most of the crowd – with the jeers out-numbering the cheers – and officially ostracize him from the traditional folk community. On the plus side, the electric single “Like a Rolling Stone” he had released five days earlier – and indeed included in this Newport set – would help turn him into a superstar.
And in-keeping with the hullaballoo surrounding A Complete Unknown, the 2015 book which inspired the film, Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald, has suddenly been re-released and the paperback is quickly disappearing off book-store shelves around the globe.
Sub-titled Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties, the book is something of an academic thesis in the intense split between Traditional Folk and Contemporary Folk, personified by the likes of Dylan, Baez, Donovan and Peter, Paul & Mary in the early sixties. To do so, Wald examines – in outstanding detail – Dylan’s first four years in New York leading up to July 25, 1965, that famous day he went electric in concert and a new rock era was born.
And central to this epic is Baez, both because of her personal relationship with Dylan but how at the time she herself was starting to transition from traditional to contemporary music. And of course, she too would largely abandon the lonesome-acoustic-guitar sound and diversify her genres to include folk-rock, country, pop, gospel and even indigenous music.
The book would paint an appealing portrait-in-print of Baez in the early ‘60’s. Wald introduced her as “a mysterious young woman with a startlingly beautiful voice who recorded for a classical records label, avoided nightclubs, and sang ancient ballads with aching conviction.”
He also detailed how she had resisted commercial over-tones from the likes of Albert Grossman, Dylan’s blow-hard manager. It helped that her first three albums (1960/61/62) reached the Billboard Top 20 and stayed on the LP chart for more than two years.
Wald summed up: “Baez was a dauntingly sincere artist, in Joan Didion’s phrase, ‘the Madonna of the disaffected.’”
Such a quote might provide the definitive description of an artist who would receive a Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences at the 2007 Grammy Awards. But, wait, there is one better! And it came at that public appearance in San Francisco last month. During the concert, Bonnie Raitt introduced Taj Mahal onstage and asked the blues legend for his thoughts on Baez.
His reply said it all: “She is part ‘dear lord’ and part ‘thank you Jesus.’’’
Paul Cutler
Editor Crossroads - Americana Music Appreciation
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