The movie ‘A Complete Unknown’ is about Bob Dylan’s early years. Many of those years were spent with folk legend Joan Baez, his girlfriend at the time. In 2015, Joan Baez spoke to Noise11 and talked about the time.
When Joan first met Bob Dylan he really was a complete unknown. “There was such a buzz, a huge buzz and I wanted to hear this go so I went to see him and the buzz was all true,” Joan Baez tells Noise11.com. “He was a unique talent. I knew that. People knew that whether they liked the sound of his voice or not. There wasn’t any denying he was a cut above and always will be”.
Joan Baez was already a major presence in the folk music scene when Dylan came along but Bob wasn’t the only new artist making waves. “It was like some sort of vaccine taking over the place,” Joan said. “Joni Mitchell came along. Her stuff is brilliant. Judy Collins was a part of it. Peter, Paul & Mary brought it into the public eye. They commercialised it. I was in the mix more as an active, using it as artillery. The songs for me and my activism. Then the British invasion and all of this was that amazing time period. People wish they were there. It was just this dream. Any kid who is aware of anything wishes they were at Woodstock and there won’t be another Woodstock”.
The folk music scene was akin to the wild west in the early 60s. “Folk music per say was kind of a modified wild west. At least the way I entered it,” she says. “For me it was by way of the ballads which are pretty sedate. For a couple of years it was mainly British ballads and then some livelier ones. It wasn’t until a couple of years that I got into topical songs. Nobody was writing them. Tim Hardin was the first ‘Greenwich Village songwriter’ that we knew about and I think that was 1958.
Joan was a born activist, literally. “That came with the territory. My family was socially conscious and active and pacifist and I was brought up in a Quaker religion. I am not a Quaker but I did learn how to be quiet and make use of meditation and that is when I became serious about non-violence at a really early age”.
Check out the full Noise11 interview from 2015 with Joan Baez:
Watch Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez in ‘A Complete Unknown’:
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