It really doesn’t matter that Joan Baez, by her own report, hasn’t written a song in 20 years. With dozens of classic songs such as “Diamonds & Rust” and “Only Heaven Knows” in her songwriting catalog, why would more be needed? Add to that her incredible renditions of anthems such as “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “We Shall Overcome,” and you can understand why she’s still heralded as the voice of a generation.
Joan Baez and Steve Earle
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“I don’t worry about what I will sing,” Baez said from the road of her current tour. “I just want to pace it right so there is an arc to the evening.”
The woman who started her career playing in Boston coffeehouses and soon was a worldwide phenomenon for her music and civil rights work now is more of a behind-the-scenes force for social issues, especially climate change.
Although she doesn’t see any real misjudgments about Woodstock, the Vietnam War protests and other divisive issues of the 1960s, she does seem disturbed that many young people seem intent on re-creating that era instead of tackling current issues.
“I don’t get frustrated. That’s human nature. I do get a lot of 19-year-olds who tell me. ‘Yeah, man. I wish I lived back then. Everything happened,’ ” she said. “I think, ‘Yeah, but you may have been drafted. Don’t go there.’ The war is almost like a forgotten issue. All they see is groovy Woodstock. It’s like a dream.”
Baez said the unrest of the 1960s was thrown before young people and resulted in a perfect storm of music and social activism. That 10-year period won’t be re-created, she said.
“I think that as people, the population and the culture really changed radically at the end of in the war of Vietnam. That was the end of an era,” she said, responding to Yoko Ono’s recent statement that had John Lennon lived, he’d still be working to stop war. “John Lennon had it set out in front of him, and I had it set out in front of me. Now there are so many wars going on, people can barely relate to them.”
Adding to that is the reliance on social networks and other devices that keep younger people in touch on a superficial level.
“They have more friends than anyone ever has but they never meet them,” she said. “The human element is just kind of overwhelming for them. The legacy for young people age 15 to 40 isn’t so hot. In the post-Vietnam War era, everything started to change. Kids [today have stories] of Woodstock and the reality of a very greedy culture.”
