I’ve met you lots of times backstage after concerts and have always been struck by how warm, friendly and open you are with your fans. Do you have any standout memories of meeting fans – either beautiful and moving or funny and bizarre? KevinFillis
I’m sure I do. You’ll need to give me a bit to think about it over a 60-year period … I remember the British audiences seemed so restrained. One night in Leeds, I said something awful like: “Is everybody out there alive?” They just couldn’t express themselves. So I didn’t know where to go next, except to be rude, I guess.
Has confidence ever been a problem for you throughout your career? ToTheIsland
The confidence in my own voice has never flagged. I can say that because it’s not of my inventing: it’s of my maintenance and delivery. When I went through periods where the career was really off the rails, I lost confidence and felt confused, I think like anybody.
In my junior high school yearbook, it said: “Joanie Baez, she’s going to be a cartoonist.” I did sketches and caricatures of Jimmy Dean and the opera types that my mom liked – like Jussi Björling, the Swedish opera singer – and of my friends at school, and sold them for $5. So I had other avenues I could have taken, but I don’t think I ever thought: “I better start doing cartoons or selling bathing suits.” The singing part was assumed.
If you could speak to your younger self, what would you tell her? AbbyDormer
Take it easy. Take a break. Relax a little.
Joan, what do you think was the biggest success and failure of the hippy generation? Kieran123
I was thinking the other day about Burning Man. We all make fun of it. Not all, but the outsiders. It’s a community. It can’t be knocked for that. You do go there with something to give somebody else. In some ways, the hippy movement created a community for a lot of lost souls. I think our failures were outstripped by the good stuff. Nobody back then could have possibly written what scenario we’re going through today.
Burning Man is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I went with a couple of friends, maybe 10, 12 years ago. You have the uptight stuff. It’s boiling out there and you have to bring your own water, so you think: “That’s not going to work for me.” When you get there, everybody is running after the water truck. So I covered my head so nobody could see who it was and ran around with no clothes on, which worked well for me. Glastonbury [Baez played in 2008] was equally wonderful. It’s the same feeling, especially if it’s muddy out. Everybody has to be kind to the tent next to them. Even at Woodstock, I had three meals a day and a comfortable place to stay.
Do you believe in God? Arsnotoria
I think so. I tend more towards Buddhist and Native American thought. For me, the spirits are quite real. I talk to trees. I haven’t had a therapist now in 20 years. I literally talk to the trees to get answers.
If you’re still and open, this one tree will tell me what I don’t want to hear. You can ask the right person, they’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear. But these trees give it to you cold turkey. My life is out with the trees and the little creek at the bottom of my hill. I spend hours in that place just being with nature. If something blocks my passage and I can’t get a grip, I’ll ask direct questions like: “I want to understand what’s happening, can you help me?” And other times I say: “I don’t care what’s happening, just make me feel better.”
Is it true that you did such a great Dylan impersonation in the 60s that you could fool people over the phone? PeteTheBeat
Yes. It was his early voice. I don’t do the older voice.
What are your views on today’s politics? GlenStrc
How long have you got? It could be a very long answer. It could just be: we’re fucked. That’s pretty succinct. I don’t know how the Brits will react to that, but it’s so awful. All the bullying and hatred has been spreading like wildfire, and we are the main source here. That, plus global warming, doesn’t look very hopeful. I’ve called myself a pessimist all my life, but recently somebody said they thought pessimism was a waste of time and hope was a practice that doesn’t just happen naturally. If I want to be hopeful, I have to find ways and reasons to be hopeful.
Do you have your own universal recipe for saving the world? Dmitry_S
Saving the world? Even when I was really young and sang We Shall Overcome, I wasn’t kidding myself. I didn’t think that was going to happen in my lifetime – little victories, big defeats. Especially now, a little victory means a great deal. Any little group you belong to that takes a step in the direction of decency and organises around it, that’s a big deal.
How did your new documentary come about? Rasbperrypi
Two friends of mine are both directors. We’d talked about maybe doing this thing. When I was talking about doing a final tour, we decided we would start filming, not knowing whether it would be the last tour or not. I gave the directors a key to my storage unit. I thought there would probably be old lampshades and stuff, but it was a trove. My mother kept every letter I ever wrote, every letter my sisters wrote. My father filmed us with a Super 8 camera since I was three. I had no idea she had kept all this. It was the directors’ good fortune, but also their curse because it was just too much. But they did an amazing job. I wanted to make an honest legacy. It includes childhood trauma, tapes from sessions with therapists where I was doing a deep dive into how my growing-up process had been altered until I was around 50. I’ve certainly changed physically. I wish I still had eyelashes like that!
Of the competitive nature of women in music in the 60s and 70s, Joni Mitchell once suggested: “Joan Baez would have broken my leg if she could.” Did you feel this combative tension at the time? McScootikins
I’m absolutely delighted that Joni Mitchell is back on stage. I wasn’t close with her. She wasn’t somebody I spent a lot of time with. Did I see her as competition? You know, it’s worse than that. I never thought I had any competition. I knew I wanted to be top of the heap no matter what. I knew nobody else had a voice like mine. But I didn’t write songs. I didn’t do the stuff Joni was doing early on. I’ve been able to call her at least a couple of times to tell her how much I appreciate her paintings. I was looking on an aeroplane at an in-flight magazine. I thought it was an impressionist I’d missed. There were four or five paintings and they were Joni’s. I went home and called her. I said they made me cry.
That smile! It is sheer happiness. How come you look so good, Joan? You are absolutely as beautiful today as you were in the 60s when I saw you. As a creaky 72-year-old woman, I am not looking in the mirror again today! LucyLockett
Ha! That’s not fair. Look in the mirror and deal with it! I made a decision not to go with all the facelifting. It was not an easy decision because everybody does it. I get these lines here and here … It’ll just bite you in the ass at some point. However, Mimi, my sister, had a remedy for a facelift. It goes like this … [Gently hits under chin with fingers] “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!” What I see when I look in the mirror has changed in the last couple of years at alarming speed. Things start going wrong, going south, you know; the aches and pains. This ageing stuff is not for the faint-hearted, for sure.
• Joan Baez I Am a Noise is in US cinemas from 6 October
