Joan Baez in 2003. Photo: Pat Swayne / Wikimedia Commons CC.
Joan Baez
Helen Johnson writes about a recent interview with Joan Baez by Jeremy Paxman
On the face of it, Jeremy Paxman’s interview with Joan Baez, broadcast recently on BBC Radio 2, could have been a straightforward plug for her current, and seemingly her last, major tour and her new album (Whistle Down the Wind). But the choice of interviewer seemed interesting, almost provocative… after all, Jeremy Paxman isn’t widely known for his love of folk/protest music and an easy-going, peace-loving interviewing style.
Well, life is full of surprises! Jeremy Paxman revealed himself as a long-time Joan Baez fan and he certainly treated this subject with affection and respect. That said, he didn’t smooth things over. The first track played was ‘There But For Fortune’, released in 1964, and it did display the peerless voice. He noted that her voice has changed over the years – and the tracks played from her new album did show that the voice, in the intervening half-century, has lost some of its power and clarity. He asked whether she could be regarded as a superannuated leftie (with, as he noted later, a comfortable lifestyle: ‘And when have you last ridden on a bus, Joan? Or on the subway?’)
She’s seventy-seven, death could be near. So, how did she feel about that? Clearly Joan Baez faces some issues head on (the second track, ‘Last Leaf’, was about outliving everyone she knows). A listener could almost feel her smiling at Jeremy Paxman as his far from tactful line of questioning failed to disconcert her. She was retiring from long tours (like Elton John) because, as much as she loved being in a bubble with her ‘tour family’, she has to remind herself that she’s old and not to do too much.
Did she think her protest activities and campaigning for peace in her public life had been at all successful? After all, aren’t wars still happening? She replied that she had been involved in such activities for a long time. Her family had become Quakers when she was eight years old. She ‘didn’t do violence’ and still sought other ways to deal with issues in her life. It is more difficult, she thought, to organise the civilised side of human behaviour. Good point. (Interestingly, though she does talk about her Quaker parents, she identifies more with Buddhists at this stage in her life).
Jeremy Paxman went on: does she feel she’s been successful? She said you do what you can on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis (which does sound like something out of Advices & queries). Life is complicated in the USA (as in most places). How do Barack Obama and Donald Trump both get to be elected president of the United States? Yes, but she is encouraged by the reaction of some young Americans to what is happening in their society.
Did she think she’d been successful in her own personal life? Are there any compensations in growing older and approaching death? What did that line in the album’s title song ‘I’m not all I thought I’d be’ mean? Did she believe in God? (Yes, she does in terms of there being something beyond herself but it’s difficult to define). Then more questions about death. At this point, the listener might be wondering quite who Jeremy Paxman was interrogating. Joan Baez? Himself? Or perhaps the listener? Whatever the reply, we can only envy Joan Baez her values, warmth, life experience, gifts and social commitment.
Further information: BBC Radio 2, 26 March 2018 (on BBC iPlayer for twenty-nine days from that date).
