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• Ms. Baez' official site
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Singer-songwriter-activist tells how she started her musical career. (2:25)
 

Full interview. (22:25)
 

Tavis: Pleased, delighted, honored, just out of words to welcome Joan Baez to this program. The iconic folk artist is often called the Queen of Folk Music with a remarkable career that has now spanned, believe it or not, 50 years. She's also a tireless humanitarian and civil rights advocate who was with her dear friend, Dr. King, at a number of key moments throughout the civil rights movement.

In honor of her 50 years in music, she's out with her latest CD. It's called "Day After Tomorrow" and, before we get to that conversation tonight, here is Joan Baez performing her classic song, "Sweet Sir Galahad."

[Clip]

Tavis: So you see that old footage, Joan Baez, and you think what?

Joan Baez: Baby fat.

Tavis: (Laughter) Baby fat? I didn't see any baby fat there.

Baez: Well, it was a long time ago (laughter).

Tavis: Yeah. Other than the hair being a little bit darker, you look just about the same actually.

Baez: Well, thank you very much.

Tavis: You're doing well.

Baez: Thank you.

Tavis: When you see footage like that, does it seem like 50 years in this business?

Baez: Not really, not really. I'm almost amazed when I see old footage. The farther back, the more amazed I am, you know, at whoever she was back then. It was a long time ago.

Tavis: When you say "whoever she was," I assume that there are stages, moments, in your life that you can look back on over 50 years and see where the momentous changes were in who she has become. You can see that in retrospect?

Baez: I think so. There's certain points that feel like home. You know, the very beginning with the ballads feels like home. When I started writing "Sir Galahad," that's the first song I ever wrote. It's like home, the Diamonds & Rust era when I started really writing more.

Then there was a serious dip which I think every singer has and none of us want to admit it, but I think that that does happen. You get reoriented. You know, what's going on around me and then you try and catch up. I think I have. So this will be another point at 50 years (laughter).

Tavis: How do you survive, to your phrase, those dips in the career?

Baez: Well, first of all, I think it takes a while to realize that that's going on. With me, it took a while until one night I woke up literally two o'clock in the morning. I was working on an album. I thought, "Why am I working on this album and people aren't really gonna be able to hear it?" I didn't have any machinery behind me. I didn't have a way to really distribute the music and so forth. You know, it kind of "bingo" in the middle of the night. So I went out and found the management. I didn't even have management then because at the beginning I didn't.

I started it all when I was 18 years old and I didn't need anything. Just walked out on the stage and sang. So the part that most people go through at the very beginning, singing in clubs, you know, trying to do publicity and do the things you need to do to be heard, I had to do that much later because I was pretty clear sailing for a long time.

Tavis: Speaking of clear sailing, the point you made a few moments ago, how do you regard in retrospect the fact that the first song you ever wrote, "Sir Galahad," becomes not just a hit, but a classic? How does that happen to the very first song you wrote?

Baez: I have no idea. I don't think any of us know very well where the stuff comes from when it just comes. There's sometimes when you sit down and I'm gonna write a song about so-and-so and you do it and, you know, that's more disciplined. But when something just kind of comes up, that's what happened with that song about my sister's second wedding, you know, to her hippie boyfriend and it just came out.

Tavis: That said, as you look back on your 50 years, do you regard yourself first and foremost as a singer/performer or a songwriter?

Baez: Probably a singer/performer because I started off with that for the first ten years and because, for a number of years now, I've returned to that, recording and singing the music of a generation of people who are just coming up on my generation, younger, some of them considerably younger, and trying to see anyway through their eyes. It was really quite different from the music that was written years ago.

Tavis: Tell me about how - you've referenced the beginning a couple of times. I want to go to the beginning before I advance to talk about all your humanitarian advocacy work down through the years. How did you get into this space? You started at 18, but how did you know that this was your gift? How did you find yourself in this space of being able to use that gift? Take me back to the beginning of your journey.

Baez: Well, you said it very deftly, how did I find myself there, because I didn't plan it. I never really planned much of anything. I didn't have that left brain working for me, so I just kind of went from one thing to the next. I realized I had a voice when I was about 14, picked up the ukulele. Somebody taught me some chords.

Tavis: At 14.

Baez: At 14.

Tavis: Okay.

Baez: I started singing all the rhythm and blues songs that I knew. Then I moved on to Belafonte, his first album, I think. I learned everything on it. You know, "Scarlet Ribbons," "Day-O," "Kingston Market." That was my introduction to folk. And then the next step was Seger and Odetta and some people whose names are not known.

Then I just knew I liked to sing and then the coffee shops in Cambridge. I had sung in high school some and kids would ask me, "Do you think you'll be famous?" That was the last thing on my mind, you know. It was just singing.

Then I had a lot of qualms about fame. I remember it was very distinct. "I'm well-known. Other people are famous" because I didn't want to deal with that. So it was probably healthy, you know, because the emphasis went into the singing. And from the very beginning because of my family and social consciousness as Quakers who really reject violence and really don't think it's okay to kill anybody and stick to that.

So I was raised that way with that kind of mentality. It was easy for me to move into social change and humanitarian issues and I found throughout my life that's where I've been the most comfortable, singing when there was some kind of need for it beyond just the beauty of the song.

You know, singing in countries that had terrible strife, sneaking in, you know, under martial law and doing what I could do. Those things were, you know, maybe things I knew other people wouldn't do. So I would say my greatest gift is the voice and it is a gift. I really look at it as I do maintenance and delivery, you know. And the second gift is the way I wanted and chose to use it.

Tavis: Tell me about your childhood growing up as a Quaker. I think we read about it from time to time and, every now and then, you get a chance to have a conversation with somebody who grew up in that way. But you're such an iconic figure to have come out of that tradition. What was it like for you growing up as a Quaker?

Baez: Well, when you're a kid, you can't stand Quaker meeting. You have to sit there and be quiet, you know (laughter). I found a mentor actually when I was about 16 who was a Gandhian advocate who did social - any social change that we did or any political action we got into was all based on nonviolence and that was, of course, my attraction to Dr. King.

He was 29, I think, when I first heard him and I was just - I guess for me I had been reading about nonviolence. I understood about it in a lot of ways, but to see Dr. King who was involved in bus boycotts, it was solid, it was action at that point, I was just beside myself.

Tavis: When you met him, you were about, what, 15?

Baez: I think I was 16.

Tavis: You first saw him at 16?

Baez: I was 16, yeah.

Tavis: Do you recall vividly the first time you saw him?

Baez: I do, yeah.

Tavis: What do you recall about that?

Baez: I was at a big gathering that was put on by the Quakers, of students, I think, a couple of hundred kids. We had discussion groups and it was pretty much about violence, nonviolence and issues in the world. Each year, they would have a speaker and that year it was Dr. King, this young preacher.

Tavis: That's amazing. Since we're talking about Dr. King, how did you go from hearing him that first time at 16 to befriending him, to working with him, to marching with him, at one point driving him, you know? How did all that happen?

Baez: You know, I cannot remember the very beginning of it, but I know that, as we moved along, eventually I started a place called the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence and Dr. King and his folks knew that they could come there to kind of build up their nonviolence arsenal, in a sense, and get the support from us.

At the same time, Dr. King began calling on me to go where, you know, he felt I was needed as an advocate of SCLC and his movement. I understood and he understood and I heard him say that the Black movement, without including the Whites, was not going to work. There was nothing better for me to support than that. I mean, a lot of things about King, people don't know.

He and I think Obama are the most laid back human beings I've ever met - I haven't met Obama, but seen - in my life. Somehow they do this tremendous strength they have inside. I know that King used to pray. I mean, when he was confronted with another issue, he just simply prayed until he got some kind of an answer.

Tavis: For you, what was it about - you were already on this nonviolent journey. I say journey and I mean you were already steeped in this, as you mentioned earlier, as a Quaker, so it wasn't something that you came to per se. It came to you. You were born into this.

For those of us who know the story of Dr. King, Dr. King, of course, had to be turned on to nonviolence. He had to go study this. You were born into it, so to speak. Tell me, beyond your being born into it, how you came to believe in this as a philosophy. Tell me about your, Joan Baez's, nonviolent formulation.

Baez: I just look and see what ever pictures come to my mind first and I would say that when we - I lived in Baghdad, Iraq actually when I was ten years old.

Tavis: I want to talk about that. You moved around, but in Baghdad at ten?

Baez: Isn't that weird? My father was with UNESCO and he had the job of teaching at the University of Baghdad. He ended up staying there and building a physics laboratory, so we three kids and my mom were there for about a year. Sometime during that year, I saw things which my classmates at home would never see.

I mean, we saw poverty and we saw sorrow. We saw kids who were broken. We saw people - we saw camels and sheiks walking down the main street. You never knew which was gonna spit first, you know. Stuff that was just so shocking. Then we got used to it. Sometime during that year - and, by the way, my parents became Quakers when I was eight, so I wasn't really born into it.

Tavis: Right. Not technically.

Baez: My mother gave me a copy of "The Diary of Anne Frank" and that was a huge point in my life that I identified with her so strongly and I think that what happened then from reading, among other things, was that I felt as a child that I was associated somehow with all children and, if any child did not want to be hurt or beaten, then I wouldn't want to and so forth.

I just felt - I mean, maybe it was simplistic, but I wouldn't like being beaten with a rubber hose, so I assumed that anybody in the world would not like being beaten with a rubber hose. That became how it started and how it began to build.

You know, I think I'm lucky that I had all that under my belt before we started things like the marches for civil rights and then eventually against the war in Vietnam because I think a lot of people came to that for its sake and then, when it was over, left in a sense.

You know, 1972, the end of the war in Vietnam, I was disoriented, but I can imagine the people who had been there just for that. So I had, you know, a backlog of things that I - I remember the first time I was in a demonstration, I was with my father at Stanford University. I think we were against bomb shelters and somebody had started dropping water balloons on us. So I had some idea from the beginning.

I was 18 and I went to a rally and Pete Seger was there and they started pelting us with eggs and tomatoes. You know, I didn't mind that. Some sort of honor. You know you're doing something right when people are throwing tomatoes at you (laughter).

Tavis: I want to go back to something you said a moment ago, and indulge me on this for just a quick second here. I was speaking to an audience of people, I think, in Texas the other day and somehow in the speech I was giving, this point came up. It came up because I was in Texas. I was there speaking right after the former president had returned back home to Texas after leaving the White House.

You know this because you were there. When Dr. King came out against the Vietnam War, everybody, as you recall, turned against him. The NAACP, now celebrating its 100th year, Roy Wilkins turned against him, the Urban League turned against him, Lyndon Johnson uninvited him to the White House. This stuff we don't recall about the latter part of his life. Everybody turned against Dr. King.

I knew this, but I wanted to refresh my memory. I went back to do some research on this. It turns out that the last public opinion poll done about Dr. King had his approval rating at the same level as George W. Bush's when he left the White House.

Now we celebrate King as this iconic figure 40 years later, 41 years now almost after his death, but he dies on that balcony in Memphis with the same approval rating that George W. Bush left the White House with. That's how low MLK's approval rating was because of his opposition to the Vietnam War.

I raise all that to ask you this question because you were there and you were his friend and you were out vocally opposed to the war as was Dr. King, how you navigated that moment where people thought you were crazy, thought you were insane, thought you were as wrong as King was for being so violent - not violent. Wrong word - so vocal in your opposition to the Vietnam War.

Baez: Well, I started early. I mean, I created a march, I think, in the early 60's before it was even official, the war in Vietnam.

Tavis: You were already out against it before it was even official.

Baez: Um-hum. I knew we had advisors over there and I thought, "Well, we might as well get in this fast." Myself, I mean, I did look like a goofy hippie. I know that. I was in Carmel, not a place where you had a lot of marches. Some friends and I made some signs.

From then on, I was - actually, no. I was dubbed a communist when I did my own demonstration in high school because they were gonna have an air raid drill. When the air raid drill happened, we were all supposed to go home and get in our cellars. I mean, it was so absolutely ridiculous. I went home and talked to my father who was a physicist about how long it would take to get a missile from Moscow to Palo Alto. Well, you know, it was ridiculous.

Some of the kids were having bomb parties and going swimming (laughter), so I'm gonna stay in school, you know. I stayed in the school and it was fascinating. I mean, they didn't know what to do with me. I talked to the principal. I explained why. I talked to the vice principal. I talked with the secretaries about what I was doing and why.

The next day, it was in the paper and the day after that, it was irate parents about this "commie" who was a danger to their children in school. So, I mean, from early on, as I say, generally it was an honor to be boycotted. When the right and left are both annoyed at me during the same time, I know I'm doing something right (laughter).

Tavis: I get the sense because you have been, again, so steeped in this from childhood. I get the sense that you never spent much time at all calculating the risk, the danger, the down side, that your career might have for being so outspoken.

Baez: Well, there are two sides to that. Some people said, "Oh, she'll never get anywhere. She's doing too much political stuff" and others said, "Oh, she's just on those marches for publicity. She's just trying to get publicity to sell her albums."

The funniest one was, I believe, was in Laos when I went over to sort of highlight the boat people and the land people in Laos and the people from Cambodia. One of those borders which was just rock bottom, you know, refugees who had nothing. It was crazy. They didn't speak English; they didn't know who I was.

Some photographer, some camera man, said, "You know, you're really just here for publicity, aren't you?" I said, "Oh, yeah. I sell a lot of albums here on the border of Cambodia, you know." They were crazy.

Tavis: (Laughter) Oh, that's funny. So it's not enough that you have shared your iconic self with us all these years. It wasn't enough that you were standing in your truth back in the day and sharing your gift with the world. Then you had to expose us to this guy named Dylan. You brought him out as well.

I crack up when I think about you because, again, it's not just that you, you know, are all that and then some, but your career brings us this guy named Dylan who's become an icon in his own right. When you look back on your introducing him to the world, what do you make of that?

Baez: Well, mostly it was funny. I mean, I'd drag him out on the stage during my concerts and the audience would groan. They were there for the angelic voice and this little scruffy dude would come out there and I'd have to scold them. "You listen to his words. This guy is gonna be really well-known." They'd groan and they'd sit there and they'd listen, you know. Pretty soon, they really listened.

Tavis: It's an amazing story. This CD that's out now celebrating your 50 years, the first song on here - and I'm glad it is the first song because, when I popped this thing in, I just said, "Wow." The first track is "God is God." Tell me about this song, Steve Earle.

Baez: Well, Steve Earle wrote it and that's the first thing I asked him. I don't understand the song because I always thought, you know, God is within us or whatever different phrases we've used about God. I said, "What is 'God is God'?" He said, "Oh, that's recovery speak" meaning that God is out there and you're gonna need that, that something is more powerful than you are. It could be the doorknob by the time you get to where you are in recovery work.

Then it began to make a little bit of sense to me, that it isn't me, it isn't us. God is God. Somebody asked him, I heard in an interview, saying, "Do you believe in God?" He said, "I got no problem with God." I thought, "Oh, boy, this old lefty, this really smart guy is tough." I thought it was lovely that he had no problem with God.

Tavis: You were saying to me before we came on the air here when I mentioned to you how much I loved the song and how much it got my attention, you said to me you actually liked performing this song. It's a good song to perform. Why is that?

Baez: Some songs just roll out like that. I'm not sure exactly the components for that, but there are some songs. It may be partly easy. You know, it's easy to sing. It's easy to get across. And I like to watch the audience when they go like or if they go like that (crossing arms), you know. I used to know when there were Bush supporters in the audience shortly after the war started. I'd say something and (crossing arms).

Tavis: Here's the part that cracks me up. How can anybody go to a Joan Baez concert and not know what they're gonna get (laughter)?

Baez: I don't know, I don't know. Sometimes -

Tavis: - I don't quite get that.

Baez: - a couple hundred people would walk out.

Tavis: They didn't expect this out of a Joan Baez show?

Baez: And they didn't get their money back either (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) All right. Here's the exit question right quick. It is, of course, one of the songs on the CD, but why call this CD 50 years later "Day After Tomorrow"?

Baez: "Day After Tomorrow" is a song that was the most natural for me. I mean, it came like that. I learned it overnight. I sang it at the concert with the words in front of me as soon as I could. It's a natural, you know. It's one of the beautiful ways of stating, once again, anti-war by just following the thoughts of this young soldier. That's all.

Tavis: Well, at a Joan Baez concert, you're gonna get the same thing you get on a Joan Baez record. In a word, it is truth, so know what you're gonna get when you go see her. And if you walk out, you ain't getting your money back, we now know. Her new CD, celebrating 50 years of doing what she does so well, is called "Day After Tomorrow" and I am tonight so glad to have you on this program. Thank you so much for your insights and for being here.

Baez: Thank you. My pleasure.

Tavis: My honor. Thank you.