Joan Baez Quotes

Joan Chandos Baez is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist whose contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest or social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages. Although regarded as a folk singer, her music has diversified since the counterculture era of the 1960s, and encompasses genres such as folk rock, pop, country and gospel music.

Although a songwriter herself, Baez generally interprets other composers' work, having recorded songs by Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers Band, the Beatles, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Woody Guthrie, Violeta Parra, The Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and many others. On her past several albums, she has found success interpreting songs of more recent songwriters, including Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter, Steve Earle, Natalie Merchant and Joe Henry.

She began her recording career in 1960 and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, Joan Baez, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, and Joan Baez in Concert all achieved gold record status.Songs of acclaim include "Diamonds & Rust" and covers of Phil Ochs's "There but for Fortune" and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". She is also known for "Farewell, Angelina", "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word", "Forever Young", "Here's to You", "Joe Hill", "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "We Shall Overcome". She was one of the first major artists to record the songs of Bob Dylan in the early 1960s; Baez was already an internationally celebrated artist and did much to popularize his early songwriting efforts. Baez also performed fourteen songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, human rights and the environment.Baez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 7, 2017.

✵ 9. January 1941

Joan Baez photo

Joan Baez: 23 quotes18 likes

Famous Joan Baez Quotes

“You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.”

Daybreak http://books.google.com/books?id=Imte1JcsQ64C&q=%22You+don't+get+to+choose+how+you're+going+to+die+Or+when+You+can+only+decide+how+you're+going+to+live+Now%22&pg=PA135#v=onepage (1968) <br class="br">Variant or paraphrase: You can't decide how you're going to die. Or when. What you can decide is how you're going to live now.

“Well you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Would keep you unharmed”

Diamonds & Rust
Diamonds & Rust (1975)

“Yes, your father and Bartolo
They have fallen
And yesterday they fought and fell
But in the quest for joy and freedom
And in the struggle of this life you'll find
That there is love and sometimes more
Yes, in the struggle you will find
That you can love and be loved also

Forgive me all who are my friends
I am with you
I beg of you, do not cry”

"The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part Three"
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

“True he was a vocal miracle
But that's only secondary
It's the soul of the monarch butterfly
That I find a little bit scary”

Caruso
Gulf Winds (1976)

“Here's to you, Nicola and Bart
Rest forever here in our hearts
The last and final moment is yours
That agony is your triumph”

Here's to You
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

“Blessed are the persecuted
And blessed are the pure in heart
Blessed are the merciful
And blessed are the ones who mourn”

"The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part One"
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

Joan Baez Quotes about love

“Some Vietnam veterans have told me what they did over there when they were animals. They have been giving testimony about it to the public, to juries, to judges. Some of the juries cry, and so do some of the judges.
One Ex-Marine has a face like a Puerto Rican angel and a body count of 390. That means he and his unit killed 390 people in a variety of hideous ways, and the angel got to go count the dead bodies for the record.
And now he and a lot of his buddies are trying to make up for what we made them do. We paid the taxes that bought the war that hired the men and dropped the fire that burned the huts and killed the people who then were the bodies that Scott counted. It's a rotten thing to brainwash someone into doing the dirty part of killing while we stay at home. It's a rotten thing to pretend the war is coming to an end when it's only taken to the air. And in 1972 if you don't fight against a rotten thing you become a part of it.
What I'm asking you to do is take some risks. Stop paying war taxes, refuse the armed forces, organize against the air war, support the strikes and boycotts of farmers, workers and poor people, analyze the flag salute, give up the nation state, share your money, refuse to hate, be willing to work … in short, sisters and brothers, arm up with love and come from the shadows.”

Text notes on Come From The Shadows (1972)

“Against us is the law
With its immensity of strength and power
Against us is the law!
Police know how to make a man
A guilty or an innocent
Against us is the power of police!
The shameless lies that men have told
Will ever more be paid in gold
Against us is the power of the gold!
Against us is racial hatred
And the simple fact that we are poor

My father dear, I am a prisoner
Don't be ashamed to tell my crime
The crime of love and brotherhood
And only silence is shame”

"The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part Two"
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

“Rebellion, revolution don't need dollars
They need this instead
Imagination, suffering, light and love
And care for every human being
You never steal, you never kill
You are a part of hope and life
The revolution goes from man to man
And heart to heart
And I sense when I look at the stars
That we are children of life
Death is small”

"The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part Two"
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

“Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
Because I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly
Yes I loved you dearly
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust
I've already paid”

Diamonds & Rust
Diamonds & Rust (1975)

Joan Baez Quotes

“With the precision of a hummingbird's heart
Was the lord of the monarch butterflies
One-time ruler of the world of art”

Caruso
Gulf Winds (1976)

“All of us alive are survivors, but how many of us transcend survival?”

And A Voice to Sing With : A Memoir (2012), p. 322

“Bangladesh, Bangladesh
When the sun sinks in the west
Die a million people of the Bangladesh”

Joan Baez, in the Song for Bangladesh (1971)

“We're the children of the 80's, haven't we grown
We're tender as a lotus and we're tougher than stone
And the age of our innocence is somewhere in the garden”

Children of the 80's (1980)

“Some of us may offer a surprise
Recently have you looked in our eyes
Maybe we're your conscience in disguise”

Children of the 80's (1980)

“Miracles bowl me over
And often will they do so
Now I think I was asleep till I heard
The voice of the great Caruso

Bring infinity home
Let me embrace it one more time
Make it the lilies of the field
Or Caruso in his prime”

Caruso
Gulf Winds (1976)

“We are the warriors of the sun
The golden boys and the golden girls
For a better world”

Children of the 80's (1980)

“The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of nonviolence has been the organization of violence.”

Daybreak http://books.google.com/books?&id=ngoIAQAAMAAJ&q=%22the+only+thing+that%27s+been+a+worse+flop+than+the+organization+of+nonviolence+has+been+the+organization+of+violence%22 (1968)

“I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace; I was trying to disturb the war.”

Pop Chronicles, Show 19 - Blowin' in the Wind: Pop discovers folk music http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19769/m1/, interview recorded 12.3.1967 http://www.library.unt.edu/resolveuid/24bc6899959ba29ac6feca22c5ad8ed9

“We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust”

Diamonds & Rust
Diamonds & Rust (1975)

“Perhaps he's just a vehicle
To bear us to the hills of Truth
That's Truth spelled with a great big T
And peddled in the mystic's booth
There are oh so many miracles
That the western sky exposes
Why go looking for lilacs
When you're lying in a bed of roses?”

Caruso
Gulf Winds (1976)

“If we survive this century it will only be because you and I refuse to become Nazis.”

Joan Baez, SF Chronicle, 16 January 1973, reprinted as the epigraph of the book Bohemia: the protoculture then and now by Richard Miller (Nelson-Hall, Chicago, 1977)

“Lyrics for songs written for the film; the music for the songs composed by Ennio Morricone.”

Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

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