Post by pledm on Sept 21, 2009 12:43:35 GMT -5
Joan Baez gets her apology
Baez and Dylan at the Newport Jazz Festival, 1964. She helped kickstart his career and they became lovers, but he dumped her in 1965.
Dylan regrets his public breakup, he admits in revelatory new film
It took 44 years, but Joan Baez finally got a public apology from Bob Dylan for the callous way he treated her when he broke up their 1960s love affair.
And it happened, of all places, at Toronto's Yonge-Dundas Square on Friday night.
"I feel very bad about it," Dylan said. "I was sorry to see our relationship end."
The occasion, and the source of the confession, was the world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival of Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound, a PBS documentary set for broadcast next month. It was followed by a free mini-concert performance by Baez herself.
The astonishingly candid film pulls back the curtain on a painful chapter of Baez's life that she had long avoided talking about: her 1965 split from Dylan in the spring of 1965, during a British tour where he treated her as excess baggage, refusing to allow her onstage with him.
Before that, the two had been inseparable as the king and queen of folk music, and one of the most talked-about young couples of the decade.
Already a global star, Baez launched Dylan's career after their first meeting in 1961 by inviting him to share her stage and tour with her at every opportunity, often scolding her fans who found his nasal singing a poor complement to her soaring soprano tones.
She has long been coy about their relationship, referring to him as her "special friend." Dylan has also avoided the topic. He barely mentioned her in his recent autobiography and made only a cryptic comment in the 2005 Martin Scorsese doc No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.
But honesty and full disclosure is the watchword of Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound, directed by Mary Wharton. The film includes numerous new interviews with the men in Baez's life, interspersed with archival concert footage and newsreel images of her 51-year career as a performer, pacifist and social activist.
The normally reticent Dylan refers to Baez as "Joanie" throughout the film, and generously heaps praise upon her abilities and her commitment to social causes, which included marching for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr. and going to jail for her anti-Vietnam draft protests.
Apologizing for dumping her during that infamous 1965 British road trip (all caught on camera in D.A. Pennebaker's classic documentary Don't Look Back), Dylan says he did it to keep Baez from getting "swept up in the madness my career had become."
For her part, Baez admits in the film just how much she loved Dylan: "I was crazy about him. We were an item and we were having a wonderful time."
But she acknowledges she might have pushed him away, by trying too hard to have him join her in the many social causes she pursued: "I was trying to shove him into a mold."
Backstage before the screening, a radiant Baez, looking at least a generation younger than her 68 years, told the Star she was surprised at some of the revelations in the film.
"I'm just surprised at what they were thinking then. David Crosby thought of me as an older woman!" (The two are the same age.)
Despite the confessional tone of the film, she's still uncomfortable talking about Dylan. She demurred when asked about the half-dozen or so Dylan songs believed to be about her, in particular "Visions of Johanna," a song of intense longing written after the couple split, which many fans consider his finest song.
She's happier now than she ever has been, and said making the film made her realize how much she and her civil rights brethren had accomplished.
"None of us celebrated much when the war in Vietnam ended. We didn't appreciate ourselves enough or we thought it took too long to end the war.... But you know, seeing this film, when I finally see it, sometimes in it I think, oh, gee, I did that."
Her post-screening concert set concluded with Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," in which she amused the crowd by singing part of it mimicking Dylan's voice.
The tune includes the line, "You could have done better, but I don't mind." Hearing Baez sing it on Friday night, it took on a whole new poignancy.
Joan`s version of Babe,I`m gonna leave you;
----------------
Watch these,you will not be disappointed
Baez and Dylan at the Newport Jazz Festival, 1964. She helped kickstart his career and they became lovers, but he dumped her in 1965.
Dylan regrets his public breakup, he admits in revelatory new film
It took 44 years, but Joan Baez finally got a public apology from Bob Dylan for the callous way he treated her when he broke up their 1960s love affair.
And it happened, of all places, at Toronto's Yonge-Dundas Square on Friday night.
"I feel very bad about it," Dylan said. "I was sorry to see our relationship end."
The occasion, and the source of the confession, was the world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival of Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound, a PBS documentary set for broadcast next month. It was followed by a free mini-concert performance by Baez herself.
The astonishingly candid film pulls back the curtain on a painful chapter of Baez's life that she had long avoided talking about: her 1965 split from Dylan in the spring of 1965, during a British tour where he treated her as excess baggage, refusing to allow her onstage with him.
Before that, the two had been inseparable as the king and queen of folk music, and one of the most talked-about young couples of the decade.
Already a global star, Baez launched Dylan's career after their first meeting in 1961 by inviting him to share her stage and tour with her at every opportunity, often scolding her fans who found his nasal singing a poor complement to her soaring soprano tones.
She has long been coy about their relationship, referring to him as her "special friend." Dylan has also avoided the topic. He barely mentioned her in his recent autobiography and made only a cryptic comment in the 2005 Martin Scorsese doc No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.
But honesty and full disclosure is the watchword of Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound, directed by Mary Wharton. The film includes numerous new interviews with the men in Baez's life, interspersed with archival concert footage and newsreel images of her 51-year career as a performer, pacifist and social activist.
The normally reticent Dylan refers to Baez as "Joanie" throughout the film, and generously heaps praise upon her abilities and her commitment to social causes, which included marching for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr. and going to jail for her anti-Vietnam draft protests.
Apologizing for dumping her during that infamous 1965 British road trip (all caught on camera in D.A. Pennebaker's classic documentary Don't Look Back), Dylan says he did it to keep Baez from getting "swept up in the madness my career had become."
For her part, Baez admits in the film just how much she loved Dylan: "I was crazy about him. We were an item and we were having a wonderful time."
But she acknowledges she might have pushed him away, by trying too hard to have him join her in the many social causes she pursued: "I was trying to shove him into a mold."
Backstage before the screening, a radiant Baez, looking at least a generation younger than her 68 years, told the Star she was surprised at some of the revelations in the film.
"I'm just surprised at what they were thinking then. David Crosby thought of me as an older woman!" (The two are the same age.)
Despite the confessional tone of the film, she's still uncomfortable talking about Dylan. She demurred when asked about the half-dozen or so Dylan songs believed to be about her, in particular "Visions of Johanna," a song of intense longing written after the couple split, which many fans consider his finest song.
She's happier now than she ever has been, and said making the film made her realize how much she and her civil rights brethren had accomplished.
"None of us celebrated much when the war in Vietnam ended. We didn't appreciate ourselves enough or we thought it took too long to end the war.... But you know, seeing this film, when I finally see it, sometimes in it I think, oh, gee, I did that."
Her post-screening concert set concluded with Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," in which she amused the crowd by singing part of it mimicking Dylan's voice.
The tune includes the line, "You could have done better, but I don't mind." Hearing Baez sing it on Friday night, it took on a whole new poignancy.
Joan`s version of Babe,I`m gonna leave you;
----------------
Watch these,you will not be disappointed