The Joan Baez Movie
“I Am a Noise”: https://tinyurl.com/3bc92h2m
She’s so f*cked up.
Then again, aren’t we all?
The guys will say they’re not, the women trying to compete with men by mimicking their styles will not, but generally women are much more open, in touch with their emotions and willing to talk about them. Which is why conversation with women is almost always more satisfying than with men. Men will tell you where they’ve been, who they met, what they did, they’ll regale you with their tales, whereas women will tell you how they feel, the stories will illuminate how they felt, humanity will be evidenced, it’s much more rewarding.
Now Joan Baez was before my time. She was the thing, the rage, at the turn of the decade, from the fifties to the sixties, and I was seven. But as the folk scene picked up steam I certainly knew who she was, I remember hearing her albums, but then the Beatles came along and wiped both Baez and the folk scene from the map. Newport and his fans may have hated Bob Dylan for going electric, but he sustained whereas his contemporaries did not, they fell by the wayside, relics of the era. There are a lot of lessons here, but most people don’t want to learn them, but I’ll put it simply, using Dylan’s words, “He not busy being born is busy dying.” And there are so many ways to be born. But they all require venturing into the unknown, being uncomfortable, being unskilled. That does not mean you have to leave the past completely behind, you just can’t become calcified, lost in the past to the degree you become irrelevant.
Now one of the debates back then was how you pronounced Joan’s last name, many said “Baise,” like “maize.” Funny to younger generations, the lack of information we had. Information was scarce, you hunted for it, and oftentimes you had it wrong before you had it right.
Joan Baez was the queen of the folk scene, and her influence spread beyond her music. She inspired long hair. Yes, that was attributed to Joan back then, girls all grew their hair long to be like her. And many picked up the guitar to boot. Folk guitars, with wide necks, with gut strings, it wasn’t about picking the notes but playing the chords. And one thing is for sure, it was about singing the songs, along with everybody else.
So Joan is instantly famous. And admits she likes it, likes being the center of attention. And she admits that’s who she is, put a group together and it will end up focusing on her. These are the people who end up succeeding, whose names we know, it’s a certain charisma, a certain otherness, but this does not necessarily equate with happiness.
That’s the story of this movie. Joan’s unhappiness. Her depression, her panic attacks, her entry into therapy in her teenage years and her continuation thereof as she aged.
Growing up is so daunting. Joan is connected, but isolated. And she prefers the isolation, but it’s not ultimately fulfilling, it doesn’t make her happy. And she tells all this to her parents, to her family… If I told my mother I was feeling down she’d tell me to buck up, to go outside and play, that there was no reason to be unhappy. That made me feel more isolated. As for panic attacks, I had ’em before they were big, when no one knew what they were. I took medication when needed, but then I read a book and I was cured, which is pretty amazing. The book was written by one of the founders of cognitive therapy. You can go to the cognitive therapist and cure your panic attacks, get your OCD under control, but most people don’t want to do this. Therapy is evil, for weaklings, and people consider their failings to be features. But if you’ve ever been in an endless OCD loop you know this is not true, it’s torture. And to walk around thinking you might have a panic attack at any time… There are people who take Ativan or Valium or Xanax 24/7 for fear of having a panic attack. They’re all from the same family, known as benzodiazepines, and Stevie Nicks took Klonopin for years, and although one can argue that Xanax has the fewest side effects, they all have effects, quite noticeable ones, and you don’t want to be taking them on a regular basis, because they are habituating to boot.
Now I may be going too deep for you, but quiz your friends, see how many have benzos in their medicine cabinet. All the talk is about opioids, and they’re a problem, but the nation’s mental health is a problem too.
But all this is to say that Baez is not completely rooted, not completely stable, and she knows it.
As for relationships? She’s not good at them. She admits that outright. She blames her breakup with David Harris on herself, not him. As for what went down with Bobby Dylan… They shared a closeness, Dylan wouldn’t admit they were in a love relationship, and Joan got caught in the maelstrom and excised herself.
She invested herself in the civil rights movement, in the “revolution.” Hard to believe we used that term back then, but we did, and to a great degree believed in it, Joan certainly did. And she was there, with Martin Luther King in D.C. and she was in Montgomery and this film does a great service of education to those who were not there, it illustrates the struggle, the successes, much of which has been papered over, or completely forgotten.
And then in the seventies it’s over. She’s past her peak. The attention is not on meaning, this is the AOR era, loud rock and sensitive singer-songwriters and changing the world is secondary to making money, if changing the world is even important at all.
But Joan writes the story of her time with Dylan in a song entitled “Diamonds and Rust,” and it’s a surprise hit and the money is coming in and she fires her manager in favor of a drug-addicted road guy.
Yes, having a career means you make mistakes, everybody does, it’s part of being a musician. They can sing and play, which the business people cannot, but they can’t do what the business people can do.
Yet the artist gains fame. But they are still the other. And the audience is fickle, they adore you today, and then a lot fewer will show up to support you tomorrow. You haven’t changed, but something new has come down the pike, the audience itself has changed, moved on, and it’s disheartening.
Now as a result of the cheap means of production and distribution, everybody’s got a documentary these days. And almost all are hagiography. The subject is an overlooked star who is as good as any on the planet. Like that inane Bee Gees documentary equating them with the Beatles. That’s positively laughable if you were around in the sixties. The Bee Gees were a singles band, with hits, oftentimes wimpy, and they certainly didn’t change the culture, but if you have final cut, you can say whatever you want.
So at this point when someone tells me there’s a documentary about this or that musician I usually roll my eyes, and do my best not to watch it. Ditto on their books. It’s so sad, everybody who can’t gain attention anymore, who’s got time on their hands, is writing a book. Now the truth is if they’d written these books during their heyday, they would have been a big deal, but now, decades after the fact, almost no one cares.
Now the truth is “I Am Noise” is a cut above the usual fare. You can see the money on the screen. It plays like a real movie, as opposed to something shot on an iPhone and put together in iMovie. Soderbergh can do that, but almost no one else can. You need money, and talent.
I was surprised I was riveted by “I Am Noise.” The fact that Baez reveals her warts, her questions, says she doesn’t have answers, makes her very appealing. Her character ends up different from the public image. She’s strong, but vulnerable, and distraught and sometimes lost, and it’s not like you watch this movie and think you can be her best friend, but you understand her, as a person, she’s much more than a star.
But she still is a star, that’s the conundrum.
Even weirder, she’s the last person standing. Her two sisters died of cancer, her parents are gone, even David Harris has passed. So many of her memories…there’s no one to share them with, no one who was there, and that is weird, but she’s happier than ever, because…
According to her it’s therapy. Focusing on family trauma. But in truth, most people get happier as they get older. When you’re young, you don’t know who you are. You’re trying to figure out where you’re going. And then you age and you accept who you are, you’ve seen the world, you know much better how to play the game. The only downside is there is not much time left.
Joan Baez is 82. Fewer and fewer people were there with her, during the heyday. Interestingly, Dylan still is. But the rest?
But with this movie you can see how it was.
The sixties and the civil rights movement and Vietnam and…have been recast, been denigrated when they’re not seen through rose-colored glasses. But if you were alive back then you know the truth. It was a vivid era. Everything was up for grabs. And underpinning the entire decade was the music. Joan Baez was there. You’ll be fascinated by what she has to say.
