Joan Baez, Diamonds and Rust - what a beautiful song

I knew Diamonds and Rust from various live recordings of RTR shows, but it took me 42 years to hear the original studio version. I'm gobsmacked, can melancholy and nostalgia ever be more beautiful? The YouTube version here adds not only lyrics, but very appropriate pictures of Joan with Bob. The look in her eyes says everything she expresses in the lyrics.

Melancholy and longing for something lost may be the finest drivers of songwriting. I get the exact same feeling from many songs on The White Album. It may not be explicitly stated in the lyrics, but a feeling of something being lost permeates this album. Try playing Mother Nature's Son after Diamonds and Rust. The score expresses the same feeling of beautiful melancholy. At least to my ears it does.

As to Joan in general, I guess I think the same about her that most do: a beautiful voice that quickly overstays its welcome. Her highly visible activism for various causes is not necessarily aligned with my view of the world. She has never created her Blonde on Blonde. I don't know any of her albums. This song, however, gives me an enormous respect for her. When she is good she can be up there.



I would have added the RTR duet with Bob of I Pity the Poor Immigrant, but it doesn't seem to be on YouTube. Their finest duet ever?

 

I'd suggest editing this to remove the political. Baez's activism is most associated with the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam. Yes, she's continued a life of activism for lesser known causes célèbres, but those aren't what she's primarily known for.

As for Baez as an artist, she is primarily a singer, not a writer. Her early albums interpreted traditionals and mixed them with covers of contemporary writers, like Dylan. As the singer songwriter movement took off she began writing more, though I don't think she ever penned the majority of tracks on an album. If you get the Diamonds and Rust album, there is a beautiful cover of John Prine's Hello In There.

I read a recent interview with her where she indicated that she wasn't really writing anymore, though she is still releasing albums, again, covering current songwriters like Gillian Welch.

 

Her public persona is tied to much more than her music, and as such everything becomes a legitimate object of personal opinion in the public. I had no intention of specifically commenting on the field of activism (and break forum rules), my point was only to say that her music will inevitably be perceived in the light of the full person that she is. I will admit that I could have done more to dive into her musical output and thereby bypass the public persona cliches.

Thanks for the suggestions of specific songs.

 

GREAT song, no question, but how many people will post that they prefer the Judas Priest version I wonder....?

Probably just me....

 

One of the most hauntingly beautiful songs ever written, i’ve felt this way since the first time I heard it, the album is very GOOD as well.

 

At first I thought you were joking, but it is real. Is there a story as to how the song ended up in an entirely different context? It sounds pretty great from what I heard.

 

That song was an obvious "Stairway to Heaven" level classic to me in the 70's.

 

I don't own a single Joan Baez record and most of my understanding of her material comes from listening to complete Rolling Thunder Revue shows. I always thought "Diamonds And Rust" was a pretty good song. The couplet I like most is "As I recall your eyes were bluer than robin's eggs / My poetry was lousy, you said". I don't really care for her persona but I did arrive at one conclusion. No one sang with Bob Dylan with such authority as Joan Baez. She was the absolute best at doing that and I suspect it is a difficult task.

 

There were other examples of soft singer songwriter stuff being amped up around the same time. Nazareth covered Joni Mitchell's This Flight Tonight around the same time.

 

Their filmed duets are a chapter in itself. Not only is their singing a marriage made in heaven, but their body language, intimacy and glances are a joy to behold. Look how Bob makes funny facial gestures at her during I Pity the Poor Immigrant. Like he is trying to make her crack up laughing.

 

I’m not her greatest fan, but i’ve never understood the whole “persona” thing when it comes to Joan Baez. What is so wrong with caring about the world and the people in it, and showing it.

 

One of those rare, rare songs, that is able to literally, take one's breath away.

 

Yeah, even I have a hard time listening to her doing a live sing-a-long of Kumbaya from one of her early albums. Not having lived through that period it's hard to believe there was ever a time that wasn't cloying and cliched.

As long as you're checking out songs, pull up "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You." She recorded it live after hearing the song's author Anne Johannsen (nee Bredon) perform it. Joan's was the first recorded version and I don't think Bredon ever recorded it. If she did, I've not been able to locate it. Zeppelin then did an arrangement thinking it was a traditional, and only later adding Bredon to the credits.

 

A persona is something actively created and maintained and difficult to ignore. Even the pre-superstar Pink Floyd had a public persona - anonymous blokes with unkempt hair- but I'm sure they were aware of what they were projecting. Let's respect forum rules and ignore the specifics of politics.

 

That "Best of Judas Priest" with the Japanese looking masks was one of my first ten or so albums, so I've known their version a lot longer than I've known the original.

 

The roots of Zep, a chapter in itself. I used to think not crediting the composer was something unethical, but in recent years I have delved into blues, country and other Americana from the 1920s onwards. I can hear how songs or just specific phrases pop up in an infinitude of contexts and genres. When you realise how blurry the origins of old songs are, Zep becomes just another band that continues this tradition. The blues artist that they fail to credit in all likelihood wasn't 100% the originator of the song.

 

Not I

Don't care for their version of Love Hurts so I will avoid checking out their likely butchering of Joni.

 

This is a song that never fails to bring me to tears. The feeling of loss in it is so palpable...
I wanted to post a part of the lyrics that was especially moving to me (...It's all come back too clearly,
Yes I loved you dearly...) but when I looked them up to make sure I got it 100% correct, and I read the whole song, I was overcome with how achingly wonderful the entire thing is.

 

There is undoubtedly some of that, but for something like When The Levee Breaks, that was written in 1929 about a specific even that had occurred in 1929, so the authorship is well established as being Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy. Plus, fair or not, once you copyright a song, it is yours. The fact that Willie Dixon may have thrown in a bunch of stock phrases in his songs doesn't mean you don't have to pay him if you cover "Whole Lotta Love."

In the case of "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You," it was written in the late 50s. Bredon is actually still alive.

 

I am reminded of the never seen outtake from Don't Look Back where Donovan presents his own composition based on the 'traditional' tune It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. He didn't know it was entirely a Bob song. A VERY awkward moment that we will never see.

 

An amazing song and extremely well recorded.

 

A sad song . . .

 

Well, I'll be damned, not sure I prefer the Priest version, but I do like it a lot, if that's not a sin.

If you want to want to show off beautiful sound, the Joan vinyl is simply stunning.

 

Not only the song itself but the whole record is a masterpiece.