Elizabeth Thomson - Joan Baez

Very early Joan: Baez performing in 1960 (Charles Frizzell)

This book was finished and ready to go to press in March 2020, just as much of the world went into lockdown. Like every other aspect of life, book publishing has been affected by the Covid-19 crisis and will be for a long time to come.

Joan Baez: The Last Leaf was commissioned as a large-format, fully illustrated book. However, it was agreed that the best way to proceed, given global publishing restrictions and the need to have books on sale in good time for Joan Baezs eightieth birthday in January 2021, was to publish it as a straight biography with a plate section, and a detailed Discography, Filmography and Bibliography. I hope this will enable what is essentially a serious study to find a readership beyond those who have followed Baezs long career an international readership among university students studying music, American social-political history, including Vietnam and the anti-war movement, human rights, womens studies and much besides for whom Baezs life and work are vibrant threads in a larger tapestry.

In April 2020, she was elected to The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and sixty other scholar-patriots who understood that a new republic would require institutions able to gather knowledge and advance learning in service to the public good. Its mission is to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people. Baez is in good company, for its membership roll includes Rene Fleming, Jimmy Carter, Toni Morrison, Martin Luther King Jr., and Henry David Thoreau.

During the worst weeks of the Covid-19 tragedy, Baez sang to the world from her kitchen: songs in Italian, French, Spanish, German and, of course, English, each of which had millions of views. On Memorial Day, she sang in support and honor of my sisters and brothers in the American Indian community. Forever Young was dedicated to the heroes of our time: the healthcare providers, farmworkers, truckers, pickers, and growers; the store clerks, the janitors, and the morticians to the people working on the front lines so that I can stay at home. To the governors and mayors, battling to keep people safe in the face of the indifference, the callousness, the cruelty of the non-leadership of the federal government. And to Navy Captain Brett Crozier for exhibiting extreme courage in the face of this new war. At the close of the song she smiled and saluted.

The paint splatters visible on her fingers and jeans showed Baez had not been idle, and a painting, Viva Italia!, depicting the Italians, in their darkest hour, singing from their balconies, was printed and sold in a signed limited edition, all proceeds going to Foundation Specchio Dei Tempi, the Italian relief agency. Hello in There, a portrait of Covid victim John Prine, benefited the Pandemic Resource & Response Initiative, a nonprofit directed by Dr Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician and public health activist at New Yorks Columbia University.

As America burned and Trump fanned the flames, Baez sang Let Us Break Bread Together, a spiritual from the Underground Railroad which the great Marian Anderson had sung so often. She prefaced it with an appeal for a nonviolent show of moral force against the ugliness, the treachery, and the seemingly endless stupidity which has run through our society and which led to the death of Gorge Floyd and hundreds of others who suffered fates like his.

Forever Young is Bob Dylans most universal of prayers:

May your hands always be busy

May your feet always be swift

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful

And may your song always be sung

May you stay forever young

Of one thing we can be sure: Joans song will always be sung.

Elizabeth Thomson
London, June 2020

Program from Joan Baezs Rainbow Theatre season in December 1971. Sister Mimi Faria joined her for one night