“Dissolved into tears”: Why Joan Baez quit her 1984 tour with Bob Dylan
Bursting onto the scene as a folk force in the 1950s, Joan Baez seemed destined to change the course of music forever. However, earning her keep alongside another of the industry’s biggest names ever—Bob Dylan—meant she also seemed fated to coast half obscured by another’s shadow, transitioning from the bigger star to one only often said in connection with her poetic counterpart.
The right people will always remember Baez as someone who genuinely altered the scene for the better, and with recent releases like A Complete Unknown, that sentiment has never been clearer. Moreover, such projects prove that Baez’s career has not only always been eclipsed by another star but that her story is more than worth telling, even if it rarely gets its time in the spotlight.
Still, the pair emerged as one of music’s most iconic duos despite the personal and professional complexities that threatened to pull them apart throughout the 1960s. At the heart of their bond, however, was a mutual understanding of the power of music to unite and challenge, especially when it came to the shortcomings in societal and political spaces and how their individual voices could incite change.
Nonetheless, Baez would endure a long battle with Dylan’s popularity, even during the 1980s, when she joined the singer for his tour of Europe in 1984. During this time, she likely thought it would smoothen any negative feelings that had been harbouring beneath the surface since their early days, hoping that sharing the stage every night during the tour would remind her that, yes, her appreciation for Dylan’s friendship far excelled her disdain for his bigger fame.
However, she soon realised that the promoters were only interested in representing Dylan, and her name appeared much smaller on the tour flyers. She also didn’t get to perform with Dylan or see him very often, and after a few shows, their paths stopped crossing at all. With half a mind to quit the entire tour, she approached the singer one night after his performance in Copenhagen to tell him she was done.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dylan didn’t seem to be that bothered, but the aura he allowed himself to emit was worse than his nonchalance as he embraced her in a considerably disrespectful manner. “I leaned over and kissed his sweaty forehead,” Baez wrote in her book And a Voice to Sing With. “It was covered in whiteface. He looked, as the British say, as if he’d been dragged through a hedge backward.”
Things soon went from bad to worse; Baez writes: “Bob started running his hand up my skirt, around the back of my knee, and partway up my thigh. ‘Wow, you got great legs. Where’d you get those muscles?'” Baez removed his hands and kissed him again before leaving for good. Baez later struggled with forgiveness, saying she put his music on and “dissolved into tears,” before she felt numb enough to let it go.
Most view Dylan as the epitome of a legend. Others know him only by reputation, believing that he must have earned such a name by being excellent at creating music. While the musician no doubt altered music and reinvented what it meant to fuse poetry with sound, there’s no denying his questionable character. After all, if a longtime friend approaches you about parting ways, the last thing you might expect would be a complete dismissal.
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