Joan Baez on her relationship with Bob Dylan: “He’s a nutcase… but I have nothing bad to say”
Who on Earth could Joan Baez be calling a “nutcase”? Well, there really only is one answer, isn’t there?
That was the power of the relationship she had, and still has, with Bob Dylan. They could be head over heels for each other, hate each other’s guts, and everything in between, and yet that bond still sustains. It’s somewhat of a life source for them – no longer romantic, but also not quite platonic. Just something liminally in the middle.
In this sense, because of the constant rollercoaster they’ve been on together, you can see quite easily how Dylan and Baez can drive one another up the wall… then round the other side, and back down again. It was almost like they were destined to be brother and sister more than soulmates of the loving kind.
That meant that although their connection will never ultimately be lost, much like family members, they have both seen all sides of each other: the good, bad, and the ugly. When it comes to Dylan, the notoriously aloof, elusive, and painfully mysterious wordsmith, she’s probably the closest version to the truth that anyone will get.
Their bond has been through its tumultuous periods over the years, to put it kindly, but deep down, Baez knows that there’s no one else in the world quite like him. “He was an extraordinary individual… nobody else could give us songs like that,” she said in 2023. “I’ll joke about him because he’s a nutcase… but I have nothing bad to say.”
As much as her words there made it sound like Dylan is some sort of past entity, he is very much still searingly, if also sometimes begrudgingly, in the present. The whole point is that he has only ever done things on his own terms. By coincidence, that’s probably also the main source of tension with him.
Dylan is one of those people who embodies the phrase ‘It’s my way, or the highway’ to the end of the Earth. And, for her sins, Baez has often been on the receiving end of that. But the difference with her is that she has seen beneath the tough exterior plenty of times before. She knows there’s a good soul lying somewhere beneath.
After all, there’s no other reason that they’d write so many songs about one another over the course of their respective seismic careers. Who else is there to vent every inch of joy, frustration, envy, hatred, warmth, encouragement, and ultimately love, than the person who has been their muse for a lifetime?
They’re one of those couples who could love each other and murder each other in the same breath, but it wouldn’t be that classic Dylan and Baez pairing without the threat of permanent tension always being in the way. Beneath that, though, there’s a love that will last forever, and if they know what’s good for them, it will always stay that way.
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