Tori Amos on Joan Baez’s masterpiece: “An incredible writer”
Joan Baez feels like one of those artists that, whether they mean to or not, every woman holding a guitar is honouring. Her influence and legacy, from her songwriting to her folk sound, is so expansive that it seems limitless. Similar to the likes of Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks, Baez sits in a golden league of pioneering leaders that everyone has been following since. Tori Amos counts herself amongst the disciples.
In the 1960s, Baez was the queen of the scene. As a forerunner of the countercultural musical movement, racing ahead and bringing the folk world with her, she modernised the sound into something cool, confessional and sharply observational. Her music was richly connected to the world around her, both internal and external. Whether she was turning her pen to her own life or to big topics of politics or social inequality, each was handled with a poetic streak and a clever mind.
That’s exactly what won her the love and respect of her peers. Names like Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris and beyond all bowed to Baez as someone to be admired and listened to. Then there was Bob Dylan, the now mythologised figure who was once just a new up-starter, who was introduced to the music world when Baez brought him on stage at a festival. She was there first, but as they struck up a musical and romantic relationship, Baez’s shine was all too often usurped or overshadowed by Dylan’s.
That’s part of her power, though, in Tori Amos’ eyes. To go head to head or work side by side with a legend like that and still more than prove your abilities is no easy feat. “She’s an incredible writer and artist in her own right, but I think there were probably times when she felt as though she was in his shadow; the light being shone on Dylan was so bright,” she said. Her favourite work from the artist tells this tale as she selected ‘Diamonds and Rust’. “The fact that Joan Baez wrote this song about Bob Dylan and their relationship, and how public it all was, is just amazing to me.”
In conversation with The Line Of Best Fit, Amos bowed to Baez as a teacher. At a time when folk and country had traditionally been dominated by men and in an industry that still all too often turns down the volume on women’s stories, the musician is a reminder that our personal experiences matter. Alongside the likes of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and beyond, Baez is a key inspiration in proving the vital worth of confessional songwriting and the talent and skill that takes.
“For me, this song is one of the great, great narratives, and the way she performed it was so powerful,” Amos said. “I remember hearing it for the first time and being completely floored by the emotions and the poetry. The last line of the song, when she sings, ‘If you’re offering me diamonds and rust, I’ve already paid’… wow. It’s just a perfect song about heartache.”
Still today, ‘Diamonds and Rust’ stands as one of the finest heartbreak tracks ever penned. But specifically, this is a sad song about a musical breakup or a split that is tainted with creative identities and valuations of worth. It’s a woman’s work nursing a broken heart while still, and rightfully, demanding to be respected. “My poetry was lousy, you said,” she spits out, recounting all the things she’d done for Dylan, a man who “burst on the scene already a legend, the unwashed phenomenon”.
As she looks back at their relationship, littered with little moments of disregard and disrespect as she was swallowed up in Dylan’s star power and ego, the hyper-specific lyricism is imbued with a level of poetry that only a talent like Baez could pull off. Walking on a perfect tightrope between the personal and the universal, the care and the cruel, the sad and the savage, it’s a triumph.
