Monica Barbaro’s Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Joan Baez in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown has introduced an entirely new generation of fans to the folk icon, even though Baez retired from the road following a 2019 farewell tour and rarely performs live these days. She made an exception Saturday night when she took the stage at a tribute concert held in her honor at San Francis’s Masonic, with all proceeds going to Sweet Relief Musicians Fund.
The roster for the show included Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris, Roseanne Cash, Margo Price, Bonnie Raitt, and Tom Morello. Near the end of the night, Baez delivered a spellbinding rendition of her 1975 classic “Diamonds and Rust,” which chronicles her tumultuous relationship with Bob Dylan a decade prior. As she’s often done over the years, Baez updated the lyrics by singing, “60 years ago you bought my cufflinks.” She was unable to hold back a laugh that such an absurd amount of time has passed since the events of the songs took place. (Click here for a much better video than the one below.)
The studio version of “Diamonds and Rust” ends with the bitter line, “If you’re offering me diamonds and rust/I’ve already paid.” She’s often altered them in concert to “If you’re offering me diamonds and rust/I’ll take the Grammy.” At this show, however, she went with, “If you’re offering me diamonds and rust/I’ll take the diamonds.” After the audience erupted with applause, she returned to the mic and deadpanned, “I’m still waiting for the diamonds.” The night wrapped up with all of the performers of the night joining Baez on the Latin American standard “Gracias A La Vida,” which was the title track of her 1974 album.
Baez’s voice remains in extraordinary shape, considering that she recently celebrated her 84th birthday. When she walked away from the road in 2019, however, she said the state of her voice was one of the key considerations. “I don’t want to try and use it forever,” she told Rolling Stone. “I know some people strain to sing until they’re 100 and then drop dead on the stage, but that’s never been my vision of how I’d end the career. I like this voice. It’s nothing to do with the one I had 50 years ago, nothing at all, but I’m enjoying it and it’s also, at the same time, quite difficult to keep up.”
Barbaro worked extremely hard to sing like Baez while prepping for her role in A Complete Unknown. She even got a chance to speak with Baez on the phone. “I felt emotional hearing her voice on the phone because I had been studying her voice in her twenties so intensely,” Barbaro said. “And I felt like I had so much respect for her. But she was like, ‘Oh, I’m just in my garden listening to the birds.’ And I was like, oh, yeah, you don’t live or die by what we say about you in this movie. She’s lived her life…She was like, ‘I’m here, I’m open and available for any question you have.’ I was really appreciative that she was so generous with me.”
In a recent interview with the Marin Independent Journal, Baez shared her thoughts after seeing the movie with her granddaughter. “I loved what [Barbaro] did in the film,” Baez said. “If I didn’t think she was good at it, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it in general. But she looked enough like me and she had my gestures down. You could tell who it was. She worked so hard. Kudos to her for taking the role on.”
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t strange to watch a fictionalized version of herself make out with Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan character. [The scene] was pleasantly brief,” Baez said. “[My granddaughter] said, ‘I don’t want to see my grandmother making out in a film.’”
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