Joan Baez: I Am a Noise (2023)
She Shall Overcome
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
It seems like Joan Baez has always been here.
A folk singer who arrived on the scene at age 19 at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, followed by a 1960 debut album, Baez was a counterculture fixture, and now the subject of a fearless, revealing documentary, Joan Baez: I Am a Noise, which opens Friday in San Francisco theaters.
Yet she might also have been the kind of figure who could get stuck in time, a forgotten relic.
Even her cohort Bob Dylan, with whom she had an intense and volatile relationship, had to reinvent himself over the decades in order to stay relevant.
But Baez, a longtime staple of San Francisco and a current resident of San Mateo County, remained herself, and for six decades has commanded a devoted audience.
Co-directed by Miri Navasky, Karen O'Connor, and Maeve O'Boyle, Joan Baez: I Am a Noise takes place on the occasion of Baez's final tour, as the singer considers retiring.
The documentary captures her in a giving mood, fully ready to discuss her errors and faults, as well as her victories.
The latter includes her performing for sold-out crowds, hearing Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech in person during the March on Washington in 1963, performing with Dylan — a symbiotic relationship that benefitted them both (but arguably benefitted Dylan more and left Baez feeling left out) — and the recording of her 1975 masterwork LP Diamonds and Rust.
Then there were the downsides.
Baez was not the only member of her family who could sing; her sister Mimi could join her in beautiful, effortless harmonies. Joan was jealous of Mimi's natural beauty, and Mimi was jealous of Joan's fame. As Joan's star rose, the sisters' relationship became strained.
And, indeed, a warm, sunny picture of a happy family is shattered with rumblings of abuse, and years spent in therapy. Joan even confesses to having multiple personalities.
There was also racism to deal with, as Joan's father was Mexican-born. She recalls being labeled a "dumb Mexican" in school.
She's open about her years-long Quaaludes habit, which led to many awkward decisions, from the ill-chosen cover for her 1977 LP Blowin' Away — Joan wears Amelia Earhart-style flight goggles and what looks like a silver space suit, smiling and waving — to an out-of-place 1986 appearance at the Amnesty International Tour, performing a cover of Tears for Fears's "Shout."
She also speaks honestly about her many relationships, including a passionate year-long coupling with a woman called "Kimmie," as well as her ill-fated marriage to political activist David Harris, and the mysterious pairing with Dylan, which may or may not have been romantic. (Dylan denies it.)
What's remarkable about Joan Baez, aside from that unfussy, clear-as-a-bell soprano voice, is her massive archive of letters and tapes — we see sequences of Joan sorting through drawers full — access of which she has granted to the filmmakers.
They, in turn, have come up with a clever, visual way to incorporate these things into the movie, the camera rolling over the letters and highlighting significant passages, and, even better, animating Joan's revealing little sketches, giving us another peek into her mindset.
Like Joan herself, Joan Baez: I Am a Noise is a wise film, in that it understands the elusive nature of biography. It opens with a quote from Gabriel García Márquez: "Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life and a secret life."
Joan herself speaks of the flawed nature of memory, asserting that memories have a way of blocking out or distorting things. She can only tell it the way she remembers it, which may or may not necessarily be the truth.
In this way, Joan Baez: I Am a Noise is less a document of a time and place than it is a document of thoughts and feelings.
For example, in one perfect sequence, she sings Dylan's "It Ain't Me, Babe" at the Fox Theater in Oakland, dipping into the past with a voice showing the cracking signs of age.
And so, it's really about Joan looking back, and looking forward, and in the process, perhaps finding out something about the present.
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