What do you do when life doesn't go according to plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one, or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this is now What, a podcast about pivotal moments as told by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down with a guest to talk about the times they were knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice answers one question, Now, what are there any other risks that you sit there and look back at and go, God, oh my god, I can't believe I did that.
I think probably Saria comes out on top of that, because I was just in snipe rally, you know. But there again, I'm protected by my own denial, just blocking out, blocking out my mortality, and my mortality I hadn't really run into until nineteen seventy two. In her noise, I thought, oh god, yeah, I could die here, and kind of don't really believe until it's in your face. And by the way, every atheist there says Oh God, say, oh God. They're praying like thunder at the end of the day.
My guest today is one of the leading voices of her generation. Joan Biaz is a singer, songwriter, political activist, and more. Her legendary soprano made her famous, but it was her role in the counterculture of the nineteen sixties that made her an icon. She stood with doctor Martin Luther King Junior at the March on Washington, performed at Woodstock,
fought to integrate schools. The list goes on. I was admittedly starstruck during our interview, especially when she said we should go get a cup of coffee, but mostly because I had just watched I Am Noise, an incredible new documentary about Joan's life. It chronicles her incredible career, her efforts to uncover and heal from childhood trauma, her relationships, and her activism. I'm blown away by her life's story and honored that she took the time to share a
little of her wisdom with me. Here is Joan Bias. Joan Bias. I can't believe I'm actually talking to you. This is such a huge honor, and I just want to say thank you for your time, and just for deciding to spend any time with me.
I'm delighted to be here, are you, beautiful woman?
I was watching your documentary I am Noise. I recently was part of a documentary about my own life, and watching it and being in it was a very surreal sort of revisitation of a lot of things in my life. And I was so impressed by you and your career and your messaging and your voice and your history. Why did you decide that this was the appropriate time to re examine all of that and share it with the public.
Well, a question goes for the whole film, and the singing and the family, sisters and growing up and all of it. Why did I decide? And it was about wanting to leave an honest legacy, wanting to just go ahead. I mean, I've got nothing left to lose. I'm eighty two, my family's gone, so for a lot of the sensitive material that this was the time to do it. It
came out as I would have hoped. It stays understated, but you get the general idea of what my entire life was, and also things like the tapes from Birmingham, you know, Hi Mummy and Popsy I'm going to meet Martin Luther kingdomarw. I mean, how crazy is that? So I don't have to tell the story. It tells itself from tapes I made when I was twenty two, things like that.
And you kept it all. I mean you kept it. Was amazing seeing your doodles and your your handwriting and your love for your family is evident.
It is. First of all, my mother kept everything. I didn't keep a thing, and I had no idea it was in that storeroom, nothing And when I walk in and the film, it's the first time I've ever been in there, so surprise, surprise, I've learned a lot. Yeah, I've learned a lot from watching the film.
What did you learn the most? What struck you the most from watching it?
I think things like my son, it's just the depth of what he was dealing with. I knew he was dealing with, you know, my not being present for so many years. I didn't know how deep, how deeply it affected him, and how marginal he felt, you know, And I get it about feeling marginal. Hearing my sisters say
what they really felt about me. You know, you kind of guess, but it's hard for you it's hard for them to really say what they said face to face with one of the directors, and they love My older sister never talked to anybody anybody, wouldn't let anybody take a photograph. But Karen O'Connor, one of the directors, they were friends, and she just put the camera there and
Pauline started to talk. So I learned from that and from my son, and then some of the some of the therapy tapes I had, you know, I mean, I want to get rid of all the rest of them. I don't even know what they say. I just know they were a lot of them, and that I turning the keys over to the directors. That was part of it.
The opening up of that storage, like the just it was such a I don't know if the director intended that, but that's sort of that roll up and then being confronted with all of this in the film. The film examines your whole life up to the current day, from the beginning, through your diaries through home videos. It's quite extraordinary the amount of material that exists and that has been documented, and it really it's very moving to watch.
And there's one journal entry when you were I think you were about thirteen, and you say, I think of myself hardly a spec Then I see there is no use for this small dot to spend its entire life doing things for itself. It might as well spend its time making the less fortunate specs enjoy themselves. Where did you develop that? Where did that come from? At thirteen?
You know, probably well it had to have come from whatever in my life had been so far. And my family at that point weren't officially Quakers but pretty much as close to. No, actually they actually were. And I'd been subjected to quicker meeting, which kids are not crazy about. You should have to sit there and be quiet, but it does affect you anyway. No, And I think going to bag Dad, which is in there a little bit, and seeing the poverty and people who had absolutely nothing,
sick and all of that. People respond in different ways. I mean, my sister will all respond slightly differently, but whatever my makeup is, it was devastating to me. And I remember one day I was on a train and I couldn't have been more than ten or twelve, and in my mind I saw train going parallel to us. I mean it wasn't for real, but I saw and I saw a little girl basically another little me, and I was thinking I didn't want anybody to hurt that little girl, that if she didn't want to be hurt,
then I didn't want, you know. I looked at her and thought, oh, this represents kids, and none of us wants to be hurt. And we you know, we all want to be loved. And you know, I would have these little epiphanies when I was pretty young. They saved my life also, but.
They're also there. It's you taking care of that little girl in you. Somewhere in there, you knew you wanted to feel safer than life maybe made you feel or was unfolding around you, maybe didn't feel as safe.
Self care wasn't a word back then, but yeah, I mean that's must have been what the whole thing was about.
I just was so surprised that the degree that you suffered from panic attacks and depression and dissociation. Do you remember when that started?
Yeah, I mean I was fragile as a little girl, and I didn't realize it. You know, we didn't have any words for panic attacks back then. It's just seeing you're crazy people, and the crazy person went to see a psychiatrist. It was really not something anybody talked about.
So but early on, yeah, I was. You know, my mom says something about we you know, she but something's bothering her and we don't know what that is, and you know, and it confounded my lovely mom who wanted to take care of her daughter and didn't know quite how to deal with it all. So, yeah, I went through a life of it until I hit fifty and started dealing with it.
Said you said it one moment, you said I was just too crazy at the time, and that is that. I don't think you were crazy at all. I think you were coping. I think were you know, I used to carl into the sink and cry and spurts and then get up and have to memorize lines. And you know that's not that's not crazy. I mean you, how did you like?
It?
Broke my heart when I heard you call yourself crazy, because I I, that's a trigger for me, because it is you are coping, you're sensitive, you're an artist, you're a little kid. You're traveling all around in quite a bohemian way of life. Was music a tough form of escape or yeah? That help?
I mean since music did both because I was I would have crippling stage fright, but I'd go out there, and I know that that gave me. I mean, I guess in the film it says when I really started getting that recognition, I went from thinking of myself as a skinny, dumb Mexican. Literally, that's how I saw myself as a well the madonna. That's a good why not off through that? But I began developing, you know, some self,
some self worse, and I was proud. I loved my I can always consider it a gift, so I can talk about it. However, I like my job has been maintenance and delivery since I was fifteen. Yeah, so it gave me me.
You were such an active participant in the seminal moments in our history, whether it's the March on Washington, or helping into great schools, or Woodstock or the list just continues, Vietnam War protesting. Do you think that your motivation for that stemmed from anything in particular.
I think that there was great sadness that I didn't know about when I was little, and I remember, you know, the interviewers would say I was a twenty one or something. Why are seeing all those sad songs. I don't know why were you saying we shall overcome with me please, that there was a diet. You know there was a depth of sorrow in me, and that was you asked it earlier. That was one way to deal with it, with singing those songs that were expressing something I didn't really know about yet.
Well, I encourage everybody to see this documentary because of the honesty and because of hearing your voice, and hearing your voice at different stages, even when you're taping messages to your parents and you're on the train and you're talking about the sunrise or the mountains or whatever it is, you really do get an understanding of your psyche to a certain extent, you and your sweetness juxtaposed with your strength. The juxtaposition of both of those things all the time
really does come through in the documentary. And I think people will feel that I.
Was just going to say, I think we're allowing them to feel in some way, as I'm not telling people what to feel. What we've discovered that this is unlocked things. For many people come up and say exactly that, whether it was communicating with their family or whether it was trauma childhood trauma, et cetera. I didn't this is icing on the cake for me. It wasn't. I didn't go out to make a film and make everybody else feel better.
But it's given. You know, it's open doors for people, which is wonderful.
The documentary really does dive deeply into your mental health and discovering at what at such a young age, how you are grappling with that, and discovers that abuse was part of the family narrative. We hear tapes in therapy and we see you examine the roots of your anxiety. I feel like you've sat with this for so many years. But the willingness to be to examine it with regards to how you can heal I think as generous. I don't.
I don't think maybe you set out to make other people happy, But I do think sharing experiences that are less than perfect are important. Yes, But it does. I think you examine your memories.
Yeah, it does, and I that was the healing journey. No. I think everybody ought to see a therapist at some point because we're all we all get so lost and we go turn to friends and they're trying to please us, and or turn to a friend who just pisses us off. But if you can go somewhere where you're going to get a straight answer or you're going to find your
own straight answer, I think it's really important. And just just to make myself crazier then you say, I'm not, I do that my way of talking about I talk to trees. Now. I remember when Charlie McClain talked about, you know, talking to trees. I thought, oh man, what a fruitcake, you know, And I come completely around the other way. They're a big part of my life that I go to. There's one special one and I just
take my problems there. And if you speak to a tree and listen very carefully, you are I get answers.
Well that's that's great. I mean I've been going to the same therapist for almost thirty five or maybe a little bit over almost thirty eight years, and I got very, very lucky. And you know, hearing your own voice, hearing your own belief and feelings about things, is a huge gift. The show is called now What because it's about pivotal moments in our lives that, really, looking back, good or bad, they were you know something in your life that was
specially specially formative. If you were to look back, are there any that come to mind?
What comes to my mind first is the goodness that I got from my parents that comes before worrying about the problems. Was that I have to have survived partly because they loved me and I love them. And the importance of the Quakerism, I mean Quakerism. You really learned that human life is more important than the nation state. So here we are the nation states pile up, you know, one after another, and kids go on dying for that. So at a very early age, I was thinking about
those things and for that I'm grateful. In the in the movie, my older sisters has that globe and she's pointing to it the place sort of symbolizing all the places that we've been, and she said, Pops wanted to travel around meet different people to show us that we're sort of we're all the same basically, you know. And that's probably where that speck came from, that little speck of a person that my parents both must have helped me form.
That was there a person that you came into contact with. I mean, you've known so many icons like Martin Luther King Jr. And James Baldwin and Patti Smith, who is a I love her, Bob Dylan, Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs gave me my first computer, katies me too. Any is there anybody? Yeah?
I love that.
Was there anybody in particular that made an impression on you?
Oh? There have been people, No, I mean the first ones that come to mind are Hallville, who was became the president of Czech Republic and been a dissident. I always go for these dissidents because they've paid the price, taken the risk and paid the price, and I just admire so much. It's what we don't have, broke, we
don't have. I mean, we have a lot of people doing a lot of good things, and it's really difficult in this political atmosphere which is all about bullying, you know, and hatred and fear and this people there are people who are doing good things and I don't know where this rambling I'm doing started. But social change, really serious, social change, meaningful, can't happen until people are willing to
take a risk. And we need to be more tuned into that and hopefully more willing to step out of our comfort zone.
And not letting fear, not letting fear, you know, really guide us as much as it wants to do.
Yeah, yeah, I think I think courage is contagious, and courage is not that you're fearless, but it is that you're afraid and you do it anyway. So most of us, to be courageous means to face the demons, whether they're personal and internal or whether it is this sick world we're living in.
But I mean I also think you like people have said things I've done, written about are courageous, and I've never thought about it as courageous. I just thought about it as necessity because very rarely, I think, does one really feel courageous unless something is simple, and then that's not really courage. But you took risks. I mean, are there moments that from your youth and your career that you still can't believe that you experience?
Yeah? There are, and I think it's a blessing. I think denial is our friend because as I'm walking through those threetes, who great Mississippi, I mean you're either in denial or dumb to do that, because you're going to get hurt. No, I mean denial about say climate change. If we didn't stay in denial, maybe ninety percent of the day, it wouldn't be worth living.
You talk about being the right voice at the right time, and I'm so moved by the sound of your voice now. It resonates differently, but there's something about the richness of your voice now. Albeit the younger sound was extraordinary and unique and there was a clarity and a timbre to it, But hearing your voice now is extremely moving. Do you think that there's any metaphor in that psychologically with how far you've come and of doing all the work.
Well, I was busy not liking my voice for the last number of years, and it's because I was trying to make it in something it can't be anymore. And the more I accept it. I mean, I don't sing much, but people have asked me recently to do a couple of things. I mean, I took the guitar off the wall, which is where it's lived since I quit touring, and started to see whether I could my fingers are going to stay spaghetti, or whether the muscle memory would come back.
It came back enough, and I actually when I quit trying to make notes that I couldn't make. That's where all the tension was coming from and that was making it not fun. And I would say, although I don't spend much time at it, I've found spots where I'm really happy with the sound of the voice and accepting that sort of like accepting wrinkles. For me, it just is. It is what it is.
But there's no botox for the vocal cords.
That's correct.
Yeah, But I think anytime we try to compare ourselves to something that was, I think we come up short. I hope you found joy again in your voice, because so many of us have and do. But looking back at your songs and your activism, did you do it for the greater good or was there a part of you that just was being defiant or self destructive?
I don't think self destructive. I think the positive part of it is that I am proud of every one of those challenges that came along and I did. I don't think I went off on the wrong track at any point. I think then the film alludes to it. I was addicted to it, which show, you know, whatever made it impossible to me to be really present with
my son. Something in there was so difficult for me that I would take off you know, and I would do something valuable and something good, but I could have stayed home.
When you say that you your son, you were not present, do you mean that just because of your schedule or do you mean that emotionally both both.
I mean the schedule physically took me away, but being there but not really being present for him, I kind of knew. I mean, I know that, and I knew it already, but to hear more from him about what that actually felt like, and you know, to hear you know, my mom surrounded me with really good people, but there's nothing can really take the place of a parent. So you know, I had a lot of gut punches while I was watching and the healthy ones because I learned from them.
And to see your son, you and your son on tour for the quote unquote, I don't want to admit it. I will not I will not be I will not be accepting the farewell tour as a farewell tour. But that's not for me to decide. Seeing you know, you're his only mom, you know, and seeing the two of you to other and seeing you two performed together, there's a huge amount of healing in that, and you can feel it and I don't think it's ever too late
in any way. We all have guilt. For I have a huge amount of guilt for being so kidnapped by postpartum depression with my first daughter. And you know and hold that, and I think, what you it's it's a very it's a beautiful thing anyway to see you both on stage together, and so I'm glad for that.
When people ask me what is it I'm most proud of in my life, it really isn't the accolades and the whatever, all that stuff and the praising and the and the awards, and that it really is. And I came, this came to me really clearly that my son and I were able to reach each other. We had to work really hard at it. We needed a therapist or a referee or a something. But still we go back. If there's a hitch, we go back again. Because the wounds were deep and it will be processing now from
here on out. But that's good news for people that you can actually do that, but you need help. You just can't do that on your own.
That was Joan Baez. To learn more about her incredible story, check out I Am Noise, available everywhere on November twenty First, that's it for us today. Talk to you next week. Now. What with Burke Shields is a production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner is Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by Darby Masters and Abu Zafar. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The show is mixed by Baheed Fraser.