Joan Baez

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My guest today is the one and only legendary Joan Bias. Joan, the new movie is out. I am a noise. Now that it's out, how do you feel about it?

Well, the response has been absolutely extraordinary and wonderful. But even before that, I recognize it as a superb work of art. And that doesn't even have that much to do with me. It's the filmmaking. I mean, I'm glad they were making it about me, but it is really a work of art, and it was meant to be an honest legacy, and it did turn out to be that.

Well, it's one thing to have private conversations, is another thing to hear your see your story depicted on the big screen for everybody. You talk about a lot of personal elements, depression, relationships. Do you squirm a little bit seeing that up there? Or do you say, no, that's me, that's fine.

The funny thing is what I squirm about is something like a vocal lesson the other You know, it's me, It's fine. I didn't know how i'd feel. Plus I wasn't there when I made it. I had nothing to say about it at the very very end, they do. You want to have a look, but it's too mad to do anything about it. So I didn't know what extent of it would be cringe worthy, But the little parts that are now just make me laugh. And I know that as a whole, whatever is in there is

So you talk a lot about depression in the movie. When did you first feel that you were different from other people that you felt depressed?

Well, it's funny about depression. My mother was depressed her whole life, but didn't know it until she took any depression when she was in her eighties. So you don't know, you just know, I mean, for me, speaking for me, I didn't know that word. I didn't know. I just knew I was different. I knew other kids didn't feel sick in the morning, didn't you know? Those are the things that made me feel different, you know, in another world from my classmates.

So do you take medication now?

Yes, I do for the deep work that I did to really go through the tunnel and come out what I considered to be healthy human being. We had to find the appropriate medication that would allow me to work. If I was working from a place of depression and I didn't have really didn't have my faculties available to me, I don't think it could have worked, or it would have been really really painful. So to find that takes

Yeah, So how is your outlook and feeling differently different now that you're on medication.

I don't think that's the question. I think the question is how is it different from the work that I did? I think, well, okay, do this way. If I stopped all on medication, I think I would be in pretty big trouble. But that isn't the issue because I'm I found what's appropriate to keep the highest from being too high and the lows from being too low. And then it's more about the work that I have done and to some degree still do. But I don't see a

Okay. In the film, you say that you ultimately do this deep work at a relatively advanced age, inspired by your system. Me me, can you tell us a little bit more how that comes to be?

Well, she was She and I always knew there was something wrong. I mean, there's something wrong with our relationship, but we never understood why. And then but she was the first one to think, whoopsie, you know, maybe it was something that we really that was really buried and did I was I understood in going investigating that with her, and so we both embarked on this journey and came up with very similar stories and supported each other through

Well, in the movie, there's issues of abuse, which your father denies and the two of you believe happened. Uh, how did you reconcile your father's deniy was what you felt?

You know? I read him. I was reading a book of a famous actor who I willed that name, but he he discovered that he was abused by a priest when he was eight, and he struggled with that for his entire lifetime, and at one point decided he was going to call this old man you know who had abused him and other kids. And he called him, ready to just say, you know, you sort of a bitch,

Okay, So, how do you find a box to put that in? All these years later?

I guess the process of discovering who did what to whom is a long process and a deep process, and I guess the best answer to that is putting in my little multiple helpers, and that's what they're there for, and just somebody helps take the take the load off each You know, each time there's a fresh realization, there are different ways, there are different places to put it in, different ways to deal with it. And it's ongoing, No, it's it's constant through that time period of discovery.

In the movie, you say a number of times you're not good at relationships. Do you think that's as a result of the abuse?

I think that from when I talk to people, everybody goes ha ha ha ha, yam too, So I don't. I think one to one, one on one relationships are probably the hardest things for us, the human beings, to tackle. I think that it's exacerbated by the fact that we once trusted and that trust was taken away, you know, so who do you trust? You don't to be intimate means you have to trust the other person to open

Now we've had COVID the last handful of years really been crazy. But what does your everyday life look like? Are you more of a homebody? Do you go out?

I am homebody. I would say those two choices very much. Your homebody, I guess I've been out enough for sixty years traveling around, and I thought, oh, you know, when I'm through with that, and I can go visit these places and just hang out and see stuff, all things I didn't do while I was traveling. But I haven't really had any interest in getting back on a plane. The only thing I've been doing is hopping around the

Okay, you're someone who is attractive, outspoken, in legendary famous. I have to believe when you're out and about to use the vernacular, men are hitting on you.

But a nice thought, I mean son thought, because at this age it's a question of sensuality, sexuality. Where is that? When I was talking to Jane fondo. She said, oh, I closed up shop a couple of years ago, and I said, well, I don't know what's what is here at this point to be hit upon. I feel very vibrant and I would be delighteders. No men were hitting on me as long as I don't have to hit back.

So if a man is warm and congenial, you basically send a vibe. At best, we're on the friend level.

Probably probably yeah.

And when we were young, person, what vibe did you send?

Oh? I think really confused messages. I mean really, I look back at myself and my schoolmates. They couldn't understand me. I mean I didn't understand me, but it was very confusing message that I sent out. And I'm thinking also when we moved to Baghdad, for we were there for a year, my family and I would write my classmates and they never responded. And I was telling them all about Baghdad. Well, they had no point of reference. It wasn't interesting to them that or not I was talking about.

When did you have your first panic attack?

Oh, Jesus, I don't know. I mean depends probably on how you define it. When you're really little, pretty little, And.

If you told your mother you were feeling this way, what would she say?

Oh? She I wanted to be with my mom because she would say, oh, let's have a cup of tea. I mean, I've run home from school in kindergarten. That my first day of kindergarten, I remember, and I found my way back home because I couldn't. I was too scared to be there. And instead of saying, well, we're going to take your back and talk to the teacher. She said, oh, let's have a cup of tea. You know, so that did two things. It was my comfort zone but also helped keep me from dealing with the reality

Okay, so you live this tenoran lifestyle and you talk about not being able to make friends. How much of that was situational and how much of that was you.

Well, yeah, that's what I was trying to say just now that because we traveled like that, and I don't know if we'd ended up somewhere for ten years, would I have developed, you know, relationships, would they have been healthy? Would they have been healthy relationship? I mean this first time I thought of it in those terms. But if

So at this late date, how integrated? How mean you talk to other people on the phone? Do you hear from email or you're more of an ice, You're more of an isolated person with your team.

No, No, I have the emails and the text coming and going, and yeah, no, I'm not isolated in that sense. Really, it's just not I just really don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to. I don't go to many concerts. It's just like, you know, I'm stay home and I have lots of friends. Now I have good friends.

Okay, I move.

We have movie night and there are six women who watch it. This happened when my mom was still alive for ten years in her little house, we'd have movie Night the first Tuesday of every month. Well I'm still doing that. And then I have another group of friends. We dance together. We used to dance in the city and now we just dance on Zoom once a week and that's and then I have a group I call the Gang of Eight. And there are people I refer to for anything political, to discuss with them and ask

So how do you pick the movies? And what are some good movies you've seen?

How do you pick the movies? Oh, usually it's somebody has a plan and then we start talking about it and the planet switches and then we just turn on TV and see whatever comes up. We turn on the Prime one night and on the Waterfront was on, and it was it was an old brainer. It was so wonderful, especially compared to so much of the trashism that's out now, to see, you know, really good. Sometimes you just want to be silly. I think the next one I have

And this group of eight that you check in with political stuff on what kind of topics have you been broaching recently?

Well, you know, obviously the most recent is the Middle East, where we all pretty much decide the exception of few things, I wish they had them in front of me, because there are a few things that you can do and go and be with. It's such an agonizing situation. And we're all, you know, and have been non violent activists for most of our lives, and there comes a point when things aren't such full flow. There's very little room for non violent action, although there is some and you know,

You're a cent in your career coincided with the advent of the sixties, youth quake blowing up. Politics was everything. The younger generation was a great percentage of the population. There was the Vietnam War in nineteen seventy, there was Kent State, there was a so called returned to the land, people looking their wounds, and then we had the Iran crisis in the next decade, and people were talking about bombing Iran. With the perspective you have, it's like, is

I don't really know. I know that, you know, people would assume that I'm an optimist. I never have been. I struggle to not be a pessimist. Somebody suggested it was a waste of time, and I think that's true. I struggle with hope. Somebody said, hope is a discipline, and it's like a muscle. It has to be exercised for me, for somebody who's glass half empty and sometimes all the way empty. I think the trick is that I've always done what I've done anyway, whether I was

In the movie, it hints at the fact that you always knew you were different, you were charismatic, you were going to be successful. When did you internally recognize that.

I don't know about being successful. I don't think that word was in my vocabulary. I had total faith in my voice. I might have been, you know, had squeamish about everything else, or thought I wasn't good enough, or thought I was a dumb Mexican whatever, But once that voice started to I'd say by sixteen, I was sure that it was special. By the time I was twenty, and there was nothing could have could have inter feared with my feelings about my own voice. So I don't know what your question was.

Now, Well, okay, well you felt that voice to be successful. In the world of entertainment, talent, is it most fifty percent. The other fifty percent is dry and need, etc. So where did that drive and need come from?

I think I don't seize myself as ambitious, and I think it's probably because I didn't have to be. I had to get ambitious enough to keep going when the career fell apart. And that's all in the film is pretty clear. But at the beginning, my idea of the future was the following Wednesday. You know I didn't have Some kid asked me once I was about seventeen, I thought I was going to be famous, and I hadn't even thought about it. It seemed like a fun idea. Once he said it, I didn't me. I thought that

And I said, no, that begs the question. Did you ever sing with Harry Bellefanie?

Yes? I did, Yeah, I did on Marches. Yeah, what a wonderful guy.

Okay, so your family moves to Boston. How do you end up playing at club forty seven.

Well, I have to say, good old Dad took his three daughters and his wife into Cambridge because he'd seen with his own eyes these coffee shops and he knew that, you know, I was starting to play guitar and starting to learn folk music. And he took us into Cambridge, and he took us into the Harbor Square. He walked around. I remember looking in the door of one of these coffee shops sing a guy playing guitar, singing, sitting under

Okay, So what happened first the learning process? Did you would shed for a while or at what point did you get up on stage and then perform for others?

Oh? Very fast, Because I was eighteen or nineteen at Newport, I had already sung. I sang this thing for the Shriners. I mean I would go where somebody said, hey, I was sixteen. I'm in high school. So and so wanted you to come and sing for their class. Okay, I go singing to their class. Some of his dad was with the Shriners. They wanted me to come and sing with the Shriners. And I went and I sang in his drunken old shriner came over and he said, honey, don't sign cheap.

It's that great phenomenal.

That was really funny.

Yeah, okay, was your first public outing club forty seven or did you play another clubs before that?

No, that was the first one and almost the only one. I mean it was became home and I started off on every two I think it was every Tuesday, and had ten dollars. That was a big deal. Then they added a probably it was Tuesdays and Fridays. Then it went up to fifteen dollars, and I really felt he felt like a rich girl. And I had had two jobs. I had had one job at Boston Vespa company, where I taught people how to drive vestpro.

So I had to if you're driving investment was did you ever crash?

Yes? I did once, but it was on a motorcycle. It was on a little tiny, stupid motorcycle. But yes, I did fall over once as on my way to my psychiatrist, and I told what happened. He said, are you crazy? That's a stupid question. Anyway, where did I Where did I veer off?

Just now you were talking about playing Club forty seven, working your way up the ladder.

Yeah, I played the one week. The first night I played, there was my mother and father, two sisters, and one other person. I don't remember who that was. That was it, probably the owners of the club. And then whatever happened between that and the following week, it was then full, and I don't remember what happened.

And then if there were only your family members there, why did everybody show up a week later?

I don't know. And I don't know if anybody knew on that first night, or if the word got out or I don't know, but it was really fast. And then shortly after that, Albert Grossman, who handled just about everybody in the folk world, invited me to come to Newport. Wanted me to go to Newport, and so.

So I went.

And that was the You know what I'm thinking when I'm going through this, I had already been to Chicago, to the Gate of Horn to sing itub It was his club and it was a real club and people drank and stuff. It was a big deal for me because I didn't think that was appropriate. Man, people drank anywhere. So and I was there for a couple of weeks opening for Bob Gibson. That's okay, that's how it goes.

Let's go a little bit slower. You're playing club forty seven, you're going to college. How do you end up dropping out of college?

Oh? That was easy, that was the easy part. I literally I was there for about six weeks. I mean after that it was just pretending to my parents that I was in school. I don't think there was I didn't know there are that many ways to flunk. There was you know, there was a zero, there was an F, there was a missing an action, whatever they are. But the only grade I got that was decent was art class,

Okay, but your your father's academic how does he feel about you dripping out of college?

Horrible? But he knew. I mean, my opalling went to college just really for him. She had no desire to go and she didn't last there. And I was so out of it. By the end of high school. Everybody's talking about college boards. I didn't know what a college board was, and I was too embarrassed to ask, And anytime anybody said it, I just pictured a two x four plank a board that and I wouldn't go be

Okay, so you're at Club forty seven. You obviously are feeling good that there's an audience, you're making money. What At what point do professionals say, hey, kid, you know you should come here and make a deal with me.

Well, actually that happened when I was in high school, and these two they remind me of the of those sneaky guys in Pinocchio. They kind of came in, they said, come on, little girl, we're going to make an album. And all I had was stuff like Annie had a baby and work with me, Annie and six Bellefontie songs. So I went and did everything I knew and they pressed it and it was one that we banned. I can't remember the name of it, but it was really really early. And then it was that come on, honey,

It was a wonderful decision because because it.

Was the right company for me. The Maynard Solomon owned the company, and he produced my albums, and he understood and loved folk music and he, you know, we helped me with always with the songs I was going to choose, And yeah, I don't know what the path would have been. If I'd gone on Columbia, probably fine, Probably would have been fine. But I think for me to stay oriented, for me to not tip over, it's probably safer to be with that guard.

Okay, you start to have the success very quickly. How do you cope with the attention? Very few people are in this situation, yeah, and very few people in this situation that quickly. Yeah, but there's a lot of tumult. There's no one from your regular life who understands what you're going through. Yeah, So what was it like for you?

Well, as part of it was really exciting because there I was with an identity, and there I was with people paying attention to me, and I had value and worths. And then so that would It's like reading reviews. If you read good reviews, you get all puffed up. If you read bad ones, you get miserable. You know, So what do you do with your life? And that do

What about the me too moments?

I was not not active in that, and you know, I wasn't speaking about myself at that point.

So I guess what I'm saying is, you're a young girl, twenty years old, you're in business, You're a hot commodity.

Anyway, I see any.

Woman who's twenty years old, even at this late date, with new consciousness, it's a volatile situation.

Say which situation?

Sorry, sexually charged with men trying to take advantage of you.

Oh I see, well, I think it was in some ways too puritanical at some point, and then they didn't take advantage when I hadn't slept with them. Okay, this isn't I don't know if it's okay or not, but I'm just trying to be honest.

Oh died great, But this is an era with the folk music scene. We even end up with a TV show about folk music Kot and Nanny prior to the Beatles, but Dylan comes along in the early sixties. First album is Covers, but then he starts to write did you feel any pressure to write? Did you feel different from the people who wrote?

You know what, I never even considered it, because I just considered that I was an interpreter of folk balance folk music. And it was somebody after ten years in said well, are you ever going to write anything? And that's the first time I'd really thought about her. And that's when I I wrote Sweetster Galahad, and so I sort of proved to myself that yeah, I could write. And then after that I enjoyed it. I mean, I wrote a bunch of things.

And what did you feel when the Beatles came along?

Oh? I loved the Beatles. I was in there. I was when they might have been their first show in the States. It is certainly the first tour. I was in Denver and they were I'd been at Red Rocks and they were there the next night, and I met them out there, absolutely charming and funny, and they were so thrilled in that hotel room. They had a whole floor to themselves. What got them most excited was the fact that there was a Coca Cola machine. You didn't

Did you have any idea that the British invasion was coming and this might negatively impact your career?

Neither I learned, as as everybody else did. They started, you know, just one hit after another in this massive phenomenon, and you know, I was fortunate enough to spend a little time with them.

Well did you wake up in the later years and say, wait a second. You know, you talk about the seventies in the movie, but even the sixties you'd say, wait a second. You know, I'm not the hot thing, and the direction seems to be going somewhere else.

Yeah, that was a little later, because I was a hot thing for maybe fifteen years or something, and then I was, you know, still more than tepid for the next five or six years. Okay, question again, Well.

Let me let me back into it. You are famously in the Woodstock movie. Okay, no one else is like you. You're pregnant. You're talking about your husband in jail when you see that or when you're reminded of that, do you feel comfortable or do you feel you're being so authentic that you WinCE in some way?

No, I you know, I don't WinCE much in this. I was young, Dylan was young, We still had our baby fat. We got to forgive ourselves for some things. No, there are a couple of times when I laugh. The goal I had we're going to start a peace movement and talking it was just rolling off the tongue. No, and that's what I felt that it's kind of it's not cringe eorthy, just sort of amazing and slightly funny. And then I went on and did as much of that as I could in my lifetime.

Okay, so tell me about the realization in the seventies that you're talking about after fifteen years in the business. A second, I seem to be in my own little eddie and it seems to be a have passed me by.

Well, I think it does. A realization doesn't come that fast. First, it's how come this hall isn't full? They must not have gotten the advertisements out in time? You everything, it's finger pointing time, And couldn't never dawned on me that I would have anything but a full house, because that's how it started out, and that's how it was. So that was the beginning, just the very beginning, because it took years really to catch up with my life as

Was my own. So you know, you talk in the movie about having success with diamonds and rust and then switching managers. It was a bad decision. Now, if you many musicians from that era will tell you they're living off the publishing and the performing rights money that you can get mailbox money when you're sitting at home. But you didn't write that many songs, that's true. How's it worked out for you financially?

I had some really good people around me, Otherwise I'd be a mess that I had. I did pick wonderful people, and they worked me through that quagmire because they knew what they were doing. And I'm fine. I am not. You know, I am not a millionaires. I never will be that interested in making that kind of money. So I'm good.

Okay, you write Diamonds and Rust. It ends up becoming very successful, even on FM radio, which is getting harder and more corporate. At the time. You're writing about the ten years before twelve years before Bob Dylan, did this cause any Let me put it this way. Did you say I'm going to do this or did you say, hmm, you know, I'm trading on the past. I'm trading on Dylan. This might not be the right thing to do.

No, I wasn't trading on anybody. I just wrote the song. I had no idea that it was going to become popular. In fact, I was writing another song to that melody. And it's true Bob called from the phone booth in the Midwest and they read me one of his songs, and that's where the whole song was triggered. That I just had written a song. And anyway, if you didn't know the history of Bob and me to some degree, fortunately it still holds up as a song.

It absolutely does. But there was so much information back then. So this phone call took place when.

Oh, I'm not going to remember. Please don't ask me date you No.

What I'm trying to say is was this a memory of a phone call in the sixties or was this just before you wrote the song?

It was just before I wrote the song.

Yeah, so you had maintained contact with Bob Dylan over these years?

Not really, I mean it was sort of out of the blue that Betty called. Yeah, it was nine. You know, we weren't buddies all that time, and you talked of it all now. I don't know if anybody does.

He's busy on tour than going back to the bus. So you meet him when his career is very nascent, and then in sixty five, as a giant radio hit like a Rolling Stone, you go to England with him. Did you see him change? This is you know in the movie you talk about the fact you wake up one day, what am I doing here? This is not my world? Okay? Did he change with success? Was that part of it?

I think so? I think so. And it was also says that the film had happened very quickly, that suddenly there was this crush of people around him. It started but just kids, you know, fans wanted to be around him and adore him. And then it was a slightly different scene going to Europe. Yes, there were all those fans, but then there was his sort of cluster of in house people, of the in crowd, and that's where I was not comfortable. I think I was welcomed, but I

So in terms of your own drug, as we said back then, experimentation, we did you go through that? Was it never your thing? Or you dabbled?

No. The only thing ever, and it's also in the film was many years later fet Onto Coaylude and took a lot of coyluded for about eight years. But well, everybody else was doing all this stuff. They were leaving these pills on the stool by their microphone, and you know, it probably was great stuff, but I just didn't relate to it. I throw it in my purse and return to powder. So I wasn't. I just didn't relate to it.

So quayludes and soapers, which are the same things, start to happen in the early seventies. So how do you first start taking quayludes?

I can't remember. I can't remember because I was so scared of taking anything. I must have taken an eighth of it or something, and that a sixth of one, and I never took Mommy the half of them. Half one was probably the most I ever took at a time.

So what was the motivation to continue to take them all those years?

Comfort zone? It was made my life easier, made meeting people, laughing, going to restaurants, all things that had a lot of anxiety. It took away to anxiety. That's the real answer to your question.

So, even at this late date, although we're all older, did you have a level of social anxiety? Like as someone called you up, Oh, we're going to go to dann there's going to be s having people there you don't know, would say, oh, sounds great. When I show up, you say, well, you know, I really have something I want to do at home. I'd rather not.

No, when you're saying that, I don't go to dinner that much. But when I go with my pals. We have a wonderful time. No, I think it's boiling down to it. And I hadn't thought about all this till we started talking. I don't know how many friends one really needs. I know, I'm not interested in going to parties. I'm not interested in going to places where the leaves look like really nice people. And then somebody says, oh, I saw you in nineteen seventy two and I was

Okay, So you're a famous person, you're out and about on tour, you're in an airport, whatever. Everybody who comes up to you tells you a story.

They want to do you travel with me someday and it's just you. I see it in their eyes and they take a big breath they say I saw you as they go fuck do. And I was in the front row. And almost a lot of people will start with you may not remember me, but I think you know, the chances that I remembering you I want in a million. But how do I you know, let that person know that they count as a person and try to avoid it. Sometimes I'll just say no stories, no stories please.

Well that's one of the reasons I don't talk on the phone people bull It's like, get to the ask what do you want? So I can say no, so I can hang.

Up perfect because we're get to the ask. When I do Q and A after the film and you have to say, please just ask a question. I am not interested in here. Yeah, gotta say it. Sometimes they actually do.

That drives me crazy. Have Q and A and somebody stands up to make a company. We don't give a shit what you have to say. The people of the stage are the ones. But just to drill down a little bit further on this, not now, but when you were throughout your life brought into situations well, you may or may not have been the focus, and there were people you didn't know. Did that cause extreme anxiety?

You know, as you're saying that, I sort of picture myself. I was pretty. I was protected somehow because I was already separate from them. I wasn't vying for a friendship position or I knew I looked okay. You know, I was established in myself. I might not have been very interested, and I might have been, I might have gotten more out of it. And if I'd been more interested and more open, but I was okay for the most part. I was okay.

And living is a famous person. Where people treat you differently your whole life, good, bad or otherwise, How would I know? Well? Sometimes, I mean everybody can tell. You can perceive that when you're in a group of people, they're treating you differently from the other people in the room.

No, But what I mean is that's gone on more of my life than not, you see, So that's what I mean. How would I know? I wouldn't.

Well, I understand your point of your life. You're the phone. But you can tell when someone's being as sick a fan, Oh yeah, I can.

And the clearest I've ever had to be was just say, get the fuck out of here. I get what you're trying to say. I am not interested. Stop saying it now. I'm going to call a tour manager and get the fuck out of here.

And in your everyday life, when somebody calls you on your shit, are you good with that or not good with that?

I'm pretty good with that. I don't have therapy to be pretty good with that. In fact, you know you asked to be called on your shit. You have to ask because it's hard for people to. You know, somebody's standing there buttoned up, wishing that you would change or you have to unbutton and I have to hear it.

Okay. In the movie we do see Richard Ferina, it does not mention the book he wrote, which is one of the most impactful books I've ever read. Been down so long it looks like up to me right as a freshman in college. What can you tell us about Richard?

Richard was an interesting guy. He fancied himself a man about the world, and in some ways he was. In some ways he was a big blowhard. I can tell you that he and I for a while would get into these we'd have these dinners with Mimi and some friends, and Dick and I would get into some goofy story being East Indians or being whatever, and we go back and forth and creating this play, and we realized everybody had left because they were bored. It was just Stick

Now, Mimi had a singing career. To what degree could your sisters accept or resent your incredible success?

Well, I think a lot of that is in the film that there were two different reactions Paulling. The older sister had to just leave. I mean, the closest I ever heard her come to saying what she was able to say in the film was that I sucked up the oxygen in the room, and that's why she would sometimes not be able to share in whatever time they were having. And then Mimi was more complicated because Mimi really wanted to be me in some ways, and she

You're talking about Pauline, your oldest sister, saying you sucked up the oxygen before you were famous, before you played at Club forty seven. Did you suck up all the oxygen in the family.

I think that's a very good question.

Yes.

I think the answer is yes. I because Pauline's feelings would get hurt and I didn't understand why. And then later on, as we moved through life, I would see that I would get the attention. For instance, when I was thirteen, somebody gave me, gave us each a ukulele, and Pauline went to a room to learn how to play that because she was, you know, she was a perfectionist. And I learned two chords with flying downstairs and sang

So what was it about you that you were the charismatic one and you wanted all the attention. You're the middle child. Usually the oldest child is that person.

I don't know. I mean, I don't know how the stars lined up for the any of it. It's just I think that there are genetics. There are the situations you've I mean, there was Bagdad. We all had this huge reaction to Bagdad, which was Mimi was one of the sisters. Through her taper, she struggled through some papers supposed to write and wanted it up and threw it out. So this is how Americans think or do their homework.

And when you reach a level of success. I was just reading the paper before we started. The woman who wrote the book made turned into a Netflix series. How everybody hit her up for money? What deg we do you become the family breadwinner? Do you have to take care of your family? Or was it clear of this was your money, your life, do your thing.

Oh, I think whenever anybody needed it now, of course would be there with it. But it's also funny in the film, and I'm talking about I made that money at the Vespa company, you know, and I came home not with just the fifteen dollars of my singing, with a fist full of money and thinking that was, you know, to make everybody happen through it in the air and people could take what they wanted. And of course this is stupid, you know, But I didn't know that, and

So it's kind of like Brian Wilson that he was the one in the Maelstrom. He has mental problems, but he still lives and the brothers are dead. And is it just luck of the draw that you're the last one standing?

Oh, I don't know. You mean out of the whole family, right, Yeah, I don't know. Because you're all strong, We're all physically strong, and I am physically strong. And it ain't over it till it's over. No, I have so many relatives who died to cancer. So far, I've just been lucky.

One of the points you make in the movie, which resonates so much, is with all these people gone, you have all these memories no one can connect with that no one knows about.

Yeah, I know. It's a strange feeling. It's very strange. You sort of look around and realize nobody is going to remember that but me. Maybe it's free. I can remember it the way I want to remember it, and nobody's going to contest that. In fact, I've written writing a book of poetry, I've written a couple of things that relate to that that you each of us has our own perception of whatever happened, and it can be. You know that dress was blue? No, I remember exactly.

But talking about these people passing, my mother died three years ago about this time. My father died long before that. But as much as she was an influence on me, there was a sense of liberation. So to what degree with your parents and your sisters passing, do you feel you can be more yourself as opposed to have thinking about what their judgment might be.

Oh, it's absolutely For instance, couldn't have made this film if they were there. It was too hurtful, too confusing. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure liberated in a lot of ways. You know, they don't have to worry about you know. I mean, as I went, I didn't take the film to show me what my sisters felt. It took it to really define it. I've never heard them say because they would never Pauline would never get in front of a camera. It was only because she trusted Karen O'Connor.

The question was, to what degree was it liberating with you?

Liberating? Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it was. I'm sure it was liberating, and I hadn't thought of it in those terms, miss said, and then it is. There's a piece that I didn't have to put the time and energy into knowing it was a conflict.

So how has all this family stuff affected your relationship with your son?

I was just thinking about him. We worked so hard. No. I thought he was so generous and forgiving and eloquent in the film, No saying really what it felt like to be a lonely little kid. And I what I learned from my family is that I wasn't nurtured properly, and so how would I really know? How would I know how lonely he felt. I thought I was a great mom, you know, I thought everything was hunky Dori, and that's what happens. And then and then it wasn't. And we've had time to make up for that as

So you married David Harris, you're involved with him, you marry him, you're pregnant. He goes to jail for a long time. He comes out of jail. How do you pick up the relationship and what was it like?

Well, first thing comes in my mind is that somebody who was, say, for instance, a Quaker type, who has known themselves and seen the world in an open sense of seeing how unimportant we are as individuals, goes into jail with a certain mentality. And some guys would just do it. They'd do their time and come out and they were okay. For David, it was really, really difficult. He had no idea. But he was macho, he was a guy, this Fresno's Boy of the Year and all

But inherently does that separation mean it's hard to pick back up?

It was for me. I mean, I'm sure for the most stable couple, the most quakerly meditative type, it would not be easy. But I don't think it had to be as difficult as it was with David's nature.

Mean what it was now, David was younger than you. Steve Jobs was younger than you. Is that just luck of the drawer? You like younger men, I like younger men. Can you tell me anything about that?

Oh, I'll leave it to your imagination.

Okay, then let's just go to the crux of the movie is its retirement tour. Most people are never on stage in front of thousands of people, that are not in stage in front of tens of people, And what they don't understand is this incredible adrenaline hit that the money is good, but a lot of people they need that hit, so you're on the road for decades and now you're off. Do you miss that?

Absolutely? Not for a second? Is that interesting? I didn't know. I had no idea, and that reflect on that in the films thing. I don't know what I'll feel like, and from what I hear, everybody who quit starts up again. But I had a feeling inside that this was it, and I managed, I manager, and I planned. It took three years to do this properly, and I had a strong feeling that that was going to be it. What I didn't know is how calm it was to stop. And I didn't know how hard I was working until

I know people have been on the road for a year and a half and it takes them six months to recover. So how long did it take you to find your new normal after you ended?

Not long. I was already in the studio painting before it ended for number of years. So I just as though I just took a deep breath and shifted over to the art studio.

If someone called you and said, oh, we're doing a big piece festival, come out and sing a song, you would say, My.

Only regret is that I the facility to just get up and sing a song is much more limited. So yes I can. I'm not really interested to do that, but if it's something that really tugs at me, then I'll do it. I mean, I went to the Ukraine and just sang for kids because it tugged at me, you know. But to really join in a musical sense takes a lot of work for me.

And do you care about legacy or not?

No? Oh, well the honest legacy. Yeah. Do I care about archiving my life? No?

Okay, Joan. I want to thank you for taking this time to speak to my audience and being so honest.

Hey, thank you. It was fun. I like to make you laugh, but.

I'm laughing now until next time. This is Bob left stets