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(born January 9, 1941 in Staten Island, New York) is a folk singer and songwriter known for her highly individual vocal style. Baez has performed publicly for over 50 years, released over 30 albums and recorded songs in at least eight languages.
In 1957, at age 16, Joan committed her first act of civil disobedience by refusing to leave her Palo Alto Senior High School classroom in Silicon Valley for an air-raid drill. After the bells rang, students were to leave the school, make their way to their home air-raid shelters, and pretend they were surviving an atomic blast. Protesting what she believed to be misleading government propaganda, Baez refused to leave her seat when instructed and continued reading a book. For this act she was punished by school officials, and was ostracized by the local population for being a supposed "communist infiltrator.
She burst onto the scene at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, and she soon became associated with such legendary folk groups as the Weavers and the Seeger family. Her first album of English and American ballads was a huge success and included her soon-to-be classic renditions of "Barbara Allen" and "All My Trials." By the mid-1960s Baez was associated with various political causes, most prominently the antiwar and civil rights movements.
From the early to mid-1960s, Baez emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she introduced her audiences to the then-unknown Bob Dylan (the two became romantically involved in late 1962, remaining together through early 1965), and was emulated by artists such as Emmylou Harris, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt.
The early years of Joan's career saw the Civil Rights movement in the United States become a prominent issue. Joan linked arms with Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez on many occasions.
In 1969, Baez's appearance at the historic Woodstock music festival in upstate New York afforded her an international musical and political podium, Beginning in the late 1960s, Baez began writing many of her own songs, beginning with "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "A Song For David" (the latter written after her husband was imprisoned for draft-evasion.
These days when she isn't on the road, Baez is at home in the same small town south of San Francisco where she has lived for more than 20 years. Her mother lives on the property, too. Baez is divorced and has a grown son, whose impending arrival she announced from the stage at Woodstock in 1969.
Baez spends a lot of time meditating and listening to classical music. Her favorite retreat is a treehouse where she often spends the night, weather permitting.
2 Legends from the sixties meet
Gilberto Gil the Brazilian Minister of Culture and Joan Baez ham it up at a February Berkeley press reception in 2005
Her commitment to social causes, however, remains constant. "People say, `You can't change the world through music,' " she said. "Well, I think it isn't any fun to try to change the world without music." she told Eric Goldscheider
23 November 1962 Time cover story called her voice "as clear as air in the autumn, a vibrant, strong, untrained and thrilling soprano."
Three Sisters: Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, Pauline Marden, 1968 This picture became a famous anti-war poster that said Photo by Jim Marshall.
Baez was born on Staten Island to Mexican and Scottish parents. Her father, Albert Baez, was born in 1912 in Puebla, Mexico, and died March 20, 2007
Their father Albert Baez grew up in Brooklyn, where his father preached to — and advocated for — a Spanish-speaking congregation. Joan Baez's father considered becoming a minister, as well before he turned to the study of mathematics and physics. A physicist (co-inventor of the x-ray microscope and author of one of the most widely used physics textbooks in the U.S.), he refused to work on the "Manhattan Project" to build an atomic bomb at Los Alamos. This decision had a profound effect on young Joan, who had two sisters: older sister Pauline and younger sister Mimi.
Joan Baez with Bob Dylan, August 1963. Baez first met Dylan in 1961 at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village. At the time, Baez had already released her debut album and her popularity as the emerging "Queen of Folk" was on the rise. In 1965 Dylan's UK tour and simultaneous disintegration of Baez's and Dylan's relationship was documented in D.A. Pennebaker's film documentary Dont Look Back
In May 1989, Baez performed at a music festival in communist Czechoslovakia, called Bratislavská lýra. While there, she met future president Vaclav Havel, whom she let carry her guitar so as to prevent his arrest by government agents. During her performance, she greeted members of Charter 77, a dissident human rights group, which resulted in her microphone being shut off abruptly. Baez then proceeded to sing a cappella for the nearly four thousand gathered. Havel cited Baez as a great inspiration and influence in that country's so-called Velvet Revolution, the bloodless revolution in which the Soviet-dominated communist government there was overthrown. On October 8, 2006, Baez appeared as a special surprise guest at the opening ceremony of the Forum 2000 international conference in Prague. Baez's performance was kept secret from former President Vaclav Havel until the moment she appeared on stage. Havel remains a great admirer of both Baez and her work.
Her disquiet at the human rights violations of communist Vietnam made her increasingly critical of its government and she organized the publication, on May 30, 1979, of a full-page advertisement, published in four major U.S. newspapers in which the communists were described as having created a nightmare, which put her at odds with a large segment of the domestic left wing, who were uncomfortable criticizing a leftist regime. In a letter of response, Jane Fonda said she was unable to substantiate the "claims" Baez made regarding the atrocities being committed by the Khmer Rouge
On Earth Day, 1998, Baez and her friend Bonnie Raitt were hoisted by a giant crane to the top of a redwood tree to visit environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill, who had camped out in the ancient tree in order to protect it from loggers.
The Contessa
On February 3, 2008, Baez wrote a letter to the editor at the San Francisco Chronicle endorsing Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. She noted: "Through all those years, I chose not to engage in party politics.... At this time, however, changing that posture feels like the responsible thing to do. If anyone can navigate the contaminated waters of Washington, lift up the poor, and appeal to the rich to share their wealth, it is Sen. Barack Obama." Playing on the Acoustic Stage at the Glastonbury Festival in June, Baez said during the introduction of a song that one reason she likes Obama is because he reminds her of another old friend of hers: Martin Luther King, Jr.
Grace Slick
(born Grace Barnett Wing on October 30, 1939)
is an American singer and songwriter, who was one of the lead singers of the rock groups The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, and as a solo artist, for nearly three decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s. Alongside her close contemporary Janis Joplin, Slick was an important figure in the development of rock music in the late 1960s and was one of the first female rock stars.
By the summer of 1966 the San Francisco scene became a hot spot for rock music and her band with her husband and brother-in-law, The Great Society was one of the biggest bands in the area. Slick left her band for the Jefferson Airplane with two compositions: "White Rabbit" , and "Somebody to Love" and the band began recording an album. By 1967, Surrealistic Pillow and its singles were huge hits and Jefferson Airplane was one of the biggest bands in the country. The album and the two songs were instrumental in announcing the existence of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture to the rest of the United States. Grace became a household name and one of the first popular female rock stars. Her striking beauty and stage persona also turned her into a sex symbol for the era.
In the eighties, Slick was the only former Airplane member to be in Starship. The band went on to score two chart topping hits with We Built This City and Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now. After retirement from music, she turned her attention to painting and drawing. She has done many renditions of her fellow '60s musicians such as Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, and others. In 2000, she began displaying and selling her artwork. She attends many of her art shows all across the United States.
After retirement from the music business — and after a devastating house fire, divorce, and bad break-up — Slick began drawing and painting animals, mainly to amuse herself and because doing so made her happy during a difficult period in her life. Soon thereafter, she was approached about writing her memoir, which ultimately became Somebody to Love? A Rock-and-Roll Memoir. Her agent saw her art work and asked her to do some portraits of some of her various contemporaries from the rock and roll genre to be included in the autobiography. Hesitant at first — because she thought “…it was way too cute. Rock-n-Roll draws Rock-n-Roll.” — she eventually agreed because she found she enjoyed it; and color renditions of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jerry Garcia appeared in the completed autobiography.
While critics have alternately panned and praised her work, Slick seems indifferent to the criticism. She views her visual artistry as just another extension of the artistic temperament that landed her in the music scene in the first place as it allows her to continue to produce art in a way that doesn’t require the physical demands of appearing on a stage nightly or traveling with a large group of people.
She attends many of her art gallery shows across the United States, sometimes attending over 30 shows in a year. While she says she enjoys talking with the people who come to her art shows, she is not a fan of the traveling involved, particularly the flying.
With Slick and Marty Balin sharing the lead vocal duties, and the rhythm section of new drummer Spencer Dryden and bassist Casady in place, Jefferson Airplane recorded one of the strongest albums of the 1960s, "Surrealistic Pillow," perhaps the platter most responsible for launching the psychedelic rock movement. It hit the streets as the Summer of Love began, and its two singles, "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit," became the soundtrack of that summer.
Jefferson Airplane on record, as represented by "Pillow," was a left-leaning, esoteric rock outfit, but in concert, the band was intent on blowing minds. Improvisational, long-winded and groundbreaking, the group's performances paved the way for the work of other San Francisco acts including the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Santana.
She has one daughter,China Wing Kantner (born January 25, 1971). China's father is former Jefferson Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner, with whom Grace had a relationship from 1969 through 1975. During her stay in the hospital after the baby's birth, Grace sarcastically told one of the attending nurses (whom Grace found to be annoyingly sanctimonious) that she intended to name the child "god", with a small "g", as she 'wished for the child to be humble'.
"The bus may be different, but it's the same trip."
-- Grace Slick
Slick's longevity in the music business helped her earn a rather unusual distinction: the oldest female vocalist on a Billboard Hot 100 number one single. "We Built This City" reached #1 on November 16, 1985, fewer than three weeks after her 46th birthday. The previous record was age 44 for Tina Turner, with 1984's number-one hit, "What's Love Got To Do With It". Turner (who is, coincidentally within a month of Slick's age) turned 45 two months after the song topped the charts. Slick broke her own record in Summer 1987 at age 47 when "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" topped the U.S. charts. Her record stood for 12 years, but was ultimately broken by Cher, who was 53 in 1999 when "Believe" hit number one.
Aside from singing, she also sometimes played piano, keyboards, oboe, and recorder for the bands.
She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 (as a member of Jefferson Airplane).She was ranked #20 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women of Rock N Roll.
Aside from singing, she also sometimes played piano, keyboards, oboe, and recorder for the bands.
In a 1969 Dick Cavett Show performance, Grace became the first person to say "motherfucker" on live television during a performance of "We Can Be Together" as Jefferson Airplane.B
Blender Magazine calls STARSHIP's 1985 #1 hit “We Built This City” the worst rock song ever.
"The lyrics of “We Built This City” appear to restate the importance of the band once known as Jefferson Airplane within San Francisco’s ’60s rock scene. Not so, says former leader Grace Slick, who by 1985 had handed her band to singer Mickey Thomas and a shadowy team of outside songwriters.
“Everybody thought we were talking about San Francisco. We weren’t,” Slick says. “It was written by an Englishman, Bernie Taupin, about Los Angeles in the early ’70s. Nobody was telling the truth!” [more]
Janis Joplin
She had an unshakable commitment to her own truth, no matter how destructive, how weird or how bad. Nothing else seemed to matter. She was such an individual in the way she dressed, the way she sang, the way she lived. She loved her whiskey and made no bones about it. This was a full-blown one-of-a-kind woman — no stylist, no publicist, no image-maker. It was just Janis.
Rosanne Cash From RS 946, April 15, 2004
She defined men sexually, as she defined herself, and then went at her one-night stands and sometimes orgies under the cover of a liberated style of life. . . . She was left with little more than the yawning chasm of a tortured loneliness,”
Myra Friedman in Buried Alive
“Yes, folks, it’s me wearing a sequined cape, thousands of strings of beads & topless. But it barely shows because of the beads. Very dramatic photograph & I look really beautiful!! I’m thrilled!!! I can be Haight-Ashbury’s first pin-up.”
On the surface, she seemed the perfect icon for stardom in the late Sixties: She fit no standard of beauty yet exuded a raw sensuality that mirrored a movement which rejected societal standards by creating its own. When Janis Joplin arrived in San Francisco, in 1966, the year before the Summer of Love, its music scene was already in a nascent, post-Beat hippie whirl. Young people flocked to the Bay area as if to Mecca by the thousands, searching for identity, reason, justification, maybe just something as simple as acceptance.
(January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer, songwriter, and music arranger, from Port Arthur, Texas. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later as a solo artist. She left Texas for San Francisco in 1963, living in North Beach and later Haight-Ashbury. Cheap Thrills, which gave the band a breakthrough hit single, "Piece of My Heart," reached the number one spot on the Billboard charts eight weeks after its release, remaining for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks. wikipedia.org/Janis_Joplin
“Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That’s what music is to me.”
“The thing that really got me about Janis the most, was how liberated she was. She stood in that power even though it was kind of that platform of blues of being completely tormented, that enabled her to just stand there and let it go at a time when woman were not doing that…she just came out in the completely undone, unwrapped way and I think spoke right out of a woman’s soul. Directly.” — Ann Wilson
misleading government propaganda, Baez refused to leave her seat when instructed and continued reading a book. For this act she was punished by school officials, and was ostracized by the local population for being a supposed "communist infiltrator.
