Because she is on her last music tour and because I have been a huge fan since the late 60's, I have been listening to and thinking of Joan Baez a lot lately. It's easy to download her music but I am old school and so get CDs out of the library to listen in my car. As her friend John Wasserman said, she had, in the 1960-1980's, the voice of an angel. Her range was huge and when she hit those floating high notes, well, yes, the angels were envious.
And then there are the lyrics and the emotion she conveys in every song. Listen (on youtube) to "Love Song to a Stranger" and tell me that you don't want to go back to being thirty years younger and sleep on a twin bed with a stranger. "Don't tell me of love everlasting and other sad dreams, I don't want to hear. Just tell me of passionate strangers who rescue each other from a lifetime of cares."
For me it has been years and years of Joan Baez. Not only have I admired her dedication to humanitarian causes and issues but I admire her honesty and her bluntness about her life, what she has done, what she has chosen and what she has ignored. But mostly I simply love her voice and her songs. I have seen her perform a couple of times and will see her in Oakland in late November for what might be the final night of her final tour. Her voice now is lower and has less range but it is still wonderful. I am looking forward to seeing her then.
As a side note, Baez has a son named Gabriel. He was born in 1969 so would have been 8 years old when my Gabriel was born. In the early 1970's I was in Muir Woods to see the redwoods, when it was accessible and easy to do so. I heard a mother say "Gabriel, stop!" the way mothers do and I turned to see a small kid, about six years old with crazy curly hair, stop at his mother's command. Could it have been Gabriel Harris? Maybe. I wasn't cognizant enough to turn to see who the mother was, but from that moment I loved that name. Thus, I have my own Gabriel.
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