An evening with Joan Baez - Royal Festival Hall

The longevity of Joan Baez’s career is astonishing. The American folk singer and activist got her start in small Cambridge, MA clubs in the late 1950s. In September, she will be playing at the Royal Festival Hall. Baez has been in the business for six decades and, at the venerable age of 73, she’s still a force to be reckoned with.

Baez seems remarkably energetic for her years. Perhaps that’s because - unlike so many of her peers - she has always stayed away from drugs, even during the blissed-out Sixties when she was at the height of her fame. Despite her antipathy to drugs, she became an iconic Sixties figure. This was the era of LSD and the Magical Mystery Tour, sure, but it was also the decade of Martin Luther King and the student movement. And if Baez always said ‘no’ to the peace pipe, that’s because she was so busy actually working for peace. 

Drawing on the likes of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, Baez melded the sound of folk with the message of the anti-war movement. She only ever had two hit songs—'Diamonds and Rust' and 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down'—but for Baez, social justice has always “[loomed] larger than music.”  Her consuming desire to change the world for the better seemed to be reflected in the serenity of her performances, and Baez’s popularity put her at the vanguard of a rising tide of activism. Luther King personally invited Baez to accompany him on rallies; Czech dissident (and later president) Václav Havel said he was inspired by her. Baez set up the Institute for the Study of Non-Violence and sang on the first Amnesty International tour. She appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1962; a year later, she started dating Bob Dylan , at that time a relatively unknown folk singer called Robert Zimmerman. Funny how legends run together. 

The Times describes her as 'simply astounding'; the Independent as 'a royal presence'. Get your tickets soon: this is Baez’s only UK performance this year.