By Rollo Ross
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A new documentary about folk singer Joan Baez explores an unknown dimension about the musician and activist – her lifelong struggles with depression, childhood trauma and mental illness.
Called “Joan Baez: I am a Noise,” the documentary is playing in a limited number of U.S. theaters and will expand to more locations on Friday.
“I’ve always been honest and I really wanted this to be an honest legacy,” Baez, now 82, said in an interview with Reuters. “There’s no reason for me to have a glamour attempt at a film now. I’m not glamorous anymore. I’m doing what people do as they get older, hopefully telling the truth along with it.”
Baez became a voice of protest in the tumultuous 1960s and sang at the 1969 Woodstock festival. Her performances of the traditional song “We Shall Overcome” in the early 1960s became the anthem of the civil rights movement.
The new documentary was made without any input from Baez herself, other than her offering up the keys to a vault that contained her and her family’s letters, recordings and artwork.
“When I handed over the key to the storage room, that’s where all the material was,” she said. “Those poor directors walked in and it was, yes, a dream, and yes, a nightmare. It was just too much stuff.”
Despite suffering from depression and stage fright, Baez continued performing as well as adding her name to the civil rights movement in a prominent manner alongside Martin Luther King Jr.
“I don’t know how I managed to get out on the stage when I had such stage fright,” she said. “It was just debilitating.
“I mean, literally, sometimes I’d be curled up under a bench in the back of the hall and I would just say to somebody, ‘Just get me up. Give me a shove on the stage,’ trying to be funny at the same time. Ha ha. But I got out there.”
Baez said many people have thanked her for her candid descriptions of mental health struggles.
“It wasn’t in my mind as I was doing it that this was for helping people,” Baez said. “It was just doing what I do and saying what I say that people have come up, my age or 10 years younger or 10 years younger than that, saying, ‘It meant so much to me. Now I can talk about this.'”
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Leslie Adler)
