The brief but transformative relationship of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez has gone unnoticed in their recently released biographical film A Complete Unknown.
The former lovers, played by Timothée Chalamet and Monica Barbaro in James Mangold’s film, released in theaters on Christmas Day, had a relationship between 1963 and 1965.
Báez was a well-established recording artist when she met the then-unknown ‘urban hillbilly’ in Greenwich Village in April 1961, but she soon began inviting him on stage to perform with her at her concerts.
Both performed at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom event, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his iconic I Have a Dream speech.
The couple continued spending time together in Bearsville, New York, a village in the upstate town of Woodstock, in the summer of 1964.
He was working on what would be his fourth album at the time, Another Side of Dylan, which prophetically included the song It Ain’t Me Babe.
However, Báez and Dylan’s relationship ended painfully during her British tour in 1965, when he invited her on tour but refused to allow her on stage.
“I was just going back and forth, wondering why Bob wasn’t asking me on stage, feeling really sorry for myself, getting really neurotic, and not having the brains to leave and go home,” she later told Rolling Stone.
The brief but transformative relationship of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez has gone unnoticed in their recently released biographical film A Complete Unknown.
The former lovers were in a relationship from 1963 to 1965.
‘That would be the best way to describe that tour. “It was kind of wasted time.”
Dylan walked down the aisle with Playboy Bunny Sara Lownds in late 1965.
Dylan and Báez are played by Timothée Chalamet and Monica Barbaro in James Mangold’s film, which hits theaters on Christmas Day.
In his 2015 posthumous memoir, Another Side of Bob Dylan: A Personal Story on the Road and Off the Track, Dylan’s former tour manager Victor Maymudes asked him why he married Lownds and not Báez.
‘Because Sara will be home when I want her to be home, she will be there when I want her to be there, she will do it when I want her to do it. Joan won’t be there when you want her. She won’t do it when I want to do it,” Dylan told him.
“Bob didn’t want to compete with her,” Maymudes said.
‘If Bob was king, Joan was queen and Bob didn’t want a queen. I wanted something simpler.
In her 2023 Joan Baez documentary I Am A Noise, Báez revealed that Dylan broke her heart so much in 1965 after their whirlwind three-year romance that she described him as “broken.”
“We were in our early 20s,” he said. “We were stupid and you can’t blame someone forever. I certainly tried but eventually gave up.’
Both performed at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom event, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his iconic I Have a Dream speech.
They separated in 1965 and Dylan walked down the aisle with Playboy Bunny Sara Lownds (seen in 1969) that same year.
Speaking about their split, Baez added: “Dylan and I couldn’t understand how we felt about each other.
‘The other problem was that I was the only one who didn’t do drugs. I was outside.
“Even if I tried to be cool and hang out with everyone, which I did, I didn’t feel comfortable.”
Dylan also spoke out about their breakup, once stating in a documentary: “I was just trying to deal with the craziness that my career had become and, unfortunately, she got carried away and I felt really bad about that.”
And the ex-lovers didn’t keep in touch, as Báez revealed in 2018 that she hadn’t spoken to Dylan in 25 years.
However, he told DailyMail.com that “whatever happened between them was completely healed.”
‘There is still a bond, and that is enough for me. “The fact that I’m attached to him forever, from some people’s point of view, well, there could be worse things,” she said at the time.
‘I’m smart enough to know that I never understood it and I never will understand it.
Dylan, now 83, was married twice and is the father of six children.
Báez’s only marriage ended in divorce in 1973. She and her ex-husband share a son.
“I probably got closer than a lot of people, but in the end no, I don’t understand any of that.” However, she has a theory about her ability to retain a mystique.
Despite the pain, Báez sang about Dylan in one of his best songs, Diamonds And Rust.
The song included the lyrics: “Your eyes were bluer than a robin’s egg / My poetry was lousy, you said.”
Fans have also long speculated that Báez influenced some of Dylan’s most iconic songs, including the 1965 song Like a Rolling Stone and the 1966 hit Visions of Johanna.
He has never confirmed those theories.
Báez was married only once, to journalist and activist David Harris, who is the father of her son, Gabriel. Their relationship ended in an amicable divorce in 1973.
In the early ’80s she dated Apple founder Steve Jobs, who was then in his twenties and already a billionaire.
Dylan has been married twice. First with Lownds, with whom she shares four children: Jesse (born January 6, 1966), Anna Lea (born July 11, 1967), Samuel (born July 30, 1968), and Jakob (born July 9, 1968). December 1969).
He also adopted Lownds’ daughter Maria from a previous marriage; They separated in 1977 after 11 years of marriage.
Dylan then married Carolyn Dennis in 1986, but divorced her in 1992. They share daughter Desiree, born January 31, 1986.