in the beginning, i was always called a joan baez copier. i did not have a style of my own.t was not until i met and started with gram parsons that brought the country and rock music together. he was in a group called the byrds, and then they started the quintessential country western called the garrido brothers. after his death, but after i had only known him a year and was converted to country music and found my voice in that harmony singing and that kind of music, i really felt like i was supposed to carry forward his music, in a way, or at least try to convert people of my generation to country music. we tended to kind of dismiss it. i still had my love of folk music and i was still inspired by folk music, because in a sense they are all coming from the same pool. but when you are working on something that you love and you have the opportunity to learn with graham, who was kind of my teacher, and then to find myself with a really good people, really good musicians, the opportunity to make a record, and then lo and behold i had an audience, there was nothing to stop me bu

i hadn't known that bonnie raitt, as a young girl growing up, was fascinated by joan baez because they're both quakers, and they came out of that tradition-- (crosby) antiwar stuff was, you know, served with breakfast for them. something we learned in doing the stand and be counted and something you'll see in the documentary, that these are the stories of where people come from. where did--what sparked them to do this? it didn't happen for the same reasons for everybody, but everyone has a story to tell, and we learned a lot in doing this project. (paulson) and as you point out in the book, it's not about your career per se, but when you talk about the kind of music that's a big part of the book, you're in the middle of it, and i wanted to ask you about, in particular, one song and one period of time. crosby, stills, nash, and young, top of the world, teach your children is riding the charts, and then we have the horrible shooting at kent state, and neil young walks in with a song. and today, you'd have a meeting of the marketing department, and say, "no, teach your children "has got to r

you--you had to--you had to meet a young joan baez, certainly. you certainly ran into bob dylan. what were those days like? well, they were very exciting. it was very-- it was very fast and very--now, in retrospect, it all went so quickly. but in the time that it was happening, it seemed to be a slow process. my own work was--was growing. i was going to the clubs that i was working in. i had to make a living, and it turned out that i-- the only thing i really knew how to do was to sing and to play the guitar. so consequently i made my living in the clubs in the early '60s and eventually got to newport where i met all kinds of singers. but all along the way, i'd be-- been meeting people like tom paxton and eric andersen and bob dylan and joan baez and mimi farina and dick farina, who became a very good buddy of mine. and peter, paul, and mary, before they were peter, paul, and mary-- when they were peter yarrow and mary travers and noel stookey. but we all felt, as i did at that early time, that we could make a difference and that music would change the world. and i believe it did