Joan Baez Avoided Bob Dylan at an Obama-Era Event Because She Knew Talking to Him Would Be Too ‘Awful’

Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were romantically involved in the early 1960s and continued to cross paths for years afterward. Baez has said her relationship with Dylan was a challenge, but that she has forgiven him for the way he treated her. Still, she turned the other way when they both attended the same event in the 2000s.

Joan Baez didn’t want to talk to Bob Dylan at an event

In 1987, Baez published a memoir, And a Voice to Sing With. In it, she detailed the end of her 1984 tour with Dylan, which she exited abruptly. She said she had no worries about writing about the uncomfortable end to their working relationship because Dylan never reached out to her.

“Pffffft. . . . What’s to lose? Nothing,” she told Rolling Stone, adding, “I made two records of his music and never heard from him.”

Even if Dylan had tried to contact her, Baez likely wouldn’t have wanted to talk to him. Both of them were at a White House civil rights night in 2010, and she avoided him entirely. 

“The chances of him just walking past me would be too awful a scenario,” she explained. “It would just bring up feelings that aren’t necessary.”

Joan Baez often played Bob Dylan’s music in concert

Despite the difficult end to their relationship, Baez is glad for the music it inspired. She wrote her 1975 song “Diamonds and Rust” about their happiest period together. 

“The really, really good stuff comes from down deep, and that was how strongly I was affected by Bob in the relationship and everything,” she said. “It’d be stupid to pretend otherwise. If the only thing to come out of that relationship was the best song of my life …”

Baez even continued to sing Dylan’s songs in her concerts.

“They’re the easiest and most pleasurable to sing,” she said. “There’s a quality other people didn’t get to, for the most part.”

A friend speculated on why they never married

In 1965, Dylan married Sara Lownds. His tour manager Victor Maymudes, was surprised to hear of their nuptials. 

“Bob’s desire to get married to Sara surprised me,” Maymudes wrote in his book Another Side of Bob Dylan: A Personal History on the Road and Off the Tracks. “I asked him about it. ‘Why Sara?! Why not Joan Baez?’ He responded with, ‘Because Sara will be home when I want her to be home, she’ll be there when I want her to be there, she’ll do it when I want her to do it. Joan won’t be there when I want her. She won’t do it when I want to do it.’”

Maymudes believed his decision to move on from Baez had to do with her talent as an artist.

“I personally would have gone with Joan in a minute, but Bob didn’t want to compete with her,” Maymudes wrote. “If Bob was a king, Joan was a queen, and Bob didn’t want a queen. He wanted something simpler.”