Diamonds And Rust

Description

Originally released on A&M Records in 1975, Diamonds & Rust marked a turning point in Joan Baez’s career. Her socially engaged, emotionally charged songs took on a decidedly commercial dimension, allowing her to return to the US Top 20 for the first time in four years. This reissue, released to celebrate the album’s 50th anniversary, faithfully reproduces the original UK A&M version and is pressed on 180g vinyl. If Joan Baez’s importance to Western culture was little known to the general public, Monica Barbaro’s portrayal of her in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown underscores her central role in popularizing folk music in the early 1960s. It is in fact her relationship with Dylan, a decade earlier, that so beautifully hovers over Diamonds & Rust. The title track evokes a barely disguised former lover who calls her out of the blue; it remains one of her most beloved songs in a 65-year career. It features a spirited cover of “Simple Twist Of Fate,” from Dylan’s just-released Blood On The Tracks, with an imitation in a later verse; and “Winds Of The Old Days,” written in response to Dylan’s return to touring after a long break. Diamonds & Rust is a perfect album, bathed in sunshine, a West Coast American folk-tinged rock record, driven by renowned studio musicians. One could almost believe it was a signal to all the new arrivals on the music scene - many of them friends and peers such as Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Maria Muldaur - to remind Joan Baez that she was the first and that she was gently reaffirming her authority. Just listen to her command on “Children & All That Jazz,” her cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Never Thought You’d Leave In Summer” and the poignant closing medley of “I Dream Of Jeannie/Danny Boy.”