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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)
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