Monday, January 18, 2016

Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (57)

Even after 1968, I still admired and respected Joan Baez for being such a principled and intellectually strong and morally strong person who, despite her celebrity and pre-1970's commercial success, was willing to both use her celebrity to publicize and promote her anti-war movement politics and Gandhian pacifist philosophical beliefs and put her body on the line to the point of being arrested for the causes she believed in. So, not surprisingly, I expressed my feelings for Baez during the 1970's by writing a few songs that she inspired.

The lyrics to the "Joan Baez's Song" that I wrote, for example, began in the following way:

"Oh, Joanie Baez, I love you
Yes, Joanie Baez, you're so beautiful
When I was just a kid, I hared your voice
You seemed so sincere and so very wise.
But now they tell me
That I can't be free
Oh, Joanie, please help me." 

And the "Woman Inspired" protest folk song included the following lyrics:

"Oh, are you still singing?
And where are you living?
And are you still learning?
And who are you now loving?
Oh, Woman Inspired
Can you still catch fire?
And ignite the Cause of Freedom.

The campus laboratory
It still works for the Navy
The bombs, they still are falling
The children still are dying.
Oh, Woman Inspired
Can you still catch fire?
And ignite the Cause of Freedom."