All summer, Europe 1 looks back on the artists who played the Woodstock revolution at this iconic festival in 1969. In this fourth episode, Jean-François Pérès is interested in Joan Baez, queen of folk and protest icon.

STORY

There was a before, there was an after. Fifty years ago, the Woodstock wave swept the world. Europe 1 makes you relive, at the time of the festivals of the summer, the history of this revolution, not only by what it brought, but also by those which incarnated it. Today, Joan Baez.

Six months pregnant during the festival

It is neither more nor less than the consciousness of a generation. Since the early 1960s, with her crystal voice and courageous commitments, Joan Baez embodies the revolt of American youth more than any other. We are on the night of Friday, August 15, to Saturday, August 16, 1969, it is 1 am in Woodstock. Pregnant six months, but still determined to deliver his messages, it takes a tribute to a trade unionist of the early 20th century, unjustly sentenced to death. His name ? Joe Hill.

Spiritual convictions in political convictions

In Woodstock, Joan Baez is at the height of her glory at only 28 years old. But the singer has already had several lives. It must first be said that she grew up in a very religious family. His father is a Mexican pastor, renowned physicist, co-inventor of the X-ray microscope, his mother is a Scottish Anglican priest daughter. The convictions are not only spiritual, they are also political: the father refuses to be associated with the design of the atomic bomb. The family travels with its work, in the United States, but also in France, Switzerland, Italy and Iraq. It is there, in Baghdad, that little Joan sees with her own eyes the misery of the street children. It will be marked for life.

At age 16, back in the United States, the first act of rebellion in the system: she refuses to participate in her high school to an atomic warning exercise. It is tax "Communist infiltrated" ... This only reinforces his convictions. Armed with a first album at the age of 19, sure of herself and her charm, she quickly became a figure in the fight against the war in Vietnam. She sympathizes with Martin Luther King, walks for the civil rights of blacks in Washington, does not hesitate to carry his word in Alabama among the segregationists, and even in Vietnam. She will even take a month in prison for blocking an army recruiting center.

Her husband David Harris, antimilitarist writer, deserter of the army, will spend more than a year there. He is on a hunger strike when Joan Baez climbs onto the Woodstock stage. She writes to him and dedicates an album to him, then a song, Song For David .

David Harris, Bob Dylan, Steve Jobs ... The men of his life

But David Harris is not the only man in Joan Baez's life. Besides, shortly after Woodstock, the couple will separate. In fact, the story is more likely to retain the passionate and stormy relationship that the singer has maintained - and still maintains - in some way - with Bob Dylan. She spotted it in the Greenwich Village and threw it on stage. She did not like her arrogance, much more her songs.

This princely couple of folk will separate almost under the eyes of the camera of Arthur Pennebaker in the documentary Bringing it all back home where the balance of power and celebrity has reversed. In a video (from 1'16), we also see Joan Baez imitating the voice of Bob Dylan to perfection. It is there that one realizes that it can be also very funny.

In 1975, she devoted to their love story a melody as beautiful as disenchanted. At the time of the assessment, what is left? Diamonds and rust.

But there was also in the life of the singer, a certain Steve Jobs ... In the early 1980s, the young co-founder of Apple makes the perfect love with Joan Baez. He would have even asked for her in marriage. But if he wants to start a family, to have children, it is obviously not on the same wavelength. The couple separates ...

40 years after Notre-Dame, a last concert in France

Shortly after, in front of 25,000 people gathered on the forecourt, Joan Baez sounds the bells of Notre-Dame de Paris to the sound of Blowin 'In The Wind , Bob Dylan's famous anti-war song. We always come back ...

Today, almost 80 years old, the one who never wanted to deny his ideas or his origins ends with a farewell tour. Monday, July 22, she gave her last concert in the Hexagon, in Perpignan, as part of the festival Live Campo. "My voice is declining," she explains in excellent French. But his pacifist and ecologist ideas are not about to be extinguished ...

Find all the other episodes of our series "Woodstock, 50 years later":

> Episode 1: The origins of the most iconic festivals

> Episode 2: Richie Havens, the story of a fate that topples

> Episode 3: Tim Hardin, dubbed by Bob Dylan, destroyed by drugs