Joan Baez said or wrote somewhere: “You can not choose how to die or when, but you can decide how you are going to live, now.”
Wednesday night, she entered the Olympia stage, alone with her acoustic guitar. Like so many other times. As if it was a concert among others. As if it was not our last time with her. As if it was not Joan Baez’s Fare Thee Well Tour.
She started with “The Times They Are Changing” … an upbeat song composed by Bob Dylan in the mid-1960s and whose chorus gets darker today on both sides of the Atlantic : “The times are changing ! “
And then with all his generosity, almost thirty songs.
Viva la Vida, accompanied by the great gypsy jazz guitarists Boulou & Ellios Ferré. Songs in French too: L’auvergnat of Brassens, Le déserteur of Boris Vian, Le temps des cerises …
And Bob Dylan’s Forever Young, who at seventy-eight, is doing so well:
“May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
May you stay forever young, “
My Mom – who was not a hippie for sure – was listening on repeat the album “Farewell Angelina”, and my childhood was rocked by her warm and sweet voice.
To hell nostalgia, I will only remember the inspiring example of a woman of seventy-eight. A so young woman !
Iconography: Joan Baez, “Fare Thee Well Tour”, 2018-2019 World Tour Poster © Dana Tynan
After working as an international banker for emerging countries, Laurent Lascols became global head of country risk / sovereign risk (from 2008 to 2013) then global director of public affairs (from 2014 to 2019) for Societe Generale. In 2021, he founded Aristote, an advisory firm and training organization dedicated to environmental economics, sustainable finance and impact finance.