Joan Baez and Bob Dylan: Inside Their Iconic ‘60s Romance—Plus, Why Baez is Staying Single Now
She's happily single today, but you might be surprised to learn who she dated in the '80s!
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan are two of the most iconic musicians of the ’60s, and while they’ve always had a devoted following, the Oscar-nominated biopic A Complete Unknown—where Monica Barbaro plays Baez alongside Timothée Chalamet’s Dylan—has put them back at the forefront of the cultural conversation and introduced them to a new audience.
Baez and Dylan’s creative and romantic partnership has captivated music fans for over 60 years, though Baez has sometimes stood in Dylan’s shadow. However, there’s no denying her impact as an artist and activist in her own right, and her personal life both with and without Dylan is worth a deep dive. Read on for a look at the men in her life and the songs she wrote about them, along with what she’s said about her choice to stay single.
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan: The relationship that defined ’60s folk
The lore around Joan Baez and Bob Dylan’s relationship could fill a tome. The two met at a New York City folk club in 1961, and at the time Baez had recently released her debut album and her star was on the rise, while Dylan was just getting started.
In 1963, Baez invited Dylan to perform with her at the Newport Folk Festival, and this led to many more duets, including one at Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington that same year.
Around the time they started performing together, Baez and Dylan embarked on their romantic relationship, and she’s believed to have inspired some of his songs, though the notoriously enigmatic musician has neither confirmed nor denied this.
Baez and Dylan’s romance looms large in musical history, but it didn’t last long. Dylan was dating artist Suze Rotolo (who famously appeared on the cover of his 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) when he began seeing Baez. By 1965, tensions were running high in the relationship, as Dylan’s fame had grown exponentially and when he invited Baez to join his tour but failed to actually bring her onstage, it was the beginning of the end. During this time, Dylan was also in the midst of an affair with model Sara Lownds, and they secretly married after she became pregnant that same year.
Following the dissolution of their relationship, Baez wrote a number of songs about her time with Dylan, including “To Bobby,” a 1972 plea for Dylan to return to political activism, “Winds of the Old Days,” a 1975 song which included pointed references to some of Dylan’s famous lyrics and “Diamonds & Rust,” another 1975 song, which was inspired by receiving an unexpected phone call from Dylan a decade after their breakup, and is considered by many to be one of Baez’s greatest achievements.
Baez and Dylan continued to musically collaborate even after they broke up, as she toured with him during his legendary Rolling Thunder Revue shows from 1975 to 1976 and was featured in Renaldo and Clara, an experimental film he directed during the tour and released in 1978. They also shared the stage in 1982 and toured together in 1984, but Baez left the tour early because she felt that she was being disrespected and Dylan was getting all the attention, and they supposedly haven’t spoken since then.
What Joan Baez has said about Bob Dylan
Looking back on her relationship with Dylan in 2023, Baez called it “totally demoralizing,” and said he broke her heart but admitted, “We were stupid, and you can’t blame somebody forever. I certainly tried but finally stopped.”
Baez said that painting a portrait of a young Dylan decades after they were together proved to be a healing experience, recalling, “I put his music on, and I just dissolved into tears. When I was through with the painting, I had no animosity left. None. It’s remained that way,” and she said this led to “total forgiveness.”
After Baez did her therapeutic painting, she wrote Dylan a letter expressing her deepest feelings, saying, “I didn’t put a return address or an email or anything that was in any way trying to get something out of him. I just wanted him to know how much he meant to me. How much his music had meant to me. And I may never see him again, and that’s okay too.”
Baez has also said she’s now able to feel thankful for her time with Dylan. As she put it, “All that resentment completely washed away and all I was left with was gratitude that I’d met him, gratitude for all those songs, gratitude for the time period that we merged in.”
Joan Baez’s marriage to David Harris
In 1967, Baez met journalist and activist David Harris while they were both incarcerated following an antiwar protest at the Armed Forces Induction Center. Upon their release, they quickly began a relationship, and they married in 1968.
Baez and Harris’ relationship received much media coverage, and Time magazine even called their marriage “the wedding of the century.” Their son, Gabriel, now a musician, was born in 1969, while Harris was back in prison for refusing to be drafted. Baez wrote a number of songs about this politically and emotionally fraught time, including “A Song for David” (1970), “Fifteen Months” (1971) and “Myths” (1972).
Looking back on her marriage, Baez expressed regret, saying, “I think what was hard was that I wanted so badly to be what I of course couldn’t be. I wanted to be a wonderful wife. I wanted to be a wonderful mom. I wanted to have a whole stack of kids. I wanted to be cooking and making biscuits or whatever the hell, and none of that was possible.”
Baez and Harris divorced in 1973, but they remained friendly until his passing in 2023. Baez never remarried, and said, “I remember my therapist trying to get me to take the next step, which was being open to finding a partner. I said, ‘I’ve worked too hard to get to where I have peace of mind. Why f–k it up?’” She also called getting into a relationship “an exhausting idea,” and in her memoir she wrote, “I am made to live alone.”
Joan Baez’s other relationships
Outside of her Dylan relationship and her marriage, Baez was briefly linked to musicians like Kris Kristofferson and Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, and she even said that early in her career she turned down John Lennon. Baez has also spoken openly about her bisexuality, and revealed that she dated a woman named Kimmie for a couple years in the ’60s.
In 1982, Baez began dating Apple founder Steve Jobs. She called him “absolutely lovely” but said, “We were an odd couple. I mean, I didn’t understand anything he was talking about, ever. I don’t know what his fascination was with me, but we really couldn’t have a conversation on an equal level. He was about tech, and I was about music.” They broke up because Baez didn’t want to marry again, but stayed friends until he died in 2011.
Baez has a sense of humor about her illustrious love life, and joked, “Someone said, ‘Have you ever thought about the fact that you are the only woman in the world who has seen both Bob Dylan and Steve Jobs naked?’ I said, ‘At the same time?’”
Today, Joan Baez is happily single, and while she’ll always be associated with her relationship with Bob Dylan, it’s clear that she’s continued to lead a fascinating life outside of that long-ago couple.
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