We both know what memories can bring

October 27, 2018 7:08 AM

Well I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall

As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest
Ten years ago
I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust

posted by growabrain (28 comments total)

...well, I’ll take the diamonds.
posted by Catseye at 7:21 AM on October 27, 2018 [5 favorites]

One of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar. It suited my teenage mood of romantic bitterness, and so well written.
posted by Miko at 7:41 AM on October 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

When i was 12, my father sent me a double album set of Joan Baez live in concert. I didn't even know who she was, but since my absentee father never gave me anything, I listened to it. I fell in love with her, with that entire album, and played it over and over. Diamonds and Rust, and Lily Rosemary, and The Jack of Hearts, along with Forever Young, and Boulder to Birmingham are my favorites from those albums. Heck, they play The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down as muzak at my supermarket. I even have those albums now on CDs.

I know every word to all of those songs. Thank you for bringing up a good memory.
posted by annieb at 7:46 AM on October 27, 2018 [12 favorites]

I also listened to this like 100,000 times when I was a lad. I confess I liked to imagine the like was “a booth in the midway,” and it referred to the time Dylan had a crappy job running a game of chance at state fairs.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:51 AM on October 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

When i was 12, my father sent me a double album set of Joan Baez live in concert.

From Every Stage? My mother had that album and used to sit and listen to it with me in the evenings when I was a little kid. Like you, I still know all the words to the songs. My mother died in 1999 and I have the album but I don't know if I could ever bear to listen to it.
posted by dilettante at 7:52 AM on October 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Am I a Philistine for really digging the Judas Priest version? https://youtu.be/CgDtk1Kbi5A
posted by skullhead at 7:53 AM on October 27, 2018 [11 favorites]

thank you. Joan Baez has a big, beautiful voice, and it's a pleasure to listen to this, as well as to go back in time for a little bit.
posted by theora55 at 8:16 AM on October 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

The versions from Baez's later years can be wonderful with the addition of time and wisdom added (and a lyric tweak or two). I'm particularly fond of this version from the Cambridge Folk Festival.

Interestingly, there's a reference to it on a Bob Dylan's website in the part that normally provides lyrics and performance information, but notes that he's never played it. I suspect it's a quirk based on the fact that Joan Baez played in the the 70s at a show with the Rolling Thunder backing band (but without Bob) but I know of few other songs that get the distinction of his site saying that he hasn't played them.
posted by Candleman at 8:44 AM on October 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

I only realised much much later that this was a cover.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:05 AM on October 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm reminded of a piece that someone linked in the last few days, someone writing about "being in love with a charismatic artist, which is the worst kind of love". Accomplished women who men use for all they can bring and then the women realize that the love only goes one way.
posted by tavella at 11:15 AM on October 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Aha, found it, it was this thread.
posted by tavella at 11:20 AM on October 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Ditto on the Judas Priest cover. Those opening lines are so METAL!
posted by Ber at 11:22 AM on October 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

One of the most WTF moments of my college years was sitting in a friend’s house with some metal band playing on the stereo and gradually realizing that song playing was “Diamonds and Rust”
posted by hwestiii at 11:26 AM on October 27, 2018 [6 favorites]

#4 on this jewel thief's Pandora.
posted by clavdivs at 12:05 PM on October 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Speaking strictly for me, we both could have died then and there.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 2:52 PM on October 27, 2018 [7 favorites]

I almost missed her renditions of Danny Boy and I Dream of Jeannie. Surely, I thought, there's nothing new in these old chestnuts. Oh, I was wrong. Her renditions were the first time I actually heard the music within the songs.
posted by SPrintF at 3:19 PM on October 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Another Judas Priest version
posted by otherchaz at 6:06 PM on October 27, 2018

Man that song calls out across time with that crystal soprano, and ringing poetry.
posted by Oyéah at 6:47 PM on October 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've never come across this before but, I'm overwhelmed with its beauty. Thank you for sharing it.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 7:53 PM on October 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

My mother has always really liked Joan Baez, and after reading a little bit about her just now, I think I get it. I never knew much about her except that her music was so earnest, so I'm sure this is old news to many, but I didn't know she'd had a thing with Bob Dylan, for instance, during the time she helped launch his career, or that he had only apologized for the way he'd treated her within the past 10 years. Interesting!
posted by limeonaire at 10:40 PM on October 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Wow, I never knew that "Diamonds and Rust" was about Bob Dylan. Listening to it just now really blew me away, it's like I never heard it before.
posted by james33 at 3:51 AM on October 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

Non fiction book 'Positively 4th Street' by David Hajdu is a pretty good overview of the Baez/Dylan scene for the curious.
posted by ovvl at 11:42 AM on October 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Am I a Philistine for really digging the Judas Priest version?

Only if don't think the live version from Unleashed in the East is much better...
posted by littlejohnnyjewel at 4:12 PM on October 28, 2018

I like the Judas Priest version that otherchaz posted; the Priest has a great tradition of slower ballads in a minor key that are still pretty heavy--think "Victim of Changes", "Before the Dawn", "Beyond the Realms of Death", "Night Comes Down", I'd even argue for "Blood Red Skies."
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:05 PM on October 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

Non fiction book 'Positively 4th Street' by David Hajdu is a pretty good overview of the Baez/Dylan scene for the curious.

Yes, highly recommend.

This song is amazing, brave, sorrowful & angry. Sure as hell makes me nostalgic, which this can make so heavy as to seem a disorder, & perhaps it is. Goddam though that bridge is perfect.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:11 PM on October 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

I was indulging in a deep music nostalgia, listening to this album with reverence and attention, falling into sad memories to which I usually do not succumb. I was moving to stop the record, to call myself back to my wonderful now.. My decidedly-not-an-artist husband came charging through the door with a strange look on his face.

“Who is that singing? Do you recognize that song?”
“Sure. It’s Diamonds and Rust.”
“It’s a PRIEST COVER!”
Laughter initiated, the present retrieved, and a new mission to expose this man to more folk music.

Oh, Joan. For so many of us, the healing from our beautiful broken artists came through realizing that we ourselves were the fascinating creatives we yearned for in our lives. But you were already there when you met him. I don’t know how you recovered, but I can imagine that writing out your heartbreak was such a part of it.
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 4:08 AM on October 29, 2018 [4 favorites]

One of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar. It suited my teenage mood of romantic bitterness, and so well written.

One of the first songs I learned to play on guitar and sing at the same time*. It suited my ermm... late-middle-aged mood of romantic bitterness.

I was a metalhead as a kid (born in Brum, as was Metal), so heard the Priest version first on this bootleg cassette from a live gig they did (that I stupidly gave away**, it's still the best I've ever heard them, even including seeing them actually live).

JOAN BAEZ Was 'Stunned' To Hear JUDAS PRIEST's Version Of Her 'Diamonds And Rust' Classic

In a recent interview with QMI Agency, folk icon Joan Baez was asked what she thought of JUDAS PRIEST's classic cover of her song "Diamonds And Rust", which can be found on the band's 1977 album "Sin After Sin". "I love that!" she replied. "I was so stunned when I first heard it. I thought it was wonderful. It's very rare for people to cover my songs. I think there are a couple of reasons. One is they're personal — they don't have a universal quality to them

Also: Rob Halford: My Best And Worst Gigs Of All Time

"I remember being a big fanboy backstage. There were so many stars walking around, and this was before cell phones, so nobody had their head down. I saw this lady walking by and I thought, 'Oh, my God. That's Joan Baez!' My mind immediately went to that famous Diamonds and Rust song of hers that we covered, and I thought, 'What if she didn't like what we did with it?' Well, wouldn't you know? She popped over and said, 'Hi, Rob. I'm Joan, and I just wanted to say thank you for what you did with your rendition of Diamonds and Rust.' And get this—she said, 'Just so you know, it's my son's favorite version of anything his mom's ever written.' How cool is that? She literally came over to tell me that. That's a pro in the truest sense of the word.

That said, in a properly curated world we would be talking about how there was this dude called Dylan or maybe Bob who had a thing once with acknowledged world treasure Joan Baez. I mean let's see him do this.


* Apart from the bridge, which it is literally impossible to play and sing at the same time.
** Also had the greatest version of Green Manalishi.
posted by Buntix at 2:01 PM on October 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

This song has haunted me for the last few days. Little epiphanies, like keeping things vague/ a booth in the midwest. The cure is remembering Dylan sing out, "Nobody feels any pain," that specious syntax of his; then imagining a nostalgic phone call in that cadence. "Hello Joan, this is Bob." I feel better now. We are so brave when we dare to love.
posted by Oyéah at 3:56 PM on October 30, 2018 [1 favorite]