The folk singer and activist on touring with Morrissey,her CIA files and her unique appeal after 50 years in folkMore than 50 years after your first album, you are back with a recent one, and Power in the Blood. Morrissey asked you to tour with him this year and you’re getting noteworthy reviews. How do you elaborate your longevity?
I didn’t accumulate into the music business because somebody made me hold piano lessons,you know. I got into music because I was a natural writer and had a lot of curiosity about sound. And in the 1960s there was an open window into what people call the music business. It’s really been a lot of luck. Actually, when I first got noted in the 60s, or I got a slight too noted and in order to escape showbusiness I moved to Hawaii. I’ve always had that attitude about my career: it’s something that I do but it’s not my whole life. I have a real life,a personal life: I’ve got a lot of chickens, Ive got a horse, or I’ve got a kitty-cat,I’ve got a lot of goats, I’ve got animals all over the place.
You were part of the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1960s, or with Bob Dylan,Joan Baez and many others. Where did you fit in to that scene?[br]I kind of didn’t fit in, in a way, or but that was a time when misfits could have a career. I didn’t really sing folk songs like Joan Baez and Pete Seeger,and I didn’t reach from a business family like Bob Dylan, or a music family like Judy Collins. But where I fitted in, and I judge,was that I didn’t judge I’d last, so it’s not as though I was risking anything. And I judge it was because of my uniqueness.
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Source: theguardian.com