Joan Baez – Diamonds & Rust

Vinyl  LP

Originally issued on A&M Records in 1975, Diamonds & Rust marked a change in direction for Baez; it gave her songs of the heart and politics an unashamedly commercial veneer, returning her to the US Top 20 for the frst time in four years - This re-issue, released to mark the album's 50th anniversary, faithfully replicates the original A&M UK release and is pressed on 180g vinyl.

If people were unaware of the signifcance of Joan Baez to western culture, her portrayal in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown (played by Monica Barbaro) underlines how central she was to the popularization of folk music in the early 1960s. And it is her decade- previous relationship with Dylan that hovers joyously over Diamonds & Rust. The title track is about a thinly disguised ex-lover who calls up out of the blue; it remains one of her most loved songs in a 65- year- career.

There's a playful cover of "Simple Twist Of Fate" from Dylan's then just released Blood On The Tracks, complete with impersonation in a later verse; and "Winds Of The Old Days", written in response to Dylan touring again after a lengthy hiatus. Diamonds & Rust is a perfect, sunshine- drenched album of west- coast folk- tinged rock, full of star session players. It could almost have been a signal to all the recent comers on her patch many of them friends and colleagues, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Maria Muldaur that Baez was here frst and was...