Diamonds & Rust (song)
| "Diamonds & Rust" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Song by Joan Baez from the album Diamonds & Rust | ||||
| Released | July 1975 | |||
| Recorded | January 1975 | |||
| Genre | Folk rock | |||
| Length | 4:39 | |||
| Label | A&M | |||
| Writer(s) | Joan Baez | |||
| Producer(s) | David Kershenbaum and Joan Baez | |||
| Diamonds & Rust track listing | ||||
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| "Diamonds and Rust" | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Judas Priest | |||||||||
| from the album Sin After Sin | |||||||||
| Released | 23 April 1977 | ||||||||
| Recorded | January – February 1977, Ramport Studios, Battersea | ||||||||
| Genre | Heavy metal | ||||||||
| Length | 3:28 | ||||||||
| Writer(s) | Joan Baez | ||||||||
| Producer(s) | Roger Glover, Judas Priest | ||||||||
| Judas Priest singles chronology | |||||||||
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"Diamonds & Rust" is a song written, composed, and performed by Joan Baez. It was written in November 1974 and released in 1975.
In the song, Baez recounts an out-of-the-blue phone call from an old lover, which sends her a decade back in time, to a "crummy" hotel in Greenwich Village circa 1964 or 1965; she recalls giving him a pair of cuff-links, and summarizes that memories bring "diamonds and rust." Baez has stated that the lyrics refer to her relationship with Bob Dylan.
The song, which was a top-40 hit for Baez on the U.S. pop singles chart, is regarded by a number of critics, as well as by Baez fans, as one of her best compositions. It served as the title song on Baez's gold-selling album Diamonds & Rust, which was released in 1975.
For her 1995 live recording Ring Them Bells, Baez performed the song as a duet with Mary Chapin Carpenter. In that performance, she changed the end lines: "And if you're / offering me diamonds and rust / I've already paid," to: "And if you... well I'll take the diamonds." The line "I bought you some cuff links, you brought me something" was changed to "I bought you some cuff links, you brought troubles." And on 25 February 2009, in Austin, she sang it, "And if you... well I'll take the Grammy." In 2010, she recorded it as a duet with Judy Collins on Collins's album Paradise.
The song alludes to Baez's relationship with Bob Dylan ten years before. Although Dylan is not specifically named in the song, in the third chapter of her memoir, And a Voice to Sing With (1987), Baez uses phrases from the song in describing her relationship with Dylan, and has been explicit that he was the inspiration for the song. She recounts how she originally told Dylan that the song was about her ex-husband David Harris, which was obviously not true. The lyrics, for example, include the lines, "Well, you burst on the scene already a legend / the unwashed phenomenon, the original vagabond..." which would describe Dylan but not Harris.
In her memoir, And A Voice To Sing With, Baez records a 1975 conversation between herself and Dylan, discussing songs to include in the then-upcoming Rolling Thunder Revue concerts:
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