With the Vietnam War winding down,
Joan Baez, who had devoted one side of her last album to her trip to Hanoi, delivered the kind of commercial album
A&M Records must have wanted when it signed her three years earlier. But she did it on her own terms, putting together a session band of contemporary jazz veterans like
Larry Carlton,
Wilton Felder, and
Joe Sample, and mixing a wise selection from the work of current singer-songwriters like
Jackson Browne and
John Prine with pop covers of
Stevie Wonder and
the Allman Brothers Band, and an unusually high complement of her own writing.
A&M, no doubt recalling the success of her cover of
the Band's
"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," released her version of
the Allmans'
"Blue Sky" as a single, and it got halfway up the charts. But the real hit was the title track, a self-penned masterpiece on the singer's favorite subject, her relationship with
Bob Dylan. Outdoing the current crop of confessional
singer/songwriters at soul baring,
Baez sang to
Dylan, reminiscing about her '60s love affair with him intensely, affectionately, and unsentimentally. It was her finest moment as a songwriter and one of her finest performances, period, and when
A&M finally released it on 45, it made the Top 40, propelling the album to gold status. But those who bought the disc for
"Diamonds & Rust" also got to hear
"Winds of the Old Days," in which
Baez forgave
Dylan for abandoning the protest movement, as well as the jazzy
"Children and All That Jazz," a delightful song about motherhood, and the wordless vocals of
"Dida," a duet with
Joni Mitchell accompanied by
Mitchell's backup band,
Tom Scott and the L.A. Express. The cover songs were typically accomplished, making this the strongest album of
Baez's post-
folk career. ~ William Ruhlmann
![Desire [Remastered]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0827969239322_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Desire [Remastered]")
