God respects me when I work. He loves me when I sing.
Tagore
I was born gifted. I can speak of my gifts with little or no modesty, but with tremendous gratitude, precisely because they are gifts, and not things which I created, or actions about which I might be proud.
My greatest gift, given to me by forces which confound genetics, environment, race, or ambition, is a singing voice. My second greatest gift, without which I would be an entirely different person with an entirely different story to tell, is a desire to share that voice, and the bounties it has heaped upon me, with others. From that combination of gifts has developed an immeasurable wealth—a wealth of adventures, of friendships, and of plain joys.
Over a period of nearly three decades I have sung from hundreds of concert stages, all over the world: Eastern and Western Europe, Japan, Australia, Northern Africa, South, Central, and North America, Canada, the Middle East, the Far East. I sang in the bomb shelters of Hanoi during the Vietnam War; in the Laotian refugee camps in Thailand; in the makeshift settlements of the boat people in Malaysia. I have had the privilege of meeting some extraordinary citizens of the world, both renowned and unsung: Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner; The Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina, Mairead Corrigan in Belfast, Bertrand Russell, Cezar Chavez, Orlando Letelier; Bishop Tutu, Lech Walesa; Presidents Corazon Aquino, François Mitterrand, Jimmy Carter, and Giscard d’Estaing; the King of Sweden. Through Amnesty International I have met political prisoners who have endured repression and tortures under both right- and left-wing governments and who have astounded me with their humor, good cheer, and courage. And, of course, Martin Luther King, Jr., more than any other public figure helped to solidify my ideas and inspired me to act upon them.
The music business has brought me into contact with some of the most creative artists of our time, from Bob Dylan and the Beatles to Luciano Pavarotti. But the last six or seven years have been difficult for me musically, though I enjoy a distant respect from the music industry. But distant respect does not pay the bills. My music has suffered more of an identity crisis in the United States than in the other countries where I am known, and as a result I have often felt something of a dissident in my own land.
My personal life has also been complicated—and public—though I am beginning to find more of a sense of peace and self-acceptance than I ever thought possible. Once I wanted to be married and have heaps of kids scrambling around me, licking cake mix off eggbeaters and riding Saint Bernards through the kitchen while I cooked stew over an open fire. Alas, those images bore no relation to my areas of competence, and since my marriage to David Harris dissolved in January of 1974 I have lived mainly alone, with occasional romantic interludes, the best of which are magical and splendidly impractical. The last was with a Frenchman half my age who entered my life on horseback one misty afternoon and kept my spirit aglow for four years. My art, work, family and friends, my son Gabe, and a curious relationship with God remain the sustaining forces in my life.
Through all these changes my social and political views have remained astoundingly steadfast. I have been true to the principles of nonviolence, developing a stronger and stronger aversion to the ideologies of both the far right and the far left and a deeper sense of rage and sorrow over the suffering they continue to produce all over the world. Here at home the current trends toward “new patriotism,” Ramboism, and narcissism, and the emphasis on feeling good about oneself threaten our cultural, spiritual, moral, and artistic values and preclude any honest perception of or caring about the world beyond our borders. I have long worked for Amnesty International and am currently president of a human rights organization called Humanitas, which attempts to initiate projects on both human rights and disarmament. And, oddly enough, my own business, the music business, has taken some of the first steps—Live Aid and some of its follow-ups—out of what I call the “ashes and silence” of the 1980s.
I am writing this book in the kitchen of my home in California. Gabe is living with me for his last year of high school. I have loved writing, especially in the winter, early in the morning, sitting with my back to the fireplace at a card table bearing my word processor, the only sign of the space age present in this rustic room, or this rustic house, for that matter. As I put the finishing touches on this work, I’m also preparing to go into the studio and make a record for the first time in six years. The roses outside the window have at least one last bloom to come before winter. It has taken me two years to trace these threads of my personal, political, spiritual, and musical lives—how they came together and how they fell apart, depending on the times and the circumstances. I’ve told about the people I’ve loved. I’ve told all as I have remembered it, knowing full well that, like everybody else, I am blessed with a selective memory and, perhaps more so than some, a vivid imagination. I have recorded these facts, first of all, because I have led an extraordinary life and want to tell people about it; and second, because I am only forty-five years old, active, creative, in vocal prime, and do not wish to be relegated to obscurity, antiquity, or somebody else’s dewy-eyed nostalgia about days gone by. Third, and most important, I am recording them for myself, to take a hard look back before facing forward in these most bizarre of times.