If not for one rock icon, Emmylou Harris might still not be playing guitar in her live shows. Harris reveals that it was Joan Baez who inspired her to become a performer.
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"My main ambition was still to act, but I only lasted three semesters studying drama at the University of North Carolina," Harris recalls to The Guardian. "Music did something to me that drama never did because I didn't have the talent to get into that zone. I realized I wasn't very good, so instead I went to New York and tried to be Joan Baez.
"She is the reason I picked up the guitar, and I think I speak for a lot of other girls my age," she continues. "She's an iconic artist who changed music and the heart of America by giving voice to the civil rights movement, and her continued support for any struggle for democracy represents the best of what America stands for."
Emmylou Harris And Her Path To Country Music
It's Baez who persuaded Harris to pursue music. But it's Gram Parsons who influenced Harris to pursue country music, a genre she initially thought she disliked.
"I used to look down on country," Harris admits. "Though at the time because I was heavily into folk protest stuff. But I couldn't help being drawn to some of it - like Hank Williams. Country was always creeping in. Like, I was an Ian and Sylvia addict. They had a lot to do with my musical inspiration. Their music was so original, it had a lot of guts and a lot of powerful beauty."
"There were all kinds of little seeds starting from the beginning," she adds. "But it was only when I met Gram and started working with him that I really got involved with country. That was the turning point in my musical life."
Parsons passed away in 1973, but the mark he left on Harris was indelible.
"I discovered my own voice singing in harmony with Gram," Harris reveals to The Guardian. "There is something about the uniqueness of two voices creating a sound that does not come when they are singing solo, and I have always been fascinated by that. That song, and our harmony, is kind of a pinnacle of our duet-singing together."
