Folk singer and activist Joan Baez, 84, stopped by the premiere of John Mulaney’s Everybody’s Live to talk about her experience with Teslas and with Martin Luther King, Jr. But before she could do that, she felt she needed to address something else first.
“I have to set a context that I’m here in,” she told Mulaney. “You said I could say anything I want out here?”
“Oh yeah, 100 percent,” Mulaney replied.
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“OK, so we’re all here to be silly and have fun,” Baez said, “And as long as we recognize the fact that our democracy is going up in flames, and that we’re being run by a bunch of really incompetent billionaires.”
After some applause from the audience, Baez continued, “That being said, ask me anything you want.”
Mulaney thanked her for the aside, and then continued on with the show.
Mulaney soon joked about the idea of Baez driving a Tesla, an electric vehicle sold by Elon Musk‘s company. Baez surprised everyone by saying she had once bought and driven a Tesla, but she hated the experience.
“I hated that thing, but I thought I was supposed to like it,” Baez said. “Within 45 minutes I had smashed it into an oak tree on my property.”
Although she clarified that the crash was not on purpose, she joked that maybe deep down it was:
“I hated it. It was too big... I sold it, and got one-half the amount of money I paid for.”
“You really walk the walk though,” Mulaney told her. “You’re not just talking about these billionaires, you’re smashing their cars.”
Baez also shared her experience hanging out with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the ‘60s, hearing him make a lot of “dirty jokes” behind the scenes.
“I thought, ‘I am going to get the inside story on how these guys do these marches,’” Baez explained. Instead, “They all start telling dirty jokes... from the airport to his favorite little restaurant.”
She recalled telling Andrew Young, a voting rights activist who worked with King, “I thought I was gonna hear the inside story of how you guys plan a march.” Young had responded, “You just did.”
When Mulaney asked if she remembers any of the specific jokes she heard MLK say, Baez replied, “I do, and I can’t tell them here.”
