Customer Reviews

Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina & Richard Farina

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3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

From 1961-66, the Baez sisters, Bob Dylan and Richard Farina came of age, befriended one another, fell in and out of love, raised hell, traipsed the globe on a shoestring budget like college students, drank, got high...and produced some of the most durable music (and, in Farina's case, one of the most underappreciated novels) of their generation. Hajdu captures that half-decade in 300 pages of remarkably seamless prose, painting a vivid picture of four young artists whose intertwining paths left an indelible mark on the work they produced.

Although he appears most interested in Joan Baez and her family, Hajdu produces an impressive amount of information on all four of his subjects. Dylan fans especially are likely to be surprised at some of the details of their hero's early career, such as his first appearance on a studio recording (it wasn't Harry Belafonte's "Midnight Special," as has often been reported) and the somewhat disputed origin of his stage name. Baez, meanwhile, is portrayed for once as a human being with strengths and weaknesses of her own, rather than strictly as a victim of Dylan's misogyny (though this too is acknowledged, as well it should be). Best of all, Richard and Mimi Farina are both researched and profiled just as carefully as Baez and Dylan despite being far less famous outside the realm of hardcore folk music fans.

The book, like its subjects, is not without its shortcomings. For one thing, Hajdu's vision of the four and their importance is a bit sweeping. Baez may have been the first protegee of the folk revival to achieve commercial success, but she was hardly the first folk artist to have a hit record (or even the first of the rock era). Dylan was the movement's biggest name in songwriting, but hardly the only one; Hajdu sprinkles the names of others throughout the book (Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Ian and Sylvia Tyson, Paul Simon, Judy Collins, Eric Andersen and a list too long to complete here) without really acknowledging their place relative to those of his four subjects. His sly allusions to their works (i.e. "Dylan acted as if he and the social activists in the folk community never had met") are by turns amusing and tiresome. Also, his practice of phrasing all quotations in the past tense makes it impossible to differentiate between contemporary interview material and decades-old remarks without consulting the endnotes, unless the speaker is a person the reader knows to be dead. Speaking of which, Hajdu tells his nonfictional story novel-style, not revealing the post-1966 fate of his subjects until the end of the book. For those of us who already know why any story of this quartet would have to stop that year, the efforts at suspense can be slightly offputting.

These, of course, are minor criticisms. For any fan of the folk music of the 1960s - especially those who weren't lucky enough to have been in Cambridge or Greenwich Village at the time - this book is a fascinating and welcome look inside a place and time that left a great mark on music history.

David Hajdu deserves a National Book Award if for no other reason than that he was able to interview Thomas Pynchon AND Fred Neil -- two of three of America's most reclusive creative artists (J. D. Salinger being the third, of course). He seems to have talked with nearly everybody who played a role, however marginal, in the 1960s folk scare. He tells a mesmerizing, soap-operatic tale of four interweaving lives played out against the backdrop of a particularly vital moment in our country's cultural history.

Though Hajdu is in no sense a debunker, only Mimi Baez Farina emerges mostly unscathed here. The other three come across, in varying degrees (Joan Baez the least, relatively speaking), as narcissists and opportunists, an impression left even after Hajdu's perhaps too-generous concluding chapter. Dylan in particular is given to jaw-dropping fits of odious conduct, though this is hardly news. Even would-be hagiographers (of whom Hajdu, though certainly a compassionate observer, is not one) struggle with longstanding reports of bad Dylan behavior, especially in the early years of his international stardom. Dylan had the dubious fortune of becoming a great artist before he became a grown-up. Still, as with all of his other biographers, Hajdu's Dylan remains as inscrutable as ever. The nearly forgotten Richard Farina, the real star of the book, is more approachable, more human, more fun: a personable, self-absorbed man on the make -- one is reminded of Melville's phrase "one eye on the cosmos, the other on the main chance" -- and canny manipulator with genuine gifts, a superior literary stylist to Dylan, but not in Dylan's class as a songwriter. Then, however, who is?

Hajdu's splendid book, the finest so far on the folk revival, led me back to Mimi and Richard Farina's Vanguard recordings, which proved better than I had remembered them from my last hearing maybe 25 years ago. If Richard was not a musical genius of Dylanesque proportions, he was a more focused, disciplined craftsman. His most successful songs (for example the brilliant "Birmingham Sunday") stand up remarkably well. Mimi was his perfect musical partner, possessed of an appealing voice and technical skills her husband was unable to master before his tragic early death.

Hajdu writes interestingly of Richard's determination to create a "boogie poetry" -- what would become known as folk-rock -- before the idea ever occurred to Dylan. Phrased that way, the idea sounds more original than it may have been. Rockabilly singers in the mid- to late 1950s had already wedded folk and bluegrass songs to stripped-down blues rhythms. Folk-rock was well nigh inescapable. As the revival began to lose its creative and commercial force, it was the only logical place to go, and it would have gone there even if Dylan and Farina had never existed. But happily, they did, and Hajdu helps us appreciate anew the wise and thrilling songs these decidedly imperfect human beings brought into the world.

What wonderful writing, what a bittersweet and romantic tale of BS-artists who turned out to be real artists. I laughed out loud at some of the events and descriptions (Dylan's re-invention of the harmonica as a life-support device!), I went out and bought music by those who were under-represented in my collection. The story of Richard and Mimi plumbs the depths of sadness. As a fan of Dylan's (and Joan's), it was hard to bear his sudden cruelty to those who loved him, but it was heartening to see his reinvention as a family man, free of most of his chains (Albert Grossman's drug supplies and incessant touring that was ready to kill Bob). If you love poetry, music, rock, folk, and want an engrossing story of how Dylan came to be Dylan, Joan became Joan, Mimi started to find herself, and Richard really was somebody, read this book. Along the way, learn about the kindness and musical contributions that Bob soaked up and reinvented to build our current view of the musician's responsibility: write songs from the heart, use a language as universal as you can invent, and don't be afraid to follow your muse.

This is one of those rare popular culture biographies in which the subjects come off, for better or worse, as three-dimensional human beings. Joan Baez has been so infrequently written about, and Mimi and Richard Farina even less so, making it a pleasure to revisit their story as presented here in such illuminating detail. Bob Dylan, of course, is another story, but rarely has he been cast in such an all-too-human light. Most highly recommended to fans of Dylan and Baez, and to those initiates who want to learn more about the highwater era of American folk music.

In 1962 I was a tentative, impressionable kid hoping that a guitar and a three chord song would give my life direction. The most important thing in Mr. Hajdu's new biographical tour-de-force is finding that although his subjects have become cultural icons and symbols for my generation's excesses, they were then also tentative, impressionable teenagers raised on Buddy Holly, the Lone Ranger and Mighty Mouse. They were also looking for direction and while most biographies of musical artists of that time usually concentrate on their achievements in the public arena, this book never forgets to remind us of the confused, hopeful kids that were standing up on stage. Their humanity leaps and bounds off these pages. Through the author's skillful storytelling and impeccable research, the spirits of those two sisters and those two part-time friends feel like they're in the room with the reader -- just over your shoulder with a joke, a new chord fingering, or a complaint. While many of us were listening in coffee houses and campus venues, a few of us were trying to make our instuments do what we wanted them to do, and thought that if we could just get it right, the world would be saved. Mr. Hadjdu's work reminded me of who I was then -- something easily forgotten today. It brought back the confusion when lessons were learned the hardest way, and no one was the winner. I even found myself falling for the clever, overflowing charm of Richard Farina, still gesturing wildly to get the party started from within the pages. Four decades later, I'm as much a disciple now it turns out as I was when I first heard "Children of Darkness" or "Dopico". I want to thank Mr. Hajdu for bringing it back to me, and I want to thank the Baez sisters and Bob Dylan for making it all seem so simple when it was anything but... This was a one-sit read. I couldn't put it down! Now I'll go find a few old vinyl records that have been on the shelf much too long.

I sat in the 3rd row at the famed "63 Newport Folk Festival and I knew it would be historic. I still have all the worn LP's of Baez, Dylan and Farina/Baez. And it's about time a book like this was written. The Baez sisters and Farina were portrayed exactly like I thought they would be. Dylan, sorry to say, was/is what I suspected he would be. He was a phenomenon to me then. I saw every concert I could...even one in Hoboken, NJ, the weekend after Kennedy was shot. That concert went on as usual, he sang, no banter to the audience and I was surprised he never said anything in reference to the national event that had just happened as few days before. I always thought it was curious that he wrote brillantly about things that touch political/social/emotional nerves... but never seemed to put himself on the line concerning these issues. Now I know. I wondered why when Sinead O'Connor was booed off the stage because of her religious/social views in a commemorative concert honoring Dylan, that it was not Dylan who comforted her. Dylan was tainted for me after that. Dylan deserves praise for being an amazing songwriter, for having the insight for writing songs approriate for the times, and choosing managers who would help his career. It's hard to hear "Hurricaine" and think that he had any feeling about what he was writing. He's had a great career, but I do not feel he deserves the homage that he receives. And it's about time someone wrote about the reality of the times.

I was totally excited when the release of the book occurred for several reasons, but the main one was that the interesting lives of Richard and Mimi Baez Farina would be discussed.

Hadju, as he did in his excellent look at Billy Strayhorn ("Lush Life"),weaves a wonderful portrait of 4 young artists, all with immense talent,(the Baez sisters and Dylan as musicians, Farina as a novelist and musician) who all converge on the thriving Greenwich Village scene in the early 1960's. From there, the book, (complete with hundreds of wonderful interviews) begins to read like a modern soap opera- complete with torrid affairs, opportunism, deceipt, and lust. Whether it was Dylan's affair with Joan Baez to further his budding career, or taking on the bohemian personna that Richard Farina naturally had; Farina's courtship with Mimi Baez by letters, but all the while having a secret love for Joan; Dylan's very public breakup with Joan after his star had risen well beyond anyone's expectations- it's all in this book.

The book tactfully takes on the tangled web that these 4 people created for themselves, makes sense of it all, and while not pointing fingers in any one particular direction, does showcase both Dylan and Farina's overt opportunism, both at the expense of the Baez sisters. One can only conjecture what may have occurred had Richard Farina not died..would he have pursued Joan? and what would have become of Mimi at that point?

While the music is well documented on any number of cds- Dylan's early folk works are exquisite, Joan's politically active folk even more so, and Richard and Mimi's works, including one of my favorite folk songs in "Reno, Nevada," also on cd, the book takes off the golden dome of the era and shows the true underbelly of 4 starving artists trying to make it. They all did, to varying degrees. The book charts the early days, the struggles, the open deceipt, trials and tribulations. A riveting book.

This is the best book about Bob Dylan I've read. It does not oversimplify, glorify, or disdain the work or the man. Its appraisals of Dylan (and Richard Farina, although Hadju isn't detailed or pointed enough on his novel *Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me*) and entourage seem just, convincingly contextualized, and informed by an understanding of music and the recording business. The contrasts between Farina and Dylan, Joan Baez and her sister, Eric von Schmidt and Mark Spoelstra illuminate each of these figures. Anecdotes are recounted with verve and detachment, and, if the music doesn't give Hadju as much to say as it did in his biography of Bill Strayhorn, the feeling of the times comes through just as vividly--the creativity and the squalor, with the commercial accomplishments of Dylan et. al. the focus through which greater triumphs shine.

Hadju writes gracefully, has come up with new material (and I know a lot of his primary sources), and sensibly has limited the time frame from from 1961-1966. For me, as I said in my notice of Howard Sounes' Dylan biography, this is the key epoch for Dylan, so he's writing to my own prejudices, but the restricted five year scope means that although Hadju's claims may appear limited, he delivers more than he claims to, exploring the interplay of market expectation and aesthetic drive, the connection between audience and internal inspiration, and the great extent to which apparently arbitrary and unconscious decisions emerge as central for an artist and his audience. It's the one book one must read if one is interested in this era and this music, and probably it would appeal even to persons not interested in it.

It appears that David Hajdu really wanted to write a biography of Richard Farina, but for whatever reason -- perhaps concerns about marketability -- he felt compelled to broaden his topic to include Bob Dylan. Mr. Hajdu's treatment of Farina is nothing short of worshipful. Farina -- according to Hajdu -- is the artistic genius and dazzling personality who shaped our age. Oddly, I am unable to hum a single Farina song, and those of us who read his book, "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me", back in the 60's were somewhat embarrassed by it even then. By contrast, and perhaps as an attempt at controversy, Hajdu is overly critical of Bob Dylan. His songs I do remember, and still occassionally listen to. Dylan's poetry and persona did shape our age. Though Farina may have shown promise, it's difficult to say what he believed in, and his early death may have robbed us of a genius, or saved Farina from exposure as a sham. What we do know is that Dylan's was a commitment to the music, and as his life since has shown us, Dylan delivered on the promise.

One of the nice things about a quadruple biography is that you don't have to bear the foibles and character defects of any one of its four subjects for too long. The interplay of personalities--the supersized egos of Bob Dylan, Richard Farina, and Joan Baez as well as the more humanly-proportioned ego of Mimi Baez Farina--is fascinating. Author David Hajdu is thorough in his research (extensive interviews with many people, some now deceased), unbiased in his assessments, and reasonably skeptical when quoting the subjects as they reflect on themselves and on one another. Hajdu seems well-informed on music in general and presents the phenomenon of the 60s folk revival in a way that seems true and fair (I speak as someone who has owned and still owns most of the vinyl ablumns mentioned in the book). Long before Madonna became the daring of academics for her ability to shed skins and transform herself annually, Dylan, Farina, and the elder Baez were conciously and single-mindedly crafting their personae to meet audience expectations and assure their own success. The competition among the four is extreme. But so is the affection and loyalty (distorted and self-serving though it may have been at times). One finishes the book with a sense that the key to success is wanting it deperately; talent and good luck, though nice in their own way, are less essential. Overall, the Baez women come off better than the men. The pacifist Joan was capable of incredible cattiness in her personal relationships, but could be generous professionally (for instance, she continued to promote Bob Dylan even after he dumped her as his lover and publicly mocked her, sometimes in song). Aside from Mimi's somewhat saintly aura, there are no villains or heroes here. Unlike the writers of the protest songs of the folk revival, Hajdu does not see things in black and white. His subjects live quite colorfully on these pages--and without apology for their shortcomings and inconsistancies. This is an intriguing story told with aptly chosen and fascinating details.