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

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.

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 wor

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 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.