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Positively Fourth Street : The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi B
Positively 4th Street is a mesmerizing account of how four young people--Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña--gave rise to a modern-day bohemia and created the enduring sound and style of the 1960s.
The story of the transformation of folk music from antiquarian pursuit to era-defining art form has never fully been told. Hajdu, whose biography of Billy Strayhorn set a new standard for books about popular music, tells it as the story of a colorful foursome who were drawn together in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s and inspired a generation to gather around them.
Even before they became lovers in 1963, Dylan and Joan Baez were seen as the reigning king and queen of folk music; but their songs and their public images grew out of their association with Joan's younger sister, Mimi--beautiful, haunted, a musician in her own right--and Richard Fariña, the roguish, charming novelist Mimi married when she was seventeen.
In Hajdu's candid, often intimate account (based on several hundred new interviews), their rise from scruffy coffeehouse folksingers to pop stars comes about through their complex personal relationships, as the young Dylan courts the famous Joan to further his career, Fariña woos Mimi while looking longingly on her older sister, and Fariña's friend Thomas Pynchon keeps an eye on their amours from afar.
Positively 4th Street is that rare book with a new story to tell about the 1960s: the story of how some of the greatest American popular music arose out of the lives of four gifted and charismatic figures.
The story of the transformation of folk music from antiquarian pursuit to era-defining art form has never fully been told. Hajdu, whose biography of Billy Strayhorn set a new standard for books about popular music, tells it as the story of a colorful foursome who were drawn together in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s and inspired a generation to gather around them.
Even before they became lovers in 1963, Dylan and Joan Baez were seen as the reigning king and queen of folk music; but their songs and their public images grew out of their association with Joan's younger sister, Mimi--beautiful, haunted, a musician in her own right--and Richard Fariña, the roguish, charming novelist Mimi married when she was seventeen.
In Hajdu's candid, often intimate account (based on several hundred new interviews), their rise from scruffy coffeehouse folksingers to pop stars comes about through their complex personal relationships, as the young Dylan courts the famous Joan to further his career, Fariña woos Mimi while looking longingly on her older sister, and Fariña's friend Thomas Pynchon keeps an eye on their amours from afar.
Positively 4th Street is that rare book with a new story to tell about the 1960s: the story of how some of the greatest American popular music arose out of the lives of four gifted and charismatic figures.
Hardcover
First published April 28, 2001
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About the author
David Hajdu
20 books64 followersDAVID HAJDU is the author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn and Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina. He is a critic for The New Republic and a professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He lives in New York City."
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February 5, 2025
I just read Suze Rotolo’s memoir about the early sixties with Dylan in Greenwich Village, so it made sense to read this book, which in part focuses on Dylan and the woman that “replaced” Rotolo, Joan Baez. Rotolo is not much mentioned in this book except as Dylan’s first real girlfriend--a child of American Communists--and as with Baez, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger--a major influence on his early political song-writing.
This is a really good book by a Columbia University Journalism Professor David Hajdu, who can really write, as opposed to a lot of hack writers on music and musicians. And he has no axe to grind. In general he writes about four young, creative, ambitious people whose lives intersected for a time and had an impact on a generation.
I have read other biographies of Dylan, so it is interesting to read Hajdu’s take on his early years and three close friends for a time who were also key to the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early sixties, also "blowing up" (we wouldn't have used that phrase in the anti-nuke sixties) to national prominence: Joan Baez, who was for a time the Queen of Folk, with her formal, somewhat reserved, classical style and that clear-as-a-bell voice, who became a political activist; Dylan, the scruffy poet with the unconventionally scruffy voice who emerged as the most brilliant musician and writer of the four (though maybe not the best person) and of his generation; Mimi (Baez) Farina, Joan's younger sister, a fine singer in her own right, and good guitar player who at seventeen married Richard Farina, a writer and sometime folkie.
So young, creative, competitive, jealous; Bob really liked Mimi, Richard really liked Joan. . . Bob was jealous of Richard's writing and so wrote Tarantula; Dick was jealous of Dylan's musical success, so picked up a dulcimer and worked up music with young wife Mimi.
Fun facts:
*Farina's novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, was published April 28, 1966, the 21st birthday of his wife Mimi and also the day he died in a motorcycle accident.
*Like Dylan, Richard Farina was seen as a “fabulist,” as distinct from a liar, which implies ill-intent, maybe. Farina and Dylan made up all sorts of stories about themselves. The four of them were raised in comfortable middle-class homes, in suburbia, but Dylan and Farina pretended to be be Beat, hoboes. They were wild to hang with, but both could be mean.
*Joan Baez and her sister Mimi (who eventually took the last name of Richard Farina, were both musicians, Mimi younger, less famous but still well known in the scene. They all dabble in politics and literature without reading all that deeply; hey, they’re young! It was the sixties! And did so many drugs it is hard to believe anything got done at all.
*Richard's best man in his marriage was Thomas Pynchon! He was Farina’s Cornell University friend, who also wrote the introduction to Farina’s novel.
*Joan is not seen as particularly generous with others; more competitive. Her first Vanguard album sort of exploded, a best seller, a first in the folk scene. She was a sort of traditional folk singer of English ballads at first, not a singer songwriter such as Joni Mitchell. Well, all of them were competitive with each other and others; the boys especially wanted fame and fortune, and Dylan and Baez certainly got it.
*The portrait of Dylan here is not very warm. Early on he broke into the folk scene and then became an anti-war and civil rights singer, until he shape-shifted, as he has done his whole career.
Dylan said, "I don't have to B.S. anybody like those guys up on Broadway that're always writin' about 'I'm hot for you and you're hot for me--ooka dooka dicka dee.' There's other things in the world besides love and sex that're important, too. People shouldn't turn their backs on 'em just because they ain't pretty to look at. How is the world ever gonna get any better if we're afraid to look at these things.”
But then he decided not to look at those things quite as much, perhaps overwhelmed and resentful as a young man by all the pressure he felt to be a social justice icon, to be the protest singer spokesman for a generation, so he turned to poetry and electric as Joan got more politically active. And according to Hadju, he got for a time out of control with fame, and got mean and crazy. He was asked why he worked his way into folk and social justice music, and he said, "Because I had to start somewhere, and because it sold." Ouch. His main model was Woody Guthrie, whose hobo style and even biography he copied, to some extent early on.
Dylan left Joan for Sara Lownds, who became his wife, 1965-77. After a 1966 motorcycle accident (6 months after Farina’s fatal crash, though it is disputed to ever have happened, as he never was hospitalized) when his baby Jesse was 5 months old, Dylan “got out of the rat race” for eight years in Woodstock with his new family, four children in roughly five years and adopting Sara’s first child.
*Dylan was especially mean to Baez in the break-up, but he never lost touch with her, or maybe it is she that never quite gave up on him, seeing him as troubled but brilliant. In Reynaldo & Clara, a film Dylan made, Sara played Clara, and Baez played “a woman in white.” Early on she heard “Masters of War, and said, "I never thought anything so powerful could come out of that little toad.” Dylan was to live with Baez again for several weeks after his breakup with Sara, and toured with him again in the late seventies Rolling Thunder tour, and again in the eighties. {In 2024 Dylan said he regretted his tretament of Baez during that time when fame at such a young age took over his mind).
.
The lyrics to Dylan’s angry song, “Positively Fourth Street," assumed to be his diatribe against the Greenwich Village folk crowd whom he felt had criticized his shift to electric and his abandonment of political commitments:
https://www.google.com/search?q=posit...
A good soci0-cultural history of a period of joy and turmoil, I liked it a lot. It basically ends with that crazy day of Farina's death, one kind of ending punctuation to a time, like the Stones at Altamont.
This is a really good book by a Columbia University Journalism Professor David Hajdu, who can really write, as opposed to a lot of hack writers on music and musicians. And he has no axe to grind. In general he writes about four young, creative, ambitious people whose lives intersected for a time and had an impact on a generation.
I have read other biographies of Dylan, so it is interesting to read Hajdu’s take on his early years and three close friends for a time who were also key to the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early sixties, also "blowing up" (we wouldn't have used that phrase in the anti-nuke sixties) to national prominence: Joan Baez, who was for a time the Queen of Folk, with her formal, somewhat reserved, classical style and that clear-as-a-bell voice, who became a political activist; Dylan, the scruffy poet with the unconventionally scruffy voice who emerged as the most brilliant musician and writer of the four (though maybe not the best person) and of his generation; Mimi (Baez) Farina, Joan's younger sister, a fine singer in her own right, and good guitar player who at seventeen married Richard Farina, a writer and sometime folkie.
So young, creative, competitive, jealous; Bob really liked Mimi, Richard really liked Joan. . . Bob was jealous of Richard's writing and so wrote Tarantula; Dick was jealous of Dylan's musical success, so picked up a dulcimer and worked up music with young wife Mimi.
Fun facts:
*Farina's novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, was published April 28, 1966, the 21st birthday of his wife Mimi and also the day he died in a motorcycle accident.
*Like Dylan, Richard Farina was seen as a “fabulist,” as distinct from a liar, which implies ill-intent, maybe. Farina and Dylan made up all sorts of stories about themselves. The four of them were raised in comfortable middle-class homes, in suburbia, but Dylan and Farina pretended to be be Beat, hoboes. They were wild to hang with, but both could be mean.
*Joan Baez and her sister Mimi (who eventually took the last name of Richard Farina, were both musicians, Mimi younger, less famous but still well known in the scene. They all dabble in politics and literature without reading all that deeply; hey, they’re young! It was the sixties! And did so many drugs it is hard to believe anything got done at all.
*Richard's best man in his marriage was Thomas Pynchon! He was Farina’s Cornell University friend, who also wrote the introduction to Farina’s novel.
*Joan is not seen as particularly generous with others; more competitive. Her first Vanguard album sort of exploded, a best seller, a first in the folk scene. She was a sort of traditional folk singer of English ballads at first, not a singer songwriter such as Joni Mitchell. Well, all of them were competitive with each other and others; the boys especially wanted fame and fortune, and Dylan and Baez certainly got it.
*The portrait of Dylan here is not very warm. Early on he broke into the folk scene and then became an anti-war and civil rights singer, until he shape-shifted, as he has done his whole career.
Dylan said, "I don't have to B.S. anybody like those guys up on Broadway that're always writin' about 'I'm hot for you and you're hot for me--ooka dooka dicka dee.' There's other things in the world besides love and sex that're important, too. People shouldn't turn their backs on 'em just because they ain't pretty to look at. How is the world ever gonna get any better if we're afraid to look at these things.”
But then he decided not to look at those things quite as much, perhaps overwhelmed and resentful as a young man by all the pressure he felt to be a social justice icon, to be the protest singer spokesman for a generation, so he turned to poetry and electric as Joan got more politically active. And according to Hadju, he got for a time out of control with fame, and got mean and crazy. He was asked why he worked his way into folk and social justice music, and he said, "Because I had to start somewhere, and because it sold." Ouch. His main model was Woody Guthrie, whose hobo style and even biography he copied, to some extent early on.
Dylan left Joan for Sara Lownds, who became his wife, 1965-77. After a 1966 motorcycle accident (6 months after Farina’s fatal crash, though it is disputed to ever have happened, as he never was hospitalized) when his baby Jesse was 5 months old, Dylan “got out of the rat race” for eight years in Woodstock with his new family, four children in roughly five years and adopting Sara’s first child.
*Dylan was especially mean to Baez in the break-up, but he never lost touch with her, or maybe it is she that never quite gave up on him, seeing him as troubled but brilliant. In Reynaldo & Clara, a film Dylan made, Sara played Clara, and Baez played “a woman in white.” Early on she heard “Masters of War, and said, "I never thought anything so powerful could come out of that little toad.” Dylan was to live with Baez again for several weeks after his breakup with Sara, and toured with him again in the late seventies Rolling Thunder tour, and again in the eighties. {In 2024 Dylan said he regretted his tretament of Baez during that time when fame at such a young age took over his mind).
.
The lyrics to Dylan’s angry song, “Positively Fourth Street," assumed to be his diatribe against the Greenwich Village folk crowd whom he felt had criticized his shift to electric and his abandonment of political commitments:
https://www.google.com/search?q=posit...
A good soci0-cultural history of a period of joy and turmoil, I liked it a lot. It basically ends with that crazy day of Farina's death, one kind of ending punctuation to a time, like the Stones at Altamont.
August 9, 2007
Bob Dylan looks like a real asshole in this book. Maybe he was?
September 10, 2023
I picked up Positively 4th Street because of my ongoing fascination with the Greenwich Village folk revival scene. While this book keeps a close focus on the quartet of characters listed in its subtitle — Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina — Baez and Dylan were the marquee names to come out of the Village scene, so it fit what I was looking for.
I have enjoyed both Baez’s and Dylan’s music, but wouldn’t say I’m particularly a fan of either. And reading this book of their early years in the folk scene and the music business, I can’t say that either of them came off as particularly likable. Beyond his talent, Dylan seemed to lack any redeeming qualities, and comes off here almost as sociopathic. Baez fared better, but the impression I was left with was that she was both naive and shallow.
I knew little about the Farina’s before I read Positively 4th Street. Mimi I knew only from a couple of references in Dave Van Ronk’s memoir (The Mayor of MacDougal Street). I was aware that Richard Farina was significant in the scene at that time, knew about his novel (and that it’s a classic of that period) and had read Rod McKuen’s poem about him and his tragic death, but that was it. He was the most intriguing character here — a talented and ambitious huckster, driven to make a mark, compelled to live large — a man whose very real charm led people to forgive his faults.
David Hajdu is a truly talented writer. He managed to write about a group of entitled, naive, often overbearing young people whom I didn’t particularly like, and made it fascinating reading from start to finish. His details, research, and word play kept the book constantly engaging. If you have any interest in the 1960s scene where music and politics and social change all were in the air, and a bunch of 20 somethings were leading the way, check his book out.
I have enjoyed both Baez’s and Dylan’s music, but wouldn’t say I’m particularly a fan of either. And reading this book of their early years in the folk scene and the music business, I can’t say that either of them came off as particularly likable. Beyond his talent, Dylan seemed to lack any redeeming qualities, and comes off here almost as sociopathic. Baez fared better, but the impression I was left with was that she was both naive and shallow.
I knew little about the Farina’s before I read Positively 4th Street. Mimi I knew only from a couple of references in Dave Van Ronk’s memoir (The Mayor of MacDougal Street). I was aware that Richard Farina was significant in the scene at that time, knew about his novel (and that it’s a classic of that period) and had read Rod McKuen’s poem about him and his tragic death, but that was it. He was the most intriguing character here — a talented and ambitious huckster, driven to make a mark, compelled to live large — a man whose very real charm led people to forgive his faults.
David Hajdu is a truly talented writer. He managed to write about a group of entitled, naive, often overbearing young people whom I didn’t particularly like, and made it fascinating reading from start to finish. His details, research, and word play kept the book constantly engaging. If you have any interest in the 1960s scene where music and politics and social change all were in the air, and a bunch of 20 somethings were leading the way, check his book out.
February 17, 2023
Nice Folk Music history with more of an emphasis on what an asshole (author’s opinion- not mine) Bob Dylan is/was as opposed to the genius who was Richard Farina.
Also some delicious gossip on Joan Baez - like how she stole all of her onstage persona and repertoire from a young female folksinger working the Folk clubs around Cambridge and Boston.
Nice writing but the grudge against Dylan stands out.
Read this 5-7 years ago.
Also some delicious gossip on Joan Baez - like how she stole all of her onstage persona and repertoire from a young female folksinger working the Folk clubs around Cambridge and Boston.
Nice writing but the grudge against Dylan stands out.
Read this 5-7 years ago.
December 28, 2007
I picked this up during a time I was really into Farina and was wishing there was a good biography of him and the story behind BEEN DOWN SO LONG IT LOOKS LIKE UP TO ME. It's not many people, after all, who can claim to have gone to college with Thomas Pynchon and C. Michael Curtis and then become a near-brother-in-law to Dylan. The book is strong on the cafe culture of the late 50s and early 60s. Dylan fans will no doubt feel a bit defensive bc Mr. Zimmerman is treated more as a human than a deity. The sympathy of the book is with the Baez sisters, Joan and Mimi, who remain underrated both as public figures and entertainers. Ultimately, the book does a nice job of capturing an era; it doesn't quite emphasize the point that folk was as much show business as any other musical form as I would have liked, but then maybe that's not the real purpose here. I also recommend readers go find the Richard and Mimi Farina Vanguard releases talked about in here---they won't be to everyone's taste, but Mimi had a great voice. As does Joan (still).
January 5, 2012
I considered reading Positively 4th Street when it first came out, but never got around to it. I considered reading Hajdu's second book, Lush Life, but never got around to it. But when The Ten-Cent Plague, his third book, was published I couldn't resist, it seemed like it would be such a fun book and it was. So naturally I went and got a copy of this book, the subject of which I was familiar, i.e., the tragic story of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Richard and Mimi Fariña.
I've never been a big fan of Dylan or Baez although I have albums of both, which I've always enjoyed. Nor was I fan of Richard Fariña's now cult classic novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Up, which I only got around to reading recently though I bought the book in the early 70s (see my review). Now, his wife on the other hand, Joan's sister Mimi, I recall being enamoured of in my adolescence.
I always thought that Mimi Baez was the most beautiful girl to come of age in the sixties. No other girl at that time, be it Pattie Boyd, Julie Christie, Brigitte Bardot or Edie Sedgwick, captured my attention the way she did. I first noticed her on that poster she appeared on with her sisters, the now infamous anti-draft poster "Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say No." (Hajdu didn't doesn't mention the poster in the book, though, in his defense, it happened after the timeline of the book, I believe)
My family lived in Carmel at the same time as the four of them and we would see Joan and Bob tooling around in her Jaguar XKE, just hair and noses going by too fast for the more conservative townspeople who barely tolerated the beatnik artists and musicians as it was. I don't think Joan ever let Bob drive.
Anyway, I enjoyed the book tremendously. It was well-researched and well-written and is an intriguing story that not just anyone would have thought worth telling, which is true of his other books, as well. And it really is a tragic story of star-crossed lovers, to borrow a Shakespearian phrase. I don't think I'm giving away anything since it's well known how the story ends with two motorcycle accidents, the one in which Fariña is killed and Dylan's, which would so greatly alter the course of his life and music.
Hajdu's hypothesis, which he probably doesn't spend enough time trying to prove, is that these four people had a direct, or in some ways, indirect and subtle, influence on the music and culture of the sixties. Dylan and Baez, definitely, and Fariña with his book, which was the On the Road of the 60s, but also, with the music of the Fariñas. It was they, not Dylan, that first created a fusion of folk and rock. When you listen to Mimi's guitar playing and Richard's dulcimer you realize the influence they must have had over musicians such as Cat Stevens, Eric Burdon and the Byrds.
If you have any interest in 60s culture, the folk scene or folk-rock or in real-life tragic stories, this book is a must.
I've never been a big fan of Dylan or Baez although I have albums of both, which I've always enjoyed. Nor was I fan of Richard Fariña's now cult classic novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Up, which I only got around to reading recently though I bought the book in the early 70s (see my review). Now, his wife on the other hand, Joan's sister Mimi, I recall being enamoured of in my adolescence.
I always thought that Mimi Baez was the most beautiful girl to come of age in the sixties. No other girl at that time, be it Pattie Boyd, Julie Christie, Brigitte Bardot or Edie Sedgwick, captured my attention the way she did. I first noticed her on that poster she appeared on with her sisters, the now infamous anti-draft poster "Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say No." (Hajdu didn't doesn't mention the poster in the book, though, in his defense, it happened after the timeline of the book, I believe)
My family lived in Carmel at the same time as the four of them and we would see Joan and Bob tooling around in her Jaguar XKE, just hair and noses going by too fast for the more conservative townspeople who barely tolerated the beatnik artists and musicians as it was. I don't think Joan ever let Bob drive.
Anyway, I enjoyed the book tremendously. It was well-researched and well-written and is an intriguing story that not just anyone would have thought worth telling, which is true of his other books, as well. And it really is a tragic story of star-crossed lovers, to borrow a Shakespearian phrase. I don't think I'm giving away anything since it's well known how the story ends with two motorcycle accidents, the one in which Fariña is killed and Dylan's, which would so greatly alter the course of his life and music.
Hajdu's hypothesis, which he probably doesn't spend enough time trying to prove, is that these four people had a direct, or in some ways, indirect and subtle, influence on the music and culture of the sixties. Dylan and Baez, definitely, and Fariña with his book, which was the On the Road of the 60s, but also, with the music of the Fariñas. It was they, not Dylan, that first created a fusion of folk and rock. When you listen to Mimi's guitar playing and Richard's dulcimer you realize the influence they must have had over musicians such as Cat Stevens, Eric Burdon and the Byrds.
If you have any interest in 60s culture, the folk scene or folk-rock or in real-life tragic stories, this book is a must.
May 30, 2021
I am not quite sure how I could have been unaware of this book since it was published in 2001. The audible book that I listen to was created in 2002. It is odd in a way that I am coincidentally listening to this book this week which began on Monday with the 80th birthday of Bob Dylan. How could Bob Dylan possibly be 80?
This goes back to the history of folk Music in the early 1960s. I am an admirer of Joan Baez for a very long time and everybody knows Bob Dylan. I learned quite a bit about these two well known and yet unknown famous personalities. This book exposes their foibles and I have to say that I am sorry to find that they don’t come across as particularly wonderful people.
The book does not bring the primary characters dealt with in the book beyond the 1960s. I was delighted to discover some things about some personalities that I had mostly known only through their public persona.
There is a substantial bibliography at the end of the e-book that is probably a valuable resource for people wanting to know more about the people and events during this period of time.
This goes back to the history of folk Music in the early 1960s. I am an admirer of Joan Baez for a very long time and everybody knows Bob Dylan. I learned quite a bit about these two well known and yet unknown famous personalities. This book exposes their foibles and I have to say that I am sorry to find that they don’t come across as particularly wonderful people.
The book does not bring the primary characters dealt with in the book beyond the 1960s. I was delighted to discover some things about some personalities that I had mostly known only through their public persona.
There is a substantial bibliography at the end of the e-book that is probably a valuable resource for people wanting to know more about the people and events during this period of time.
September 10, 2008
Man, Joan Baez is fucking irritating.
July 13, 2018
A very well-researched book on the Star Is Born-type love affair between the two leading lights of the Protest Music movement of the early Sixties, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. The book is controversial for its scathing portrayal of Dylan as an insensitive control freak with a contrived All About Eve past, but it will be up to the reader to make that judgment.
I found the revelation of Baez as cosmopolitan hipster with her expensive digs, fashionable clothes and Jag XKE to be pretty amusing. At best, I want to thank Mr. Hajdu for turning me on to the great Eric Von Schmidt. What a cool artist!
I found the revelation of Baez as cosmopolitan hipster with her expensive digs, fashionable clothes and Jag XKE to be pretty amusing. At best, I want to thank Mr. Hajdu for turning me on to the great Eric Von Schmidt. What a cool artist!
February 18, 2008
while much has been written about the king and queen of folk, there is remarkably less to be found about richard fariña & mimi baez. this book chronicles the early years of the scene, from the late 1950's through the mid-1960's. it is an interesting read, and was clearly researched quite thoroughly (hajdu even scored interviews with fariña's notoriously media-wary college roommate & famed novelist, thomas pynchon).
to me, the most fascinating parts of the book dealt with richard & mimi. fariña's life was quite nearly inconceivable, and his talent was ascending greatly at the time of his death. if you haven't already, any of the three mimi & richard fariña albums are well worth checking out as well, as are fariña's two books.
to me, the most fascinating parts of the book dealt with richard & mimi. fariña's life was quite nearly inconceivable, and his talent was ascending greatly at the time of his death. if you haven't already, any of the three mimi & richard fariña albums are well worth checking out as well, as are fariña's two books.
January 2, 2022
POSITIVELY 4th STREET
The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan,
Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina
By David Hajdu
Readers looking for a nostalgia trip in Positively 4th Street - a sunny return visit to Greenwich Village in the early '60s, with its coffeehouses and folkies and poetry readings - will be surprised if not disappointed. David Hajdu is far too clear-minded and honest a writer to serve up sentimental pabulum. Instead, he has written a book about ambition and image-making, the central passage of which is to be found in his account of Bob Dylan's "first major work of imagination - his own persona."
Hajdu writes:
"Performers had always changed their names and adopted professional images that diverged from their biographies. Indeed, transformation has always been part of the American idea: in the New World, anyone can become a new person. The irony of Robert Zimmerman's metamorphosis into Bob Dylan lies in the application of so much illusion and artifice in the name of truth and authenticity. Archie Leach and Norma Jean Baker became Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe when they went into show business; but folk [music] was supposed to be neither business nor show. Embraced as an alternative to mainstream commercial entertainment by a generation that considered itself smarter and more serious than its predecessors, the folk movement propagated an aesthetic of veracity. It ostensibly celebrated the rural and the natural, the untrained, the unspoiled - the pure. . . . Folk would accommodate [ambitious middle-class kids] and their ambitions, no matter who they really were, as long as they could create the illusion of artlessness, and Bob did so giftedly."
So too did Joan Baez, with whom Dylan had a prolonged affair that paid handsome dividends for his career, and so did Richard Farina, who systematically -- if not outright schemingly -- "capitalized on his personal associations for self-advancement." Though none was a child of privilege, all came from reasonably comfortable circumstances yet found it in their interests to fictionalize their middle-class histories (as Dylan and Farina did) or simply ignore them (as Baez did). In order to accommodate the "folk aesthetic," which by the late '50s was becoming popular among "young people seeking their own identity in the shadow of the World War II generation," they reinvented themselves as faithful to the "antihero mythos -- a sense of the music as the property of outcasts, drawn in part from the idiom's romantic portrayal of bad men and underdogs, murderers hanged, lovers scorned, and in part from the mystique surrounding folk characters such as Woody Guthrie, the hobo roustabout, and Leadbelly, an ex-convict."
Baez came first. She was still a teenager when, in 1958, she began singing in the coffeehouses that were springing up around Boston, but she had an adult's drive and purposefulness. Blessed with a distinctive voice -- "a ringing mezzo-soprano with an unusually forceful vibrato" -- she quickly learned how to project "an air of regality or ethereality"; she also learned how to sing other singers' songs, copying their arrangements, intonations and interpretations, and picking up a number of rivals, if not enemies, along the way. She developed an "image," in her own words, "of innocence and purity," and she "took that image very seriously," playing it for all it was worth in her singleminded campaign to become Queen of Folk: "I remember thinking, when people compared me and my image to the Virgin Mary, 'That sounds good to me. Hey -- that took her pretty far.' "
But the shamelessness of her ambition was nothing by contrast to Farin~a's. Smart, charming, likeable, handsome, forceful, charismatic, he got to Cornell in the 1950s and quickly established a literary reputation. He "cultivated relationships with faculty members and fellow students who he thought could help realize his literary dreams." Among the former was Herbert Gold, and among the latter was Thomas Pynchon, who remained his friend thereafter; Pynchon's contributions to this book -- he communicated with Hajdu via fax -- are perceptive, affectionate, and uniformly engaging.
Part of Farina’s problem was that he had too many talents and didn't seem to know which to develop. When, in 1963, he married Baez's younger sister, Mimi, herself a gifted guitarist and singer, he veered off into a strange musical career of his own, but his real gift was for writing, as the publication in 1966 of his only novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, made plain.
Farina died in a motorcycle accident days after the book came out. His death, like Buddy Holly's and Jimmy Dean's, was instantly romanticized and remains so to this day, but it is difficult to become infatuated with the Farina mythology after reading Hajdu's account of his life and career. This is not to say that Hajdu is unsympathetic to Farina -- quite to the contrary, he finds much to like in him, not least that "he revelled in the act of living" -- but that the evidence Hajdu presents tends to convict him on his own. As Farina began to court Mimi Baez, her sister Joan saw him as "a glory-hungry bluebeard who had to be stopped before he hurt the whole Baez family." Though she later revised that view, there seems ample reason -- "Guess what?" he shouted to a friend. "I'm going to marry Joan Baez's sister!" -- to believe that Joan was the prize he had his eyes on, and that Mimi, who seems to have loved him absolutely, was yet another person to be used in the furtherance of his ambitions.
Obviously the most accomplished of the four people at the centre of Hajdu's tale is Dylan, and also the most enigmatic. Though Hajdu does write about the evolution of his music, his principal focus is on Dylan's relationship with Baez. It seems to have been a singular mixture of personal affection, sexual attraction, and mutual exploitation. Dylan was little known but passionately ambitious when, in 1961, Farina told him that Baez could be "your ticket, man," and added with transcendent cynicism: "All you need to do, man, is start screwing Joan Baez." Two years later the two appeared together at the Monterey Folk Festival in California, she invited him to visit her house nearby in the Carmel Highlands, and by that summer they were having an affair.
To what extent Dylan entered it in Farina’s spirit and to what extent genuine feelings and desires were involved presumably never will be known. Dylan didn't talk to Hajdu; and Baez, though she did, can speak only for her own emotions. There can be no doubt, though, that once they began appearing together in public, once she began singing his songs, once their romance became an item for folkie gossip and wish-projection, Dylan's career took off. Though one would like to think that Dylan's motives were decent as well as opportunistic, he certainly would not be the first person to use the casting couch for career advantage. He admitted as much when he told his biographer Robert Shelton, "I rode on Joan, man. You know? I'm not proud of it."
All in all, not a pretty picture. Whether this orgy of backscratching, sabotaging and coattail-riding produced enough music and literature of merit to justify how it was created and promoted is no doubt in the ears of the listener and the eyes of the beholder. As one who can scarcely remember Farina’s novel, who cannot abide the sound of Joan Baez's voice (not to mention her infantile politics), and who regards Dylan as wildly overrated, I obviously have my own opinions. But that is not the point of this book, or at least does not seem so to me. Positively 4th Street is about the real world in which "art" often gets made, a world where cynicism and exploitation and self-dramatization are as commonplace as they are in the supposedly less exalted world that the rest of us inhabit. It is also a book about the self-delusion of the '60s counterculture, in which middle-class ambition and self-interest played at least as large a role as peace and love and flowers.
The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan,
Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina
By David Hajdu
Readers looking for a nostalgia trip in Positively 4th Street - a sunny return visit to Greenwich Village in the early '60s, with its coffeehouses and folkies and poetry readings - will be surprised if not disappointed. David Hajdu is far too clear-minded and honest a writer to serve up sentimental pabulum. Instead, he has written a book about ambition and image-making, the central passage of which is to be found in his account of Bob Dylan's "first major work of imagination - his own persona."
Hajdu writes:
"Performers had always changed their names and adopted professional images that diverged from their biographies. Indeed, transformation has always been part of the American idea: in the New World, anyone can become a new person. The irony of Robert Zimmerman's metamorphosis into Bob Dylan lies in the application of so much illusion and artifice in the name of truth and authenticity. Archie Leach and Norma Jean Baker became Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe when they went into show business; but folk [music] was supposed to be neither business nor show. Embraced as an alternative to mainstream commercial entertainment by a generation that considered itself smarter and more serious than its predecessors, the folk movement propagated an aesthetic of veracity. It ostensibly celebrated the rural and the natural, the untrained, the unspoiled - the pure. . . . Folk would accommodate [ambitious middle-class kids] and their ambitions, no matter who they really were, as long as they could create the illusion of artlessness, and Bob did so giftedly."
So too did Joan Baez, with whom Dylan had a prolonged affair that paid handsome dividends for his career, and so did Richard Farina, who systematically -- if not outright schemingly -- "capitalized on his personal associations for self-advancement." Though none was a child of privilege, all came from reasonably comfortable circumstances yet found it in their interests to fictionalize their middle-class histories (as Dylan and Farina did) or simply ignore them (as Baez did). In order to accommodate the "folk aesthetic," which by the late '50s was becoming popular among "young people seeking their own identity in the shadow of the World War II generation," they reinvented themselves as faithful to the "antihero mythos -- a sense of the music as the property of outcasts, drawn in part from the idiom's romantic portrayal of bad men and underdogs, murderers hanged, lovers scorned, and in part from the mystique surrounding folk characters such as Woody Guthrie, the hobo roustabout, and Leadbelly, an ex-convict."
Baez came first. She was still a teenager when, in 1958, she began singing in the coffeehouses that were springing up around Boston, but she had an adult's drive and purposefulness. Blessed with a distinctive voice -- "a ringing mezzo-soprano with an unusually forceful vibrato" -- she quickly learned how to project "an air of regality or ethereality"; she also learned how to sing other singers' songs, copying their arrangements, intonations and interpretations, and picking up a number of rivals, if not enemies, along the way. She developed an "image," in her own words, "of innocence and purity," and she "took that image very seriously," playing it for all it was worth in her singleminded campaign to become Queen of Folk: "I remember thinking, when people compared me and my image to the Virgin Mary, 'That sounds good to me. Hey -- that took her pretty far.' "
But the shamelessness of her ambition was nothing by contrast to Farin~a's. Smart, charming, likeable, handsome, forceful, charismatic, he got to Cornell in the 1950s and quickly established a literary reputation. He "cultivated relationships with faculty members and fellow students who he thought could help realize his literary dreams." Among the former was Herbert Gold, and among the latter was Thomas Pynchon, who remained his friend thereafter; Pynchon's contributions to this book -- he communicated with Hajdu via fax -- are perceptive, affectionate, and uniformly engaging.
Part of Farina’s problem was that he had too many talents and didn't seem to know which to develop. When, in 1963, he married Baez's younger sister, Mimi, herself a gifted guitarist and singer, he veered off into a strange musical career of his own, but his real gift was for writing, as the publication in 1966 of his only novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, made plain.
Farina died in a motorcycle accident days after the book came out. His death, like Buddy Holly's and Jimmy Dean's, was instantly romanticized and remains so to this day, but it is difficult to become infatuated with the Farina mythology after reading Hajdu's account of his life and career. This is not to say that Hajdu is unsympathetic to Farina -- quite to the contrary, he finds much to like in him, not least that "he revelled in the act of living" -- but that the evidence Hajdu presents tends to convict him on his own. As Farina began to court Mimi Baez, her sister Joan saw him as "a glory-hungry bluebeard who had to be stopped before he hurt the whole Baez family." Though she later revised that view, there seems ample reason -- "Guess what?" he shouted to a friend. "I'm going to marry Joan Baez's sister!" -- to believe that Joan was the prize he had his eyes on, and that Mimi, who seems to have loved him absolutely, was yet another person to be used in the furtherance of his ambitions.
Obviously the most accomplished of the four people at the centre of Hajdu's tale is Dylan, and also the most enigmatic. Though Hajdu does write about the evolution of his music, his principal focus is on Dylan's relationship with Baez. It seems to have been a singular mixture of personal affection, sexual attraction, and mutual exploitation. Dylan was little known but passionately ambitious when, in 1961, Farina told him that Baez could be "your ticket, man," and added with transcendent cynicism: "All you need to do, man, is start screwing Joan Baez." Two years later the two appeared together at the Monterey Folk Festival in California, she invited him to visit her house nearby in the Carmel Highlands, and by that summer they were having an affair.
To what extent Dylan entered it in Farina’s spirit and to what extent genuine feelings and desires were involved presumably never will be known. Dylan didn't talk to Hajdu; and Baez, though she did, can speak only for her own emotions. There can be no doubt, though, that once they began appearing together in public, once she began singing his songs, once their romance became an item for folkie gossip and wish-projection, Dylan's career took off. Though one would like to think that Dylan's motives were decent as well as opportunistic, he certainly would not be the first person to use the casting couch for career advantage. He admitted as much when he told his biographer Robert Shelton, "I rode on Joan, man. You know? I'm not proud of it."
All in all, not a pretty picture. Whether this orgy of backscratching, sabotaging and coattail-riding produced enough music and literature of merit to justify how it was created and promoted is no doubt in the ears of the listener and the eyes of the beholder. As one who can scarcely remember Farina’s novel, who cannot abide the sound of Joan Baez's voice (not to mention her infantile politics), and who regards Dylan as wildly overrated, I obviously have my own opinions. But that is not the point of this book, or at least does not seem so to me. Positively 4th Street is about the real world in which "art" often gets made, a world where cynicism and exploitation and self-dramatization are as commonplace as they are in the supposedly less exalted world that the rest of us inhabit. It is also a book about the self-delusion of the '60s counterculture, in which middle-class ambition and self-interest played at least as large a role as peace and love and flowers.
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March 6, 2025Mi compañía durante los viajes del Carnaval. Me gustó mucho, aun siendo un libro bastante anti Dylan en general. Y la verdad que si, Dylan es el peor tipo del mundo. No es que no lo haya sabido antes, pero se hace duro leer recopiladas todas las forradas que le hizo a Joan en esos años.
Igualmente creo que el autor se equivoca extendiendo su rechazo personal hacia lo artistico. Digamos que lo ningunea en varias ocasiones, no le gusta Song to Woody, es algo despectivo con Freewhelin' y Another side…
Algo parecido sentí con la comparación recurrente que hace el autor entre Dylan y Fariña. El paralelismo me gusta y funciona, ademas la relacion de ambos como frenemies (o como quieras llamarle) es muy divertida, pero creo que el autor cae en la doble vara a partir del desagrado que siente por Dylan. Cuando Dylan miente sobre su pasado es un chamuyero y fantasma, pero cuando lo hace Fariña es un fabulador querible. Cuando Dylan empieza a tocar rock, en realidad Fariña lo había hecho antes. Cuando Dylan publica Tarantula, es en realidad porque quería imitar a Fariña. Y asi con todo. Hasta hay una historia de dudosa veracidad en donde se dice que se enganchó con Joan Baez porque se lo recomendó el otro para hacerse famoso (acá no es que ponga las manos en el fuego por la moral de Dylan, simplemente me parece una anecdota inchequeable).
Obviamente Fariña es la estrella del libro, sin animo de faltar el respeto a las geniales hermanas Baez. Además de la relación con Dylan es retratado como un tipo muy querible, que era talentoso para practicamente todo. Es difícil no sentir que lo están romantizado demasiado habido su trágico final, pero algo debia tener porque hasta el elusivo Thomas Pynchon colaboró con este libro. Era su mejor amigo! Increíble.
Y la verdad, aun sin haber leído a Fariña jamas, con este libro lamenté mucho su perdida, el relato de su accidente fatal en el mejor momento de su vida es muy triste. Quien sabe hasta donde podría haber llegado.
Igualmente creo que el autor se equivoca extendiendo su rechazo personal hacia lo artistico. Digamos que lo ningunea en varias ocasiones, no le gusta Song to Woody, es algo despectivo con Freewhelin' y Another side…
Algo parecido sentí con la comparación recurrente que hace el autor entre Dylan y Fariña. El paralelismo me gusta y funciona, ademas la relacion de ambos como frenemies (o como quieras llamarle) es muy divertida, pero creo que el autor cae en la doble vara a partir del desagrado que siente por Dylan. Cuando Dylan miente sobre su pasado es un chamuyero y fantasma, pero cuando lo hace Fariña es un fabulador querible. Cuando Dylan empieza a tocar rock, en realidad Fariña lo había hecho antes. Cuando Dylan publica Tarantula, es en realidad porque quería imitar a Fariña. Y asi con todo. Hasta hay una historia de dudosa veracidad en donde se dice que se enganchó con Joan Baez porque se lo recomendó el otro para hacerse famoso (acá no es que ponga las manos en el fuego por la moral de Dylan, simplemente me parece una anecdota inchequeable).
Obviamente Fariña es la estrella del libro, sin animo de faltar el respeto a las geniales hermanas Baez. Además de la relación con Dylan es retratado como un tipo muy querible, que era talentoso para practicamente todo. Es difícil no sentir que lo están romantizado demasiado habido su trágico final, pero algo debia tener porque hasta el elusivo Thomas Pynchon colaboró con este libro. Era su mejor amigo! Increíble.
Y la verdad, aun sin haber leído a Fariña jamas, con este libro lamenté mucho su perdida, el relato de su accidente fatal en el mejor momento de su vida es muy triste. Quien sabe hasta donde podría haber llegado.
September 12, 2012
David Hadju was pretty ambitious taking on a four headed biography where each of the subjects could have (and some do) their own books devoted to them. To be honest, I wasn't even aware of Mimi and Richard Farina before this. Despite these things, Hadju pulls it off with an interesting "he-said-she-said" style which reveals the surprising roots of the folk revival.
When I started reading I was a bit concerned, it seemed a bit "Baez-centric." Dylan wasn't even mentioned until something like 60 pages in. It was a slow start but once it picked up and the four major characters/subjects had their introductions, the pace went surprisingly better than expected. I found myself getting invested in Farina - contemplating if he was a decent guy or a hack or an opportunist or brilliant (and apparently I wasn't alone in these contemplations). Farina stole the show for me, which seems all to appropriate.
Hadju successfully de-deified Dylan for me. He definitely gets hit the hardest with critiques from his actions and commentary from friends. It doesn't disqualify his brilliance for me, but changes the perspective of "why" I think he's brilliant and taking him with a grain of salt.
Everyone knows that on the Internet 3/5 stars makes it look like you think "this book sucks" - I really wish Goodreads had a decimal option - but I actually really enjoyed this piece. It would have gotten a 4/5 if it hadn't been for a few issues. Mainly how abrupt it finished. I thought it was strange that the book was so short when I started it, but I didn't expect it to end so flat. The artists' later careers are legacies and influence are left as feeling "unimportant" by their conspicuous absence. Hadju's commitment to sources was brilliant and gives "Positively 4th Street" a lot of authority. My only complaint in this regard is the amount of names and people I had to try and keep track of in my head. At time I felt like I was reading Tolstoy or something with all the names and references being thrown around. For someone who doesn't know EVERY detail and all the minor characters of the folk era, it is hard to tell who you should keep track of in your head as being important.
After reading this listening to the music of these musicians will be much different, but more fulfilling. It's made me hungry to read more in depth into each of them. This is a fantastic palette of the rise and fall of the 60s folk scene.
When I started reading I was a bit concerned, it seemed a bit "Baez-centric." Dylan wasn't even mentioned until something like 60 pages in. It was a slow start but once it picked up and the four major characters/subjects had their introductions, the pace went surprisingly better than expected. I found myself getting invested in Farina - contemplating if he was a decent guy or a hack or an opportunist or brilliant (and apparently I wasn't alone in these contemplations). Farina stole the show for me, which seems all to appropriate.
Hadju successfully de-deified Dylan for me. He definitely gets hit the hardest with critiques from his actions and commentary from friends. It doesn't disqualify his brilliance for me, but changes the perspective of "why" I think he's brilliant and taking him with a grain of salt.
Everyone knows that on the Internet 3/5 stars makes it look like you think "this book sucks" - I really wish Goodreads had a decimal option - but I actually really enjoyed this piece. It would have gotten a 4/5 if it hadn't been for a few issues. Mainly how abrupt it finished. I thought it was strange that the book was so short when I started it, but I didn't expect it to end so flat. The artists' later careers are legacies and influence are left as feeling "unimportant" by their conspicuous absence. Hadju's commitment to sources was brilliant and gives "Positively 4th Street" a lot of authority. My only complaint in this regard is the amount of names and people I had to try and keep track of in my head. At time I felt like I was reading Tolstoy or something with all the names and references being thrown around. For someone who doesn't know EVERY detail and all the minor characters of the folk era, it is hard to tell who you should keep track of in your head as being important.
After reading this listening to the music of these musicians will be much different, but more fulfilling. It's made me hungry to read more in depth into each of them. This is a fantastic palette of the rise and fall of the 60s folk scene.
June 20, 2021
Positively 4th street tells of the early lives of Joan Baez, her younger sister Mimi Baez Farina, Bob Dylan and Richard Farina. It starts with their individual childhoods, continues as their lives intersect in the early folk scenes in New York and Boston, and ends after Richard Farina dies in a motorcycle accident. The book discusses little known tidbits of their lives as well as examining well known stories and controversies that continue to be debated to this day. These include:
1) A reminder that Joan Baez was much more successful, more famous than Bob Dylan when they met and that Dylan arguably pursued her in an effort to build his career
2) There was both a closeness and sibling rivalry between Joan and the younger, more attractive Mimi-Dylan was borderline inappropriate with Mimi when she was a teenager and after he became involved with Joan.
3) The older Richard Farina pursued and became intimate with Mimi while he was married and Mimi was still in high school. There is an argument that he pursued Mimi partly to get close to the successful Joan, but there is plenty of evidence of love, he certainly treated Mimi better than Dylan treated Joan
4) Examination of the different approaches to political protest and social justice between Dylan and Baez. In the beginning it was Baez who stuck to success with traditional folk and was devoid of social consciousness while Dylan spoke to the young generation's concern about war, nuclear proliferation and social justice. Later, Baez began a lifelong commitment to justice and protest while Dylan moved to an arguably self-absorbed focus on anything but making the world a better place to live.
5) The ongoing debate of whether Farina truly had talent that would have blossomed into becoming another Dylan if he had not died or if he was some sort of huckster who would never caught on
6) Consistent with so many other narratives from so many that while Dylan is a remarkable musician, he is a horrible human being
1) A reminder that Joan Baez was much more successful, more famous than Bob Dylan when they met and that Dylan arguably pursued her in an effort to build his career
2) There was both a closeness and sibling rivalry between Joan and the younger, more attractive Mimi-Dylan was borderline inappropriate with Mimi when she was a teenager and after he became involved with Joan.
3) The older Richard Farina pursued and became intimate with Mimi while he was married and Mimi was still in high school. There is an argument that he pursued Mimi partly to get close to the successful Joan, but there is plenty of evidence of love, he certainly treated Mimi better than Dylan treated Joan
4) Examination of the different approaches to political protest and social justice between Dylan and Baez. In the beginning it was Baez who stuck to success with traditional folk and was devoid of social consciousness while Dylan spoke to the young generation's concern about war, nuclear proliferation and social justice. Later, Baez began a lifelong commitment to justice and protest while Dylan moved to an arguably self-absorbed focus on anything but making the world a better place to live.
5) The ongoing debate of whether Farina truly had talent that would have blossomed into becoming another Dylan if he had not died or if he was some sort of huckster who would never caught on
6) Consistent with so many other narratives from so many that while Dylan is a remarkable musician, he is a horrible human being
October 22, 2014
A confession: I may have a slight Bob Dylan obsession. I own a bunch of his albums, have written a bunch of pieces about him and own a handful of books about him and his music. Dylan’s a fascinating guy: how did this awkward, mumbling guy from Minnesota take the folk world by storm, explode into rock music and revolutionize music in less than five years?
Those questions were part of the attraction for David Hajdu’s book positively 4th Street. His four-headed biography also covers Richard Farina and the Baez sisters, Mimi and Joan. And Hajdu’s book more than delivers. He covers the rapid rise of Joan Baez, the emergence of Dylan and the long incubation period for Farina’s novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. It’s not always pretty, sometimes not even nice. If I’m being honest, it’s why I enjoyed this so much.
At the book's centre are the two Baez sisters, Joan and Mimi. They grew up on the west coast with Quakers for parents and learned guitar early. As a musician, Joan was prodigiously talented: before she turned 19, she performed in coffeehouses, popped up on compilation albums and debuted at the Newport Folk Festival. She was also driven to succeed: Hajdu recounts how she hustled her way backstage at Newport, hung just off to the side and asked just about every performer if she could duet with them.
Joan didn't let people get in her way, even if they were family. Hajdu writes how Joan shut her sister Mimi’s career down almost before it started, telling Mimi she couldn't sing to protect her own career: “I didn’t want any competition,” said Joan, “and I felt my success would overshadow her.” (pg 25) Indeed, this dismissive attitude comes through at various points; later, upon hearing “Blowin’ In the Wind”, she remarks how she didn’t think Dylan “had it in him.” (pg 120)
Is it insecurity? I don’t think so, especially when compared to Hajdu’s portrait of Richard Farina. While Farina comes off occasionally as a fun guy, prone to throwing parties and generous with praise and adventure, he also appears as insecure as jealous husbands get: opening (and answering!) his wife’s mail, telling his first wife Carolyn Hester what to eat and how to dress and convincing other people to sneak his pistol across international borders.
He does not come off as a nice guy at all. Prone to flattery and lying, Farina would tell people either what they wanted to hear or wild half-truths: he had ties to the IRA, a metal plate in his head, he fought in the Cuban revolution. For all the fun parties he threw, for all his innovations to folk music – Hajdu makes an interesting case for him revolutionizing the way the dulcimer was played – he never comes off as someone who’d be fun to be around for any length of time.
It’s interesting to compare him to Dylan, though. They share some traits, especially one for reinvention. But where Farina comes off seeming like a self-promoting liar at times, Dylan comes off like an enigma: he tells so many blatant falsehoods about himself – he raced motorcycles! Ran away to join the circus! Played on early Elvis albums! – he almost dares you to realize he’s fucking with you; Farina just seems to crave attention.
And once Dylan enters the book, his personality dominates it. Hajdu covers his early years and especially his relationship with manager Albert Grossman. It was Grossman’s pushy management style that led to his songs being covered by artists like Peter, Paul and Mary even as his first LP stalled on the charts, but Hajdu alleges cash payoffs to club owners and reporters helped ensure Dylan found stage time and notice in the press.
But if he needed a push to get started, he quickly shot off like a rocket. Before long, Joan and Bob were on top of the folk world. Hajdu covers some of the breathless coverage from the trade papers of the day, who write about them in gushing terms. While they each influenced the other, he’s also careful to show how wide apart they were even at their closest; politically, musically and even in terms of personality, they were ill-matched.
Dylan’s quick sense of reinvention keeps the book moving. While Farina and Mimi became a married folk duo, experimenting with incorporating rock into folk and as Joan’s music took a more direct, anti-establishment bent, Dylan was jumping headlong into rock, playing with The Hawks and writing in wild, pot-fuelled bursts. It couldn’t last.
Throughout the book, Hajdu never lets Dylan get one over on him: Dylan was capable of writing great music, but he was capable of being vicious and cruel, too. Hajdu never shies away from Dylan cheating on Joan, from his ever-increasing drug use or from him eviscerating Joan in songs like “She Belongs To Me.” Here’s his take on “Positively 4th Street”:
“The subject of (the song) is prey to a twisted psychology close to sadism… Once he establishes himself as a wounded victim, Dylan uses this justification to rip his opponent apart.” (pg 279).
Hajdu mixes this criticism throughout the book, providing background for songs and explaining technical points about the music, but it’s never as outspoken as Clinton Heylin’s books on Dylan. It’s well researched, with a nice bibliography and background notes and he’s interviewed just about everyone involved (even Thomas Pynchon!). While only Dylan refused interviews, Hajdu had access to a trove of unpublished interviews from the Experience Music Project.
I enjoyed this one a bunch, plowing through it in only a few days. It’s a compulsive, informative read on an interesting time in music. While nobody really comes off too nicely in this, that’s part of the appeal for me: it’s not an exercise in mythologizing, another book about how great Dylan or Baez are. It’s a book about four young people, each of them flawed in their own way, who broke into folk before breaking it apart. Recommended.
Those questions were part of the attraction for David Hajdu’s book positively 4th Street. His four-headed biography also covers Richard Farina and the Baez sisters, Mimi and Joan. And Hajdu’s book more than delivers. He covers the rapid rise of Joan Baez, the emergence of Dylan and the long incubation period for Farina’s novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. It’s not always pretty, sometimes not even nice. If I’m being honest, it’s why I enjoyed this so much.
At the book's centre are the two Baez sisters, Joan and Mimi. They grew up on the west coast with Quakers for parents and learned guitar early. As a musician, Joan was prodigiously talented: before she turned 19, she performed in coffeehouses, popped up on compilation albums and debuted at the Newport Folk Festival. She was also driven to succeed: Hajdu recounts how she hustled her way backstage at Newport, hung just off to the side and asked just about every performer if she could duet with them.
Joan didn't let people get in her way, even if they were family. Hajdu writes how Joan shut her sister Mimi’s career down almost before it started, telling Mimi she couldn't sing to protect her own career: “I didn’t want any competition,” said Joan, “and I felt my success would overshadow her.” (pg 25) Indeed, this dismissive attitude comes through at various points; later, upon hearing “Blowin’ In the Wind”, she remarks how she didn’t think Dylan “had it in him.” (pg 120)
Is it insecurity? I don’t think so, especially when compared to Hajdu’s portrait of Richard Farina. While Farina comes off occasionally as a fun guy, prone to throwing parties and generous with praise and adventure, he also appears as insecure as jealous husbands get: opening (and answering!) his wife’s mail, telling his first wife Carolyn Hester what to eat and how to dress and convincing other people to sneak his pistol across international borders.
He does not come off as a nice guy at all. Prone to flattery and lying, Farina would tell people either what they wanted to hear or wild half-truths: he had ties to the IRA, a metal plate in his head, he fought in the Cuban revolution. For all the fun parties he threw, for all his innovations to folk music – Hajdu makes an interesting case for him revolutionizing the way the dulcimer was played – he never comes off as someone who’d be fun to be around for any length of time.
It’s interesting to compare him to Dylan, though. They share some traits, especially one for reinvention. But where Farina comes off seeming like a self-promoting liar at times, Dylan comes off like an enigma: he tells so many blatant falsehoods about himself – he raced motorcycles! Ran away to join the circus! Played on early Elvis albums! – he almost dares you to realize he’s fucking with you; Farina just seems to crave attention.
And once Dylan enters the book, his personality dominates it. Hajdu covers his early years and especially his relationship with manager Albert Grossman. It was Grossman’s pushy management style that led to his songs being covered by artists like Peter, Paul and Mary even as his first LP stalled on the charts, but Hajdu alleges cash payoffs to club owners and reporters helped ensure Dylan found stage time and notice in the press.
But if he needed a push to get started, he quickly shot off like a rocket. Before long, Joan and Bob were on top of the folk world. Hajdu covers some of the breathless coverage from the trade papers of the day, who write about them in gushing terms. While they each influenced the other, he’s also careful to show how wide apart they were even at their closest; politically, musically and even in terms of personality, they were ill-matched.
Dylan’s quick sense of reinvention keeps the book moving. While Farina and Mimi became a married folk duo, experimenting with incorporating rock into folk and as Joan’s music took a more direct, anti-establishment bent, Dylan was jumping headlong into rock, playing with The Hawks and writing in wild, pot-fuelled bursts. It couldn’t last.
Throughout the book, Hajdu never lets Dylan get one over on him: Dylan was capable of writing great music, but he was capable of being vicious and cruel, too. Hajdu never shies away from Dylan cheating on Joan, from his ever-increasing drug use or from him eviscerating Joan in songs like “She Belongs To Me.” Here’s his take on “Positively 4th Street”:
“The subject of (the song) is prey to a twisted psychology close to sadism… Once he establishes himself as a wounded victim, Dylan uses this justification to rip his opponent apart.” (pg 279).
Hajdu mixes this criticism throughout the book, providing background for songs and explaining technical points about the music, but it’s never as outspoken as Clinton Heylin’s books on Dylan. It’s well researched, with a nice bibliography and background notes and he’s interviewed just about everyone involved (even Thomas Pynchon!). While only Dylan refused interviews, Hajdu had access to a trove of unpublished interviews from the Experience Music Project.
I enjoyed this one a bunch, plowing through it in only a few days. It’s a compulsive, informative read on an interesting time in music. While nobody really comes off too nicely in this, that’s part of the appeal for me: it’s not an exercise in mythologizing, another book about how great Dylan or Baez are. It’s a book about four young people, each of them flawed in their own way, who broke into folk before breaking it apart. Recommended.
January 1, 2019
I liked it so much I immediately purchased one of Joan Baez’s songs: Diamonds and Rust. I couldn’t put the book down.
June 22, 2025
Maybe Negatively Fourth Street is a better name for David Hajdu’s book.
Should you read it? Depends. If you do, keep these things in mind:
First, there is a huge difference between non-fiction and an op-ed. David Hajdu’s opinion toward his four subjects is so apparent that it won’t take long for you to wonder: why would an author write about someone they believe has no redeeming qualities (well, aside from that “he’s a genius” thing, which I’m not even sure Hajdu believes, although he will grudgingly mention it on occasion). With one exception, he doesn’t seem to like his other three subjects and it seems to pain him whenever he’s pressed to mention one of their accomplishments.
It’s not wrong to dislike the subject you’re writing about. But it is wrong to make it so apparent in your words.
I’m no Bob Dylan apologist, but this book seems especially mean-spirited.
Hey it’s not news that Dylan was a lousy boyfriend to Joan Baez. That’s pretty well documented. Doesn’t make it right, but bad boyfriend’itis is pretty common among driven young men in their 20s. But, really, is that the only thing Dylan did in the 1960s?
Second, if you do choose to read it – flip to the back and read the Acknowledgements first, because it will set the stage for the entire book. You will learn that had Hajdu not dedicated the book to his wife, he says he would have dedicated it to Mimi Fariña, a sentiment that runs throughout the book. She’s the hero – an angel surrounded by fame-hounds, including a naïve, often cruel, older sister; a controlling con man; and one hygienically challenged genius. The Baez family appears to provide the core of Hajdu’s access. The longer list of interviewees is heavy on the early ‘60s Greenwich Village folk scene (a good thing) and light on voices from Dylan’s circle. (That’s not surprising since Dylan holds his circle pretty tight.)
Third, watch for sentences that begin, “Obviously” and “Clearly,” because they are often neither, and seem to be Hajdu’s way of convincing you he knows things. Things. (At least one sentence about Dylan that begins “Obviously” is so – obviously – incorrect, that it takes no Dylanologist to debunk.)
Fourth, Hajdu’s biggest tell is the title of his book: Positively Fourth Street. For someone who thinks so little of three-quarters of his subjects, it’s rich that he would choose to promote his book by naming it after a Dylan song. But, in that, he may be tipping his hand. Dylan’s Positively Fourth Street is a famously bitter “get-even” song aimed at those Dylan believed hurt him, took advantage of him, pulled him down, and used him, with no glimmer, ironically, of anything positive. This book, like the song, has little positive to it.
Even Hajdu’s retelling of the motorcycle accident that killed Richard Fariña feels heartless. (His kicker that Fariña’s autopsy showed that he had no metal plate in his head – something Fariña, oddly, would boast about – seems almost gleeful.)
Bottom line – if you’re interested in the early ‘60s New York folk scene, this gives a nice introduction and may spur you to dig deeper into the music and into other books that tell a fuller, more balanced story.
If you’re interested in a gossipy book about Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mimi Fariña, and Richard Fariña, this will give you plenty. But, you’ll pretty much only get the low-end gossip. You’ll only hear one side of the story and you’ll quickly learn that Hajdu has his favorites which should color your view of everything he writes.
Let me finish with this: Obviously – obviously – this is just my opinion. But, unlike Hajdu, I admit it.
Should you read it? Depends. If you do, keep these things in mind:
First, there is a huge difference between non-fiction and an op-ed. David Hajdu’s opinion toward his four subjects is so apparent that it won’t take long for you to wonder: why would an author write about someone they believe has no redeeming qualities (well, aside from that “he’s a genius” thing, which I’m not even sure Hajdu believes, although he will grudgingly mention it on occasion). With one exception, he doesn’t seem to like his other three subjects and it seems to pain him whenever he’s pressed to mention one of their accomplishments.
It’s not wrong to dislike the subject you’re writing about. But it is wrong to make it so apparent in your words.
I’m no Bob Dylan apologist, but this book seems especially mean-spirited.
Hey it’s not news that Dylan was a lousy boyfriend to Joan Baez. That’s pretty well documented. Doesn’t make it right, but bad boyfriend’itis is pretty common among driven young men in their 20s. But, really, is that the only thing Dylan did in the 1960s?
Second, if you do choose to read it – flip to the back and read the Acknowledgements first, because it will set the stage for the entire book. You will learn that had Hajdu not dedicated the book to his wife, he says he would have dedicated it to Mimi Fariña, a sentiment that runs throughout the book. She’s the hero – an angel surrounded by fame-hounds, including a naïve, often cruel, older sister; a controlling con man; and one hygienically challenged genius. The Baez family appears to provide the core of Hajdu’s access. The longer list of interviewees is heavy on the early ‘60s Greenwich Village folk scene (a good thing) and light on voices from Dylan’s circle. (That’s not surprising since Dylan holds his circle pretty tight.)
Third, watch for sentences that begin, “Obviously” and “Clearly,” because they are often neither, and seem to be Hajdu’s way of convincing you he knows things. Things. (At least one sentence about Dylan that begins “Obviously” is so – obviously – incorrect, that it takes no Dylanologist to debunk.)
Fourth, Hajdu’s biggest tell is the title of his book: Positively Fourth Street. For someone who thinks so little of three-quarters of his subjects, it’s rich that he would choose to promote his book by naming it after a Dylan song. But, in that, he may be tipping his hand. Dylan’s Positively Fourth Street is a famously bitter “get-even” song aimed at those Dylan believed hurt him, took advantage of him, pulled him down, and used him, with no glimmer, ironically, of anything positive. This book, like the song, has little positive to it.
Even Hajdu’s retelling of the motorcycle accident that killed Richard Fariña feels heartless. (His kicker that Fariña’s autopsy showed that he had no metal plate in his head – something Fariña, oddly, would boast about – seems almost gleeful.)
Bottom line – if you’re interested in the early ‘60s New York folk scene, this gives a nice introduction and may spur you to dig deeper into the music and into other books that tell a fuller, more balanced story.
If you’re interested in a gossipy book about Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mimi Fariña, and Richard Fariña, this will give you plenty. But, you’ll pretty much only get the low-end gossip. You’ll only hear one side of the story and you’ll quickly learn that Hajdu has his favorites which should color your view of everything he writes.
Let me finish with this: Obviously – obviously – this is just my opinion. But, unlike Hajdu, I admit it.
October 30, 2023
Let's say 3.5 stars. This is a four-way partial biography of Joan and Mimi Baez, Bob Dylan and Richard Farina. It mainly covers the years from 1958 to 1969. Hajdu conducted more than 200 interviews and a lot of fun and interesting stories come out. But one thing is clear - with the possible exception of Mimi Baez Farina (she was much younger than the others and didn't have as much opportunity to develop her own personality, surrounded as she was by these hyper-egos) - these were not a group of nice, kind people. They were troubled and didn't seem to know how to enjoy their success. They certainly weren't the only ones in the folk and rock era with this problem, but it is sometimes hard to read.
I have read a couple of interviews by Hajdu's interview subjects who say that he misinterpreted or just plain twisted their comments to him, and that is the reason I can't give the book four stars. But I'm sure the majority of it is backed up by multiple interviews that support each other. As an old folkie, I found much of the book fascinating and occasionally eye opening.
I have read a couple of interviews by Hajdu's interview subjects who say that he misinterpreted or just plain twisted their comments to him, and that is the reason I can't give the book four stars. But I'm sure the majority of it is backed up by multiple interviews that support each other. As an old folkie, I found much of the book fascinating and occasionally eye opening.
September 16, 2009
This book took me a few years to complete because I never wanted to finish it - so very juicy and beautifully told. It captures all the details about Dylan, the Baezs and Farina in perfect detail, making it factual but beautifully poetical at the same time. You get an intimate insight as well as a broad overview. Just behind Chronicles Vol. 1 (written by Dylan himself), this is the best book I've read about Dylan and his musical adventures during the 1960s. Hajdu ties in the details about their lives beautifully, not missing a single minute detail but also never branching into the sometimes boring literary style of history narratives. I'm definitely going to make an effort to find more David Hajdu books to read, because he is a brilliant author with a great, unique way of telling what could have been a very cliche "counterculture" story of the 1960s.
Plus it made me love Baez, Dylan and Farina even more!
Plus it made me love Baez, Dylan and Farina even more!
May 10, 2022
First of all, the author does not like Joan Baez. That’s what you need to know before reading this drivel. He made a big point of either demeaning her, devaluing her and several times made reference to what she thought about her “small breasts”.
I skimmed through sections of the book that focused on Richard Farina
There was some throwaway comments about situations that might not be true:
• Big Joan having a lesbian affair
• Bob moving in with Joan after his marriage ended
• Joan doing a cruel impression of Judy Collins (who is actually a friend of hers)
There was some nice moments documented about Bob Dylan and Joan Baez before Bob turned into the villain of the story and it was mostly downhill after.
I skimmed through sections of the book that focused on Richard Farina
There was some throwaway comments about situations that might not be true:
• Big Joan having a lesbian affair
• Bob moving in with Joan after his marriage ended
• Joan doing a cruel impression of Judy Collins (who is actually a friend of hers)
There was some nice moments documented about Bob Dylan and Joan Baez before Bob turned into the villain of the story and it was mostly downhill after.
May 23, 2016
Great. The text relied what seemed almost entirely on interviews. I think David Hajdu pieced it together well. He sort of sketched faint parallels and implied characters. He was not overtly present but neither was he trying to avoid authorship. I loved learning about Richard Farina and thoroughly geeked out at the Thomas Pynchon parts. In fact it's his participation that pushed me from 4 to 5 star territory. The book just got my mind running on creative ambition in relationships and the seeming hypocrisy of the folk scene, the problems with broad social movements in general but also the importance of them. yada yada. Just got the wheels going in me head.
May 22, 2007
It's funny how people of history hold this cemented place in your mind. Mainly because you don't know much about them. That was true for me when thinking about Joan Baez and Bob Dylan before I read this book. But now my vision of these famous songwriters is more clear and more enjoyable. In short I'll say that I like Joan much more, and Dylan much less. I'd recommend this book to anyone who's enjoyed a folk song, or any music that had political meaning. You learn a great deal about the 4 title characters, and the story is told very well.
October 8, 2018
Having read multiple Dylan biographies I found this a breath of fresh air, it’s a deeper dive into some of the characters that are only covered in passing in other Dylan bios. The story of Dylan’s rise is as engaging as ever but the stories of Joan and Mimi Baez and Richard Farina are almost as enjoyable.
November 19, 2012
Bob Dylan playing Henry Miller at Ping-Pong.
Interesting. Wish for more details as to why Dylan turned so sour on Baez. Seemed like a large detail in their relationship and the reasoning behind it is largely glossed over.
Interesting. Wish for more details as to why Dylan turned so sour on Baez. Seemed like a large detail in their relationship and the reasoning behind it is largely glossed over.
February 8, 2017
I really, really liked it. Liked hearing about the interconnected lives of the Baezes and Dylan and Farina.
November 3, 2023
The best book I’ve read about Bob Dylan (and I’ve read way more than my share).
November 1, 2021
Comprehensive and Thorough Study
Drawing on a trove of information from personal files, interviews, and correspondence, the author presents a clear, unbiased depiction of the subject. This is the story of the Bars sisters, Joan and Mimi,their families, and two men who loved them, Bob Dylan and Richard Farina.The reader sees the talented and fascinating Baez family, the creativity of Greenwich Village and the Folk Era (going back to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger). It was a fast -moving scene, which created tensions for Joan and Bob, and also for Mimi and Richard. Those who are familiar with this period will deepen their awareness. For those not familiar, this is a good introduction which will what their appetite.
Drawing on a trove of information from personal files, interviews, and correspondence, the author presents a clear, unbiased depiction of the subject. This is the story of the Bars sisters, Joan and Mimi,their families, and two men who loved them, Bob Dylan and Richard Farina.The reader sees the talented and fascinating Baez family, the creativity of Greenwich Village and the Folk Era (going back to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger). It was a fast -moving scene, which created tensions for Joan and Bob, and also for Mimi and Richard. Those who are familiar with this period will deepen their awareness. For those not familiar, this is a good introduction which will what their appetite.
September 25, 2018
I loved this book. I learned a lot about these 4 icons. It’s one of my favorite time periods to read about along with great music. I felt like I was in a dream state the whole time, it just romanticized the 60’s and the folk music so much it made you want to live that lifestyle. I got a similar feeling while reading On the Road, but no wonder because they were the generation after Kerouac.
February 14, 2019
It took me about 1/4 of the book to really start getting into this book, but once I was in I was in. I finished it at 4am, which gives you a sense of how engrossing it was toward the end.
The best part of this book is that the author doesn't mythologize its characters - Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Richard and Mimi Farina aren't put on a pedestal, but rather they're treated as real people, flaws and all.
This book gives a good snapshot into the 60s folk movement. Very interesting!
The best part of this book is that the author doesn't mythologize its characters - Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Richard and Mimi Farina aren't put on a pedestal, but rather they're treated as real people, flaws and all.
This book gives a good snapshot into the 60s folk movement. Very interesting!
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