Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times
of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard
Fariña
By David Hadju
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, various forces and influences converged to
gave birth to the folk revival. Chief among them were the eastward migrations
of Joan Baez with her family from California (by way of earlier stints in Staten
Island and Baghdad) to the Boston area, and Bob Dylan from Minnesota to New York
City. Baez was the first to become a star, but when the two found each other,
it signaled the start of a whole new era in music history. As Hadju’s extremely
well-researched book shows, these forces and influences were ultimately just
plain human beings – astonishingly talented, to be sure, but also full
of flaws, foibles, uncertainties, and contradictions. Baez thought she was ugly
(in fact, Dylan and many other men were more attracted to her younger sister,
Mimi, who was still living with her parents while a new youth movement raged
on just beyond her reach), while Dylan and Fariña – both true visionaries – told
so many lies about their early lives that no one still knows for sure who they
were before they became famous. But the highlight of the book is Baez and Dylan’s
unusual, brief, and intense personal relationship. It’s only when she hears
his first great songs that she doesn’t consider him a buffoon. He criticizes
her as being slow to sing about social and political issues, then she becomes
the more vocal activist, complaining about the more personal songs that started
to surface on 1964’s Another Side of Bob Dylan. The book ends in 1966 with
the eerie coincidence of Fariña and Dylan’s motorcycle accidents
(Fariña’s fatal) occurring just three months apart, Baez facing
her waning popularity, and Mimi the always-cared-for child now left alone. Dylan
was clearly prescient when, in 1965, he sang, "It’s all over now,
baby blue." Jason M. Rubin
©Copyright 2008 Libretto,
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