'4th Street' puts Dylan in context of other legends
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Bob Dylan did not name himself after Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet, but rather a more mundane, less artistic figure: Marshall Dillon of "Gunsmoke" — he even spelled it that way at first.
And it was not Dylan but Joan Baez who sparked the folk revolution of the '60s. She was hugely famous when the unknown Dylan cynically attached himself to her. When his career eclipsed hers, he dumped her. "I rode on Joan, man," Dylan later acknowledged. "I'm not proud of it."
Those and other revelations mark "Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina" by David Hajdu ($25; Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The author uncovered many previously unrevealed facts from extensive interviews with Baez, her sister Mimi Farina (who recently died of cancer) and others close to those 1960s folk legends.
He also benefited from probing, revealing interviews of Dylan done over four years' time by Robert Shelton, the late New York Times critic who was among the first to herald Dylan as a great young singing poet. Dylan was more forthcoming with Shelton, to whom he felt he owed a great deal, than with any other interviewer, but Shelton died before writing much about their talks.
Hadju unearthed transcripts of the interviews, which are now in the possession of Experience Music Project. Paul Allen, the billionaire founder of EMP, purchased the interview tapes and transcripts from Shelton's sister. Hadju is the only person, other than Shelton, to use the material.
"That archive was a goldmine," Hadju said in a recent interview, during a visit to Seattle. "(Reading the transcripts) was my favorite part of the whole process."
Hadju had to come here from his home in Manhattan to access the transcripts. He read them in a guarded EMP warehouse, writing down relevant quotes and information.
Dylan's quote regarding his exploitation of Baez is among those Hadju discovered in the transcripts. Shelton had not used it in his book on Dylan.
"I think there was an understanding between the two that Shelton would protect (Dylan) and that he would only use material that was in Bob's best interest," Hadju said. "And in fact he did."
In another of the book's revelations, Hadju contends that Dylan was not booed at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when he sang some songs backed by a rock band. In the book, Hadju calls the widely accepted story "one of the most enduring myths of postwar popular culture."
"The folk purists admonished and rejected Dylan a year before he went electric," Hadju explained in the interview, "for abandoning prescriptive music and political music to write music of a personal nature that dealt with his feelings and his relationships. That's what really enraged the folk purists. The truth is that the most scathing criticism of Dylan within the folk community came a year before Newport '65."
Dylan was booed on a subsequent tour, as a result of the Newport myth. But, Hadju points out, most of his fans liked the "electric" Dylan, and the tour was a success.
Blending rock, folk
Perhaps the most important contribution of Hadju's insightful and well-written book is the forgotten contributions of the Farinas. Richard Farina, the singer-songwriter and author best known for his classic hippie-era novel, "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me," actually blended rock and folk before Dylan did. But Hadju says not to make too much of that.
"What Richard Farina did is not the manifesto of a new music," he said, "but what Dylan made of this idea influenced a generation."
Farina, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1966 after leaving a party celebrating the publication of his novel, looms large in the book.
"He's certainly the most powerful personality, and his force of personality is overwhelming in the book, just like it was in real life," Hadju said.
Richard and Mimi Farina recorded two albums together that were well-received in their day but are now largely forgotten. After Richard's death, Mimi Farina continued singing for a while, but never managed to come out from under the shadow of her superstar big sister.
Perhaps her most enduring work was the founding of Bread and Roses, an organization dedicated to bringing live music to prisons and hospitals.
Hadju said he wrote the book largely to spotlight the contributions of Baez and the Farinas.
"There's little awareness of their place in the scene, and it's shocking in Joan's case because her role was one of immeasurable importance," he said. "She was a cultural force and an enormous cultural influence She established a new model."
Adopting the Baez look
Baez presented herself as she was, without makeup or pretense. She dressed simply, often all in black. She wore her jet-black hair long and straight. She didn't seem like a person apart, up there on the stage. She was one with her audience. Soon, young women around the country were adopting her look. A new fad arose — women ironing their hair so it would look like hers. Comedians had a field day. Conservatives scoffed. Cartoonist Al Capp added a new character to his "Lil' Abner" strip — Joanie Phonie.
Hadju said Baez is still wary of such criticism, so much so that she was skeptical at first about his book.
"After three years of inquiries and several social encounters, she granted me an interview," he said. "She was distant at first. She gave me an hour. I flew 3,000 miles, she gave me an hour. ...
"She put me through a series of tests — asking me to drive her to her shrink, making pottery together, shopping for and cooking a meal with her — and then the dam broke, over food."
Baez eventually was very forthcoming, partially, Hadju said, because she wanted Richard and Mimi Farina to be remembered. Mimi Farina was mortally ill with cancer. Baez had canceled all plans to be at her side, at Farina's home in Mailbu. That's where Hadju conducted most of his interviews with Baez.
Message from dad
Hadju also wrote the book for his kids.
"I have two teenagers, who are 15 and 18, and for whom folk music seems like the squarest sound possible," Hadju explained. "I wanted to remind them and demonstrate by bringing people into the world of this time how radical this music and its sensibility was, what a powerful statement of defiance it was. This was music that the older people hated and this was a scene that seemed to reject everything that the status quo represented."
As for Dylan's reaction to the book, Hadju said he has heard nothing from him. But he thinks he likes it.
"I needed Dylan's permission to quote his lyrics," he explained. "He kept the book for months, and I was afraid he was going to say no, and the book just wouldn't be complete without quoting those lyrics. Finally he said I could quote any lyrics I wanted for $100. That was very generous. He wouldn't have done that if he didn't like the book."