Rating: 
Summary: Mimi was too scrumptious for this world
Review: This is a Heaven-sent exercise in Dylan-bashing. Bob's not only a great entertainer, ya know. He's also a wonderful piece of human garbage. I wept tears of joy when Mimi pulled Bob's hair and made him cry. Fortunately, Hajdu included my favorite quote about Mimi. Which is also contained in that exquisite coffee-table picfest called BABY, LET ME FOLLOW YOU DOWN. Fritz Richmond said: "Mimi--she was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She was so pretty that I couldn't actually see her. If I looked in her eyes, I would be in danger of melt-down."
Mark Spoelstra provided a hilariously unflattering anecdote about Joan Baez: "We were pouring our hearts out about girlfriends and how hard it was to find the right one. I told him about the one I dated back in California that I still had a crush on. 'I went out with this girl Joan, and she was wild. Man, she was beautiful and real talented.' I told how we went to that dance, and we were slow-dancing, and I was really into it and loving being with her and holding her, and she started to sing at the top of her lungs while I had my arms around her. 'Joan Baez.' He didn't seem to recognize the name, or he didn't show it if he did. I said, 'She could kill with that voice'."
In regard to that mystically-static music-video of SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK BLUES, Hajdu said a hilarious thing about Allen Ginsberg's artsy-fartsy exhibitionism : "Allen Ginsberg, an ad hoc member of the ballooning Dylan entourage, drifts in and out of the background, as if to validate that all this subterraneanism is poetic."
Rating: 
Summary: oh, just grand
Review: This is a very good book. I bought it because I'm a great fan of Dylan and also very interested in that whole 60's folk scene. It reads like a novel and I couldn't put it down-- and it even contained a few things about Dylan I didn't know, which books on him never seem to do. Its only fault is that it makes the Farinas out to be much greater talents than they actually were. Richard Farina is made out to be Dylan's equal, and to have invented "fok rock"; both ideas are absolutely ridiculous. But I strongly suggest this book for any fans of Baez or Dylan...and anyone else interested in a truly unique time in our culture's history.
Rating:
Summary: Dylan, Control Freaks and Mimi
Review: This is an absorbing tale of three over-achieving Americans and Mimi, in the interesting late Fifties/early Sixties. David Hajdu is very good on the commercial paradox of the folkies. He is also very good on the Baez sisters and Richard Fariña - two control freaks with Mimi as controllee. He is less good at Dylan because he ignores, or fails to appreciate, the occasional flashes of brilliance in his early work which signposted how good he was to become. Furthermore, he seems to miss the integrity which has always been a hallmark of his work. His relationship with Joanie is portrayed as professionally self-seeking, but she gained from it as he did. Joan Baez was a square, and benefited as much from Bob's hipness, approbation and authority as he did from the exposure she gave him. Once this professional relationship ceased to be mutually beneficial, Bob broke out and broke through. Baez refused to acknowledge this, and this explains why she followed him to England in 1965, and also why he taunted her mercilessly there. Hajdu is also deceptively selective in the quotes he cites from Bob's interviews at the time. Nonetheless, the book is compelling. I recommend it. We watch a ramshackle new guard establishing themselves and grappling with change with varying degrees of success. The byword for the sixties was change, and no one was more mobile than Bob. Fariña died (the ultimate metamorphosis), Joan ossified (like Lot's wife, she DID look back) and Mimi ... well, poor Mimi! And where does Fariña fit into all this? Hajdu goes out of his way to portray his hero as the man who invented folk-rock. This just doesn't stand up. Fariña was a folksinger/rock 'n' roll manque (though he did a little good musical work), as Dylan was a novelist manque (though Tarantula and many of his album liner notes are rewarding to read). Dicky comes through as a one-book-wonder, with some colourful friends, a pretty wife and an untimely death. Once Bob Dylan did break through, he alone controlled the agenda for a time. Thankfully, this power did not intrude on his personal relationships. Paul Warburton
Rating:
Summary: Finally a Mimi and Richard Farina biography!
Review: This is one of the best books on the folk era ever written. Mr.Hajdu burns through the nostalgia and brings to life something more valuble.....living, breathing human beings who happen to have made some very lasting music. The book obviously fills a void by covering the lives of Richard and Mimi Farina...two frequently overlooked artists. The book is so well-written that Richard's tragic demise still mangages to shock and sadden the reader even though most know the sad tale. The book is especially poignant and timely as Mimi Farina is battling an illness. It must be satisfying to know that what she helped create, so many years ago, is getting some well-deserved attention.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: This is one of those rare popular culture biographies in which the subjects come off, for better or worse, as three-dimensional human beings. Joan Baez has been so infrequently written about, and Mimi and Richard Farina even less so, making it a pleasure to revisit their story as presented here in such illuminating detail. Bob Dylan, of course, is another story, but rarely has he been cast in such an all-too-human light. Most highly recommended to fans of Dylan and Baez, and to those initiates who want to learn more about the highwater era of American folk music.
Rating:
Summary: The Spirit Got: a Masterly Job
Review: This is the best book about Bob Dylan I've read. It does not oversimplify, glorify, or disdain the work or the man. Its appraisals of Dylan (and Richard Farina, although Hadju isn't detailed or pointed enough on his novel *Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me*) and entourage seem just, convincingly contextualized, and informed by an understanding of music and the recording business. The contrasts between Farina and Dylan, Joan Baez and her sister, Eric von Schmidt and Mark Spoelstra illuminate each of these figures. Anecdotes are recounted with verve and detachment, and, if the music doesn't give Hadju as much to say as it did in his biography of Bill Strayhorn, the feeling of the times comes through just as vividly--the creativity and the squalor, with the commercial accomplishments of Dylan et. al. the focus through which greater triumphs shine. Hadju writes gracefully, has come up with new material (and I know a lot of his primary sources), and sensibly has limited the time frame from from 1961-1966. For me, as I said in my notice of Howard Sounes' Dylan biography, this is the key epoch for Dylan, so he's writing to my own prejudices, but the restricted five year scope means that although Hadju's claims may appear limited, he delivers more than he claims to, exploring the interplay of market expectation and aesthetic drive, the connection between audience and internal inspiration, and the great extent to which apparently arbitrary and unconscious decisions emerge as central for an artist and his audience. It's the one book one must read if one is interested in this era and this music, and probably it would appeal even to persons not interested in it.
Rating:
Summary: The 60's you never saw before....
Review: This is the captivating, intimate story of the lives of four musicians who influenced a generation of young people and created a new era of popular American music. From the Greenwich Village coffee houses to the top of the pop charts, they were drawn together by their music and mutual attraction to take folk music to new heights, and create totally new sounds, re-defining the genre and mesmerizing the children of the 60's. Joan and Mimi Baez played guitar and sang from a very early age, and Joan was recognized as queen of folk music when she and the rising star, Bob Dylan met. Richard Farina, an up and coming novelist and sometime musician, was entranced by Joan, but married the beautiful Mimi when whe was 17 years old. David Hajdu explores the influence of other artistic greats such as Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly and James Dean as he captures the personalities of the Baez sisters, Bob Dylan and Richard Farina along with the complexity of their personal realationships. He Tells us of their hopes and dreams, their disappointments and their struggles to make it to the top. Whether you are a fan of their music or not, this marvelous book that reads like good fiction will give you a new understanding of what it's like to be an idol to generations of Americans. Hajdu conducted several hundred interviews to bring us a new story of the 60's that will touch your heart as it has mine. Beverly Rowe, reviewer for myshelf.com.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling reading!
Review: Truly this book makes for compelling reading! To read about these four young people, so beautiful, pasisonate and in the case of at least two of them, with talent to burn, is to immerse oneself in a world where music really meant something, and singing could make any dream seem possible. Other reviewers here aren't happy with the way Dylan is depicted. Apparently he comes off as far to human. But that's just what he was, a genius with many failings, not the least of which was insensitivity to others and an over-riding narcissism. For me this book brings to life the words Joan Baez sang so famously in her song "Diamonds & Rust" -- "..speaking strictly for myself, I could have died right there!"
Rating:
Summary: A wondeful book about great, mundane and awful deeds
Review: What wonderful writing, what a bittersweet and romantic tale of BS-artists who turned out to be real artists. I laughed out loud at some of the events and descriptions (Dylan's re-invention of the harmonica as a life-support device!), I went out and bought music by those who were under-represented in my collection. The story of Richard and Mimi plumbs the depths of sadness. As a fan of Dylan's (and Joan's), it was hard to bear his sudden cruelty to those who loved him, but it was heartening to see his reinvention as a family man, free of most of his chains (Albert Grossman's drug supplies and incessant touring that was ready to kill Bob). If you love poetry, music, rock, folk, and want an engrossing story of how Dylan came to be Dylan, Joan became Joan, Mimi started to find herself, and Richard really was somebody, read this book. Along the way, learn about the kindness and musical contributions that Bob soaked up and reinvented to build our current view of the musician's responsibility: write songs from the heart, use a language as universal as you can invent, and don't be afraid to follow your muse.
Rating:
Summary: For The Folks
Review: While the author often over indulges himself by ending sentences with lyrics from a song by the singer he is disucussing and not using quotation marks, he makes the sentence seem his own while testing the knowledge of the reader, Hadjdu makes the read a fun game. More than a game though, this book takes us old folkies back to our youth and gives us insights and information that were not available at the time. I have learned a lot about the personalities, and sometimes the pettiness of my old heroes. The end result is that the author has made me go out and rebuy some albums that I have not heard for 30 years or more. I salute Hadjdu in this magnificent effort and can only wish that there were more books of this type.
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