1960
When she was sixteen, she moved with her parents to Paris: Joan stayed in America to pursue her music, and Pauline – the eldest sister – had married the artist Brice Marden. Details of Mimi’s first few months in Paris are hard to come by: she seems to have all but quit school, toured with a ballet troupe, and appeared in a film.
1961
1962
1963
Mimi had promised her parents that whatever else, she would finish high school. Now that Dick had swept into her life everything else seemed totally unimportant, but she knew how important it was to her father and mother. After the secret marriage ceremony she had dutifully returned home to study her history lessons. It was a difficult time, and at one point the lovers were ready to flee.
Dick was determined and so was I. I was determined to leave home, and Dick was determined to have me go with him. We were going to run away the first day of spring. Then my father went away to the States. He was going to go for two weeks, and I woke up in the middle of the night and decided I had better write him a letter, because I would be gone by the time he got back. I handed it to him and he said goodbye. And the next morning at 6 o'clock, a telegram came. The doorbell rang, and I thought, "Ohhh, he came back." I was sure he had returned. It said, "Tell Mimi she has made wrong choice and broken promise." And my mother came in my room completely confused "Mimi, maybe you can explain this..." The broken promise was that I would finish high school and the wrong choice was Dick. So then she begged me and pleaded that I stay and finish school ... I said, "Okay." So I stayed. Then there was a series of discussions with the family, with Dick trying to grab my hand on the top of the table while my father talked to us, and me trying to pull my hand away, and my father looking at our hands . . . My father was getting very serious and choked up; it was the first time my father said to my mother, "Joan, I need a drink." So after about the third or fourth meeting like this it was decided that indeed it would be better for the kids to get married rather than to live in sin. Dick and I left by train and then boat back to the states without my father's blessings, but with my mother's blessings, after I had finished my last high school exam, which my father gave to me the night before. He'd written all my book reports. I really did hate school. I did not do well in school and felt very inferior and strange about it. Mother said if I did all the exams they could wait for the results — I could leave town. At two in the morning we finished the last exam, and at six in the morning we got up to take the train. My mother took us and said, "Well kids, what can I do?" I was very torn, because she was very sad.
March - After months of trying to gain approval, Dick formally asks Albert Baez for permission to marry Mimi. Flattered and impressed with the upstart's manners (and knowing Mimi's 18th birthday was only weeks away), permission is granted. A summer wedding in Carmel, California is planned. Several months after Mimi's 18th birthday.April - Somewhere about the middle of the month, although it makes sense closer to the end of the month, which would be Mimi's 18th birthday (the 30th), Mimi Baez and Richard Fariña are secretly married at town hall in Paris.
June - The dyslexic Mimi graduates from high school in Paris, thanks in part, according to Hajdu, to Dick - who wrote her book reports.
21 June - Dick and Mimi set sail for NYC on the France. It takes five days. They live with Dick's father and step-mother for a short time in Brooklyn.
August - The Fariñas drive across country and land in Carmel Valley, California, where Joan lives. Mimi stays with Joan (who'd just railroaded in with Betsy Siggins) and Dick sleeps in a one-room cabin next door. Legend has it that Albert Baez didn't leave his room for several days before the wedding, and that a large number of those assembled would have been happier with a lynching.
21 August - Fariña, Joan Baez, along with her friend and assistant, Kim Chappell, Betsy Siggins, best man Thomas Pynchon and several others head for the Monterey County Fair for some rest and relaxation. Mimi stays behind with what would larter turn out to be appendicitis.
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24 August - The wedding takes place at the Baez family's rented house in nearby Portola Valley. Thomas Pynchon is best man. The Fariñas perform together in public for the first time, playing "Old blue". Shortly afterward, the Fariñas, broke and with the better part of the Baez family not speaking to them, start playing music seriously together to while away the time Dick doesn't spend writing his novel. They move into the cabin where Dick had been staying - Brett Weston's dinky converted photo studio, next door to Joan (said to be 10 De Los Helechos in Carmel Valley). About this time, in an effort to win over Joan, Dick suggests they do a book together, combining his series of "Little nothing poems" with her drawings to illustrate them. Efforts are made on both sides, but little comes of it.
Debbie Green said: "I’d go over to their apartment, and they’d be writing, and Dick would be playing, and we’d just pick up guitars. They were very childlike and creative, laughing. They had a wonderful relationship.”
1964
The Fariñas moved east to Cambridge in the fall of 1964 so Mimi could study dance at the Boston Conservatory.
1965
As is often the case in Newport in July, the morning had been overcast. The breezes blown in
from the sea had bathed the gospel singers in pearly grey light. By midday, the hope of resurrection gone, the sun boils down. It gets plain old New England hot. Perhaps that's why God made T-shirts, beer stands, and graced it all with New Folks Concerts. As the afternoon wore on, the heat and moisture began to combine and the clouds began to gather. Mimi and Dick Fariña looked particularly fragile under the building thunderheads. Delicate and small, they carried with them a stunning grace, a painful insecurity. They started their set with "Birmingham Sunday." Eric had said, "Why don't you do Birmingham Sunday?" and Dick did, his voice a bit strident, the pitch a touch unsure, but bravely, bravely, and then, suddenly, the skys opened up, and a summer shower was pelting down. Mimi was so intent on the music she simply didn't know what was happening. I thought people were getting up to leave ... I thought, "Oh, no we can't be that awful — my pessimistic point of view — and I was looking at him to see if we should stop because I thought people were splitting 'cause we weren't doing that well. 'Cause we were the newcomers and so on.
But he went on playing, and then he went on introducing another song — and I thought, "How could he do this? They're fed up!" And then people started taking their clothes off and I realized it was raining and the people were dancing. Dancing! Blue jeans sopping, T-shirts dripping, dripping into "Hard Loving Loser," "Reno, Nevada," anything that cooked, and then Bruce Langhorn was out there, and Fritz Richmond was out there, and everybody was dancing! God had stopped by Newport after all.
While the Farinas did not use an electric band at Newport, they did bring along Langhorne and washtub bassist Fritz Richmond. Seeger is remembered for his vehemently negative reaction to Dylan’s electric show, attempting to cut the power cable with an axe, according to some accounts. Yet he could have hardly offered a more glowing, open-minded appraisal of the Farinas’ performance, which from his summary seems rather like a mini-preview of 1969’s Woodstock festival:
“Last summer I’ll never forget hearing them sing at the Newport Folk Festival. Dick Farina had a dulcimer on his knee, and Mimi, his wife, playing the guitar, and they had some other instruments playing with them. And they were going at it hot and heavy. It was the middle of the afternoon, and 7,000 people had been sitting out there in the hot sun, getting hotter and hotter, perspiration dripping down. And all of a sudden, the sky gets dark and one of these sudden summer thundershowers comes along. Rain just poured down. And Dick and Mimi, having just gotten on the stage, decided to keep on playing. Someone put an umbrella up over them to keep the instruments dry. And 7,000 people up front, they’d been waiting to hear them. They weren’t gonna leave. Well, I was standing backstage, and I peeked through the curtain there. And I saw a sight I'll never forget in all my life. Seven thousand people were getting soaking wet, and they said. What the heck, let’s get wet. They started stripping off their clothing and dancing to the music. It was a real rocking number with wonderful rhythm going. And there were people waving their shirts in the air and dancing all kinds of dances, women had stripped off their shirts, dancing in their bras. It was pandemonium. Seven thousand people dancing in the thundering rain, and Dick and Mimi pounding on. It was wonderful. (Two songs from that performance can be heard on the posthumous Richard & Mimi Farina compilation Memories.)
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| Newport Folk Festival, 1965 |
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| Newport Folk Festival, 1965 |
1966
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| Beach near Carmel, California, January 1966 |
"On a warm January day, Dick and Mimi and I spent some time on a small beach south of Carmel. I'm not in the habit of posing friends for formal portraits, but when Dick and Mimi sat together on a driftwood log, they looked as if they were sitting for a portrait. I aimed my camera, they looked at me, and I took this shot." John Byrne Cooke
After Dick Fariña's death in April 1966, Mimi moved to San Francisco, to an apartment on one floor of what had formely been a private home on Telegraph Hill.
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| Mimi Fariña at her home in Alta Street, 1966 | Photo by John Byrne Cooke | Source |
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| Debbie Green and Mimi Fariña. Debbie Green taught Mimi's sister Joan Baez how to play the guitar beyond the simple strums. Debbie and Mimi were lifelong friends. Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, June 1966, Photo by John Byrne Cooke | Source |
1967
In 1967 Mimi, her sister Joan, and their mother Joan Bridge Baez, were all arrested at the peace protest, and spent a short time in jail.
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| Mimi Fariña and Joan Baez - released from jail in Oakland - October 26th 1967 Videos here
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1968
In 1968, Mimi married with Milan Melvin. Their marriage lasted 2 years, they got divorced in 1970.
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Milan Melvin and Mimi Fariña Their 1st wedding anniversary at the The Big Sur Folk Festival - September 1969 Photo by Robert Altman |
19 November - "All the world has gone by" is copyrighted by Mimi, with "rev. and new lyrics".
1969
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