SWEET SIR GALAHAD
(Letra y música Joan Baez)
Sweet Sir Galahad
came in through the window
in the night when
the moon was in the yard.
He took her hand in his
and shook the long hair
from his neck and he told her
she'd been working much too hard.
It was true that ever since the day
her crazy man had passed away
to the land of poet's pride,
she laughed and talked alot
with new people on the block
but always at evening time she cried.
And here's to the dawn of their days.
She moved her head
a little down on the bed
until it rested softly on his knee.
And there she dropped her smile
and there she sighed awhile,
and told him all the sadness
of those years that numbered three.
Well you know I think my fate's belated
because of all the hours I waited
for the day when I'd no longer cry.
I get myself to work by eight
but oh, was I born too late,
and do you think I'll fail
at every single thing I try?
And here's to the dawn of their days.
He just put his arm around her
and that's the way I found her
eight months later to the day.
The lines of a smile erased
the tear tracks upon her face,
a smile could linger, even stay.
Sweet Sir Galahad went down
with his gay bride of flowers,
the prince of the hours
of her lifetime.
And here's to the dawn
of their days,
of their days.
© Joan Baez
1968, 1970
Chandos Music (ASCAP)
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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 |
“Milan was a producer at Mercury Records and a radio announcer for KSAN-FM. He was tall and gaunt, almost Abraham-Lincoln-like, with long black hair.
In 1968, Mimi married her second husband, Milan Melvin who had previously been with Janis Joplin.
Mimi and Milan got married at the on the morning of the opening day of the 1968 Big Sur Folk Festival, which was held on the grounds of the Esalen Institute. Milan wore a velvet suit, his long, lustrous black hair cascading over his shoulders, and Mimi, lovevly in her white Linda Gravenited, wore a crown of daisies.
Though the marriage was not to last, it did cause some bad blood between Janis and Mimi that was heightened by Mimi having one of Janis’s friends - Linda Gravenites, a designer (who also made dresses for Janis' stage act) make her wedding dress. For Janis, that was the last straw. Linda created the appliqué with a beaded lace train that is seen in all the photos of Mimi's wedding with Milan.
Baez was inspired to write the song (the first one she wrotte, i think), after hearing of Melvin's courtship of Fariña, during which he came into her bedroom at night through the window. It has since become one of Baez's best-known compositions.”
During her second marriage, Milan and Mimi moved into his apartment atop Telegraph Hill.
Mimi settled into the role of housewife and was not active musically- only one credit to "Mimi Fariña Melvin" appears on record, on Joan's David's Album, where the sisters sing "Poor Wayfaring Stranger." The marriage did not last.
Mimi later came to regard the marriage as a "a cop-out:" I was rescuing myself from having to face life alone again...It was just at that time that my life finally began developing on its own.
Mimi began to grow as a person in ways that she had never been able to with the willful Richard Fariña. She learned to drive a car, got involved in The Committee, and, as Baez put it, “since she didn't have much of an identity outside of Dick and me, and then Milan, she began to create one.
"Mimi began to see a therapist and dig deep down into the fabric of her undiscovered self"
Suddenly, and miraculously, I began writing songs and finnaly got a driver's license and started to get around." She also returned to the surname Fariña - perhaps a symbolic act. "I'll always love Dick," she recalled years later. "He was an impossible act to follow."
The marriage ended in divorce after three years, and Milan was soon back in Janis’s life, though not as before. They were occasional lovers, nothing more.
Many sources say Mimi and Milan separated after two years, while Mimi stated that they were married three years and broke up when she was 25.
Though his relationship with Janis would continue intermittently, Milan says, “There was some sort of a break for a while between us, I guess it was when i was getting married and being with Mimi Fariña or something.”
(uau..."or something"...i don't like how distant and indiferent this sounds...)
He became a scuba diving instructor in Mexico.
He has an autobriography book called: Highlights of a Lowlife: The Autobiography of Milan Melvin
I found this clip on youtube where Mimi speaks about her second marriage:
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