If you like larger than life characters who exude idealistic fervour, live crazy lives, run at manic speed, are capable of anything, are musically brilliant, are zany and different, who run on another time to the rest of the world, whose minds operates another way and who does all that with large dollops of humour then Richard Farina is your man.
People who saw him on the Greenwich Village scene claim he was the only person who might have given Bob Dylan a run for his money. I don’t know about that. I’ve only the limited number of recordings to go on. He played guitar and was an expert on the Appalachian dulcimer. He wrote a number of excellent songs and also a novel called ‘Been down so long it looks like up to me’.
He certainly was a multitalented guy.
Richard teamed up with Mimi (Joan Baez’s sister) to create a formidable duo. Richard was extremely political and put his body where his mouth was, visiting the revolutionary Cuba and supposedly fighting for the revolution.
As a songwriter he was exceptional and had really only just got into his stride when he was so tragically killed.
The couple only recorded a couple of albums but it was sufficient to establish them as great and highly original performers. Richard’s live-wire persona was much to the fore on his humorous political songs. He lambasted the McCarthy witch-hunts and provided a great parody of himself as a hard-headed loser.
In the days following the publication of his first novel he was at a party to celebrate Mimi’s birthday when he decided to go out with a friend for a spin on his bike around the mountain roads. They were going too fast and never made it round the bend. Richard was killed instantly. All that glorious possibility died with him. I don’t think Mimi ever got over it.
That’s all he wrote.