[2 articles] Questions for Arlo Guthrie
Just Folk http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26fob-q4-t.html By DEBORAH SOLOMON Published: July 21, 2009 As one of the iconic figures of the '60s counterculture, are you surprised by the fuss that is being made over the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival, at which you performed? Do you think Woodstock is overrated? No. We're still talking about it. How many other events from 1969 are we still talking about? Maybe Woodstock was nothing more than a glorified party at which white kids from the suburbs discovered camping and smoking pot in the rain. If it had been just that, that would have been fun enough, but the truth is it wasn't that. There were all colors of kids and varieties of kids, and these were the very same kids who had been brought up to believe in grade school that when you see the big white mushroom cloud, be sure to get under the desk quickly. You don't believe there was any real threat of the world ending in a nuclear conflagration? It was a real threat. But the response to it was crazy. At some point, these kids grew up and said, "What?" They realized that the people who are teaching you and the people who are in positions of authority are actually insane. You're giving a free evening concert in New York this Thursday, July 30, at Battery Park. Free to the public. It doesn't mean I'm doing it for free. You're a New York native, right? Yes, I was born in Coney Island. The Holy Land. Will you be performing your best-known song, "Alice's Restaurant," a long, talky, antiwar ballad initially inspired by a trip you made to the town dump in Stockbridge, Mass., one Thanksgiving? Garbage has been pretty good to me. But I won't be performing the song. It's a half-hour, and performing it is like being in the same half-hour "Groundhog Day" movie every night of your life. Most of the audience that follows me is already sick of hearing of it. Did you find it disappointing when the public attention lavished on folk music in the '60s dissipated and disco came in? No. Folk music is music that everyday people can play, and it inspired a lot of people to make their own music. That trailed into making your own pop music, and that's why garage bands started springing up everywhere. Where are you politically these days? I became a registered Republican about five or six years ago because to have a successful democracy you have to have at least two parties, and one of them was failing miserably. We had enough good Democrats. We needed a few more good Republicans. We needed a loyal opposition. Have you ever run for political office? I ran once, for one day. I thought I would be governor of Massachusetts. I stood on a pile of my old albums and said, "I'm the only one with a record to stand on." Who won? Dukakis. You have four children, all of whom are folk singers and with whom you will be touring this fall. Do you go around on a bus together? Yes. It's big enough now that we need two buses. And the grandkids they all play. Actually two of them opened a show for me this summer. That was the funniest freaking thing, with the little one pushing her way in there with a guitar. How often do you think of your dad, the folk legend Woody Guthrie, who wrote "This Land Is Your Land" and died of Huntington's disease? Every day. I think of my parents as a single unit, and it's interesting because they shared so much and they were totally opposite. My mother, a Martha Graham dancer, had a classical background; my father had a back-porch background. Have you ever seen "American Idol"? No, I have never watched it. But I'm thankful we're living in a world where we can actually afford to waste your time. What a great thing that is. ------- Guthrie 'coming into Southold' http://www2.timesreview.com/NR/stories/The-News-Review-T072309_Arlo_A_Cover_ES 1960s hippie icon plays Southold High School Auditorium Aug. 1 BY ERIN SCHULTZ | STAFF WRITER 7/30/2009 "You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant." The words and accompanying jingle of the 18-minute spoken-word song, "Alice's Restaurant," catapulted Arlo Guthrie to fame in 1967. The tune recounts Mr. Guthrie's real-life experiences at a hippie Thanksgiving dinner inside a church, a trip to a landfill in a Volkswagen van and hung-over dealings with the draft board. The 1969 movie of the same name, directed by Arthur Penn of "Bonnie and Clyde" fame and often described as the first music video, forever tied the fifth son of American folk music icon Woody Guthrie to the Summer of Love, Woodstock and the height of hippiedom. At 62, Mr. Guthrie said he's quite all right with all that. But he won't be playing "Alice's Restaurant" when he takes the stage at the Southold High School auditorium next Saturday. "It's been off the menu for a while," he said during a phone interview last week before his show at the Fitzgerald Theater in Minneapolis. "I can't do the half-hour every night. It'd be like living in that "Grounddog day" movie. It would drive me nuts." Mr. Guthrie said he'll play "Alice's Restaurant" only on anniversary dates of the song, and that the Southold appearance is just one of a few "in and out" performances around the country before his lengthy solo tour kicks in. He said certain signature songs like "Coming into Los Angeles," featured on the Woodstock soundtrack, and "City of New Orleans" are often featured in his recent shows. He'll also play a few of his father's songs, many of which have become part of the country's cultural fabric: "This Land is Your Land," "Do Re Mi," and "Deportees," a song about the death of 28 migrant farm workers in the 1940s. Born in Brooklyn, Mr. Guthrie grew up surrounded by folk musicians like Pete Seeger, Leadbelly and Ramblin' Jack Elliott. He often performs with such modern-day music icons as Willie Nelson, Judy Collins and Emmylou Harris, playing guitar, piano and harmonica at venues from bars to churches. He's even performed alongside the Boston Pops Orchestra. Mr. Guthrie discussed his music and a gave his take on current events during an interview with a reporter from The Suffolk Times: Q: When did you realize you had a knack for your particular kind of spoken-word songwriting? A: As a kid, I didn't know a lot of songs. So I'd spend a lot of time in between songs, telling stories to justify why I was on stage [laughs]. That ended up being a major part of what I did. Q: Are you seeing some younger faces out in the audience these days? A: I actually am, especially the past two years. My audience was typically my father's peers [in the beginning]. Then I was able to gather my own flock and maintain them. Now I think I'm seeing their kids and grandkids. Q: A song like your father's "Deportees" is still relevant, I would say even more so today, especially on the East End of Long Island with its Guatemalan workforce. Your father captured the emotion around these societal ills that will never go away, yes? A: For sure. Some of the songs have changed their meaning over time. On the one hand, it's great that the songs were written with a long shelf life. But it's too bad the world still sucks. You'd have thought we'd have gotten somewhere by now. I think the problem [of immigration] is about the same. Not only here, but around the world. When it becomes bad in one place, you naturally have to move. My father's generation got caught up in that too. The Depression and the big drought happened simultaneously, breeding doubt and fear. Q: Are we on the brink of another great depression? A: Well, I'm not a fortune teller -- but it ain't over yet. Q: Do you ever feel pigeonholed as a hippie? Overly tied to the late '60s, Woodstock, the whole thing? A: Not at all. It's like the wake of a ship going through. You can't deny that's your wake back there. I've always had fun with it. In fact, I just found a tape that was recorded in late 1968. It was a concert I did with the Grateful Dead on Long Island, but I can't remember where it was specifically, it was so long ago. The tape had deteriorated over time, so I had it digitized. When it came back, it wasn't bad at all. When my kids heard it, they were in tears, holding their guts and just laughing. There were songs on there that I hadn't remembered singing -- that I wrote! So not only am I tied to the '60s, I'm still releasing work from that era. Q: So being the iconic '60s hippie forever is OK with you? A: Oh yeah. Because the most important qualities of hippiedom didn't have to do with soap. They had to do with being free, with living your own life and taking care of yourself. Those were the values of the time, and they still have some value. Q: Does the '60s-era hippie still exist in some form today? A: I don't know. But there was a time when you couldn't work for the postal service if you had a mustache. We got through that idiocy, and now you can do whatever you want with a mustache. You can work a real job or you can be a flake. Nowadays, people are walking around in vampire clothing, and that's fine. So are suits and ties. These are the costumes of the soul. Q: Are we freer than we were in 1969, then? A: In some personal ways, yes. But we are less free with the overbearing rules and regulations, the constant Ralph Nader-isms. The state continues to protect people from themselves, from learning from their own mistakes and their own experiences. You didn't find that kind of idiocy 40 years ago. Q: Have you ever defined yourself as a protest singer? A: Yes and no. It's like being a farmer and going about your business on the farm, then having the black suits come in and tell you that what you're doing is illegal. So the idea of being an activist is not about protesting professionally. But there is an obligation to say something about the freedoms you had before they said "you can't do it." Q: So as a musician, are you back to farming? A: Well, we're still in Iraq. And there's the medical stuff and the money crisis, all affecting everybody in subtle ways. I might take some old songs and retune them [for today]. There are some things I'm not real happy about. -- eschu...@timesreview.com . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. 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