July 26, 2009
Questions for Arlo Guthrie
Just Folk
By DEBORAH SOLOMON
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.
INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.
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