Arlo Guthrie is back. Not that he ever left, but with the current craze for music and culture of the 1950s and 60s, Guthrie and people like him, Bob Dylan for instance, do appear to be back in the saddle again.
Dylan gave a concert in Louisville just last week and Guthrie brought his long locks and guitar to the University of Louisville on March 27.
Guthrie and I engaged in a sort of extemporaneous dance outside UL Students Activities Center that evening. He had just finished a sound check and was getting a breath of fresh air, when I approached him tape recorder in hand.
The bearded, long-haired Guthrie, who was dressed in jeans, cowboy boots and a patterned shirt, didn't look quite old enough to have been one of the performers at Woodstock.
He insisted on standing throughout the interview, but he answered all my questions thoughtfully and in a refreshing sanguine manner.
What does Guthrie think about the renewed interest in the music and culture of his generation?
"I see it being like a spoke in a wheel. And every time it comes around you hear it. And when you're in a time when you're not hearing it, you look back to the last time you heard it," he said.
According to Guthrie there are times in history when people wake up and become very creative and spontaneous and explore what it means to be a human being.
"But there are also times when other people say well enough with that, we got to get back to selling washing machines," he said.
Does Guthrie think the sixties was one of those creative times?
"Absolutely, if not one of the major times," he said swaying back and forth, the toes of his cowboy boots pointing in one direction and then another.
How do the 1990s differ from the 1960s?
"Wavey Gravy said the 90s were just the 60s upside down. I saw some bell-bottom pants for sale in a store the other day and it scared the hell out of me," he said.
"People talk about the sixties as if it were a decade worth of stuff. But to me the sixties were really between
1967 and 1972. And the real heart of that time was a moment when all of a sudden things changed. And I remember the day. It lasted about three months and that was it," Guthrie explained.
On that day according to Guthrie, a large number of people woke up and began to notice the world around them.
"You could look into somebody else's eyes that happened to be a little awake and it was like one of these monster movies. You knew they were awake. And you could walk up and talk to them. And they could be white, black, yellow, red, or they could be big and fat, skinny or thin.
It didn't make any difference what they looked like or where they came from. They were just people who were a little more awake than everybody else, and they all knew each other, even though they'd never met. And it lasted for about three months," Guthrie said.
Why did it end?
"Pretty soon everybody thought well, this is pretty good, whatever these people are doing I want to do it too. And pretty soon people were marketing blue jeans. And then people were saying 'Geez lets make some sheets and wall paper like the stuff they're wearing.' And all of a sudden it became a consumer culture.
And we took something spontaneous and we started to sell it," Guthrie said.
Don't you think that's pretty bad?
"I don't think it's good or bad. It's just the way it is. And I have a kind of criminal instinct to be wary of the way it is, no matter how it is," Guthrie said.
But don't you worry about people becoming zombies like in the move "Night of the Living Dead," getting up every morning and working 9 to 5 jobs, coming home to watch television and never thinking about social issues?
"My dad thought of it this way. He said a certain amount of people are working right now and a certain amount of people aren't. And he said if one of these people stop what they're doing he might have to do it.
"So, Woody Guthrie said 'Thank God that everybody is doing what they're doing. Because that means they're sparing me the job.' We should congratulate each other on the work we do. I'm very appreciative of people who are doing things I would hate to do," Guthrie said.
By Danny O'Bryan
LEO Magazine April 21, 1993
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