Arlo Guthrie interview on Woody and Bob Dylan Later 7/15/91 Alice's Restaurant

the july 15 1991 episode of later with bob costas features arlo guthrie such an interesting guy with an interesting life this is his data you know obviously was woody guthrie one of the stalwarts of americana of american songwriting the folk tradition social change advocate and to arlo he was just his dad his dad who was sick with huntington's disease for most of his life and uh oro tells a great story about getting sent to a school in new york city and getting there and the kids were singing this land is my land which he didn't realize wasn't just a made-up song his dad babbled at home so he arlo as a young kid did not understand who his father was seems way more in tune with his mother marjorie who who was a dancer and and was jewish and uh you know mario talks about his bar mitzvah that ended up just being a folk hoot nanny and all the kids walking around going when's the bar mitzvah stuff and uh kind of funny that the kids were more in tune with tradition than than the old man that being said why would would you guthrie be in tune with tradition and uh he talked about his dad being a wild man and getting sick and and uh the kind of structured family life that that created and uh so his mom was a dancer his dad was a radical folk singer that ran around the country never having a dime to his name because it's the way he lived and who he was and uh arlo arlo talks about the payday that the movie alice's restaurant had and the impact of alice's restaurant upon the rest of his career and uh talked about taking the money and buying a farm up in massachusetts so he could do whatever he wanted on his land without much uh objection and if there was any it would be on his terms so really cool dude and uh talks about dylan coming to visit his dad in the hospital that's a fascinating chunk of this interview too so fans bob dylan woody guthrie harlow guthrie this one's for you thank you for staying up later i'm linda ellerbee sitting in for bob costas you can get anything you want at alice's restaurant but what you can't usually get on network television and that's his choice is the author of that we got him arlo guthrie arlo now hi linda hi arlo how you doing i'm all right oh why do you hate doing interviews because you have to think of stuff and you have to look smart you know and i used to be able to do it but i don't know lately i just can't do it is performing different for you now than it was years ago no it's actually nicer and easier it's more free form it's more it's more power in it there's more stuff you know there's it's more real or something when you're out there and you're performing what do people ask for i don't give them a chance to ask for stuff you know if they start asking for stuff i tell them to shut up because it sounds like a drive-through and you can't perform in a drive-through atmosphere you know so uh and i and over the years i got to tell you my audience has been so wonderful because it used to be that the only thing that they wanted to hear was alice's restaurant or something like that and that was so long that you really couldn't you can't do it every show especially if you got a bunch of people on a show it's not just one guy and everybody's got to split up the time to do alice's restaurant i'd be doing three quarters of the song and have to get off you know so i had to let the audience know right out front that we weren't gonna we weren't gonna be given our little stuff to do it was just gonna have to come and whatever it was it had to be okay and over the years for those people who could accept that they kept coming and everybody else came once and split and it's and it's been fine how much of of the of the song itself is true almost all the song is true the part that gets confusing is that a lot of people that heard the song either heard it because of the movie alice's restaurant which came out two years later in 69 or some other thing like that so people don't understand that that the movie was fake and the only part of the movie that was true was the song but the song for the most part was all true you were up in the berkshires i went to i dropped out of college went to see some friends who were living in a church in the in great barrington massachusetts who were getting ready for a big thanksgiving party and we took a bunch of trash to the dump it was closed we dumped it at another dump that was open because it wasn't really a dump excuse me which these days you can't do by the way uh and then when i got when they tried to draft me they found that i had a criminal record from dumping this trash and so i was found unacceptable for military service at least that's what they told me but i think they were fooling but i'm not sure but anyway the song has all these people in it who are real people and people don't know that they're real because who could but you can't make up officer obi and you can't make up a blind judge and you can't make up that could only have happened so it's mostly true what's in the song and when they made the movie you went back and found those people and they they were in the movie weren't they those were the real people yeah the real people were who the cop who really busted us uh became a good buddy ours and still is and he volunteered to be in the movie and there was a real judge who was a really blind judge and he was in the movie and uh a lot of people the original alice was in the movie but she was playing somebody else and they had pat quinn who was nice actress who was playing alice i mean everybody was very confused about who was who even the people who knew that they were themselves but there was somebody else being them uh it turned into a real disaster on a sort of personal level but it was successful in every other way after the movie came out were the people who were in it were they pleased to see themselves in the movie or were they nuts well you can imagine what it was like here we got the real alice and her real husband who is the real ray and this is a song and a story that takes place mostly in their house kind of like and uh but then there's the fake actress alice and the fake actor ray and my relation is happening with these fake people based on what it was supposed to be with the real people but it wasn't this was a script and so it kind of insinuates that i got something going on with alice so she's got something going on with this guy and he's got something ongoing with that girl and none of which was true it was just all fiction for a movie but everybody in town says aha i knew alice was doing something i knew that guy was and all of a sudden there was such pressure on the relationships and on marriages that most of them actually broke up and people ended up going through a rough time for a few years because of how the world perceived their lives it really changed their lives it made it difficult it it changed your life in a way too i mean you were suddenly at that point this big national star everybody knew who you were it has always seemed to me arlo that at that time you've made some sort of decision i think to not to not pursue that did some part of you flat turn away from being famous what a question i don't know i was probably too stupid to be famous uh i made a lot of money from alice's restaurant i didn't make a whole i mean not a lot like today not like millions and zillions uh but to me which was a lot which was you know i don't know a few hundred thousand bucks or something it was a big time for me and the only thing i really wanted to do was to buy a farm and live in massachusetts on my own place where the cops wouldn't come and get me you know and uh far enough out you know and that's what i did and i don't think it had to do it didn't have to do with avoiding fame and fortune so much it was if it's gonna happen it's gotta happen on my own terms in my own real world because i always you know i was brought up by a dad who and a mom who were very practical people and that they were well known might ever you know a lot of people know woody guthrie uh and a lot of people in the dance world know my mother marjorie mazia and they were they were well known people but they were also real and they had their feet on the ground and uh being a prima donna in my family was not something to aspire to and not gonna get you anywhere at home right so i didn't want to be one i just wanted to live on my farm raise my kids with my wife and uh if fame and fortune could happen with that that was that'd be fine with me i'm not opposed to making money or being you know well known but i don't want to do it in a sort of fake way or have to be not real any regrets about those kinds of decisions ever not one do you think that you're a musician be because you're woody son because you grew up were there musicians in your house all the time when you were growing up well not just musicians but you know my dad was sick and for a long time and he went in the hospital when i was around six and he used to come home every weekend and we'd take care of him and stuff and all of about that same time this is early sixties uh there was a thing called the folk boom going on where somebody actually played a guitar you know and sang a song or something and all of the records that were being made uh with his songs on it would come to the house and they would come from all over the world in dozens of languages and stuff and so we didn't just have musicians but we had records from everywhere with maybe one of his songs and nine other songs and so we heard stuff uh that was amazing and it was wonderful to grow up that way now i am told that you had one of the most unusual bar mitzvahs yeah probably was but but that's not unusual oh i mean i remember i was like i went to this new school when i was in sixth grade because i had to progress or something so my mom sent me to a progressive school in brooklyn so here i go and i'm walking in there and uh they were singing all these songs one of them was like this land is your land and everybody was singing it and i was the only one didn't know the words right because i didn't realize that my dad's songs were at that time known outside of the house you didn't know he was famous well i knew he was sort of famous but i didn't know what famous was you know when you're kidding you don't think about it famous meant that there were records coming to the house famous meant there were people showing up did i never went to concerts so i didn't know nothing about famous so anyway i had to learn his songs and i and i did learn them and there were other people all around singing these songs i mean i didn't i really didn't understand what was going on but i knew that i loved it i knew i loved that whole world there was something exciting about it and i just wanted and i used to sneak in bars when i was a kid and because i was woody's kid i was allowed to sneak into these bars uh i won't tell you which ones but it was that the one claim to fame that i really used when i was a kid was being woody's kid especially when it came to not not to become famous i wasn't singing in those days i just wanted to go hear people and there were people that were only playing in you know little slimy little joints you know that you had to know somebody to get in and i would try and get in the bar mitzvah did i avoid that yet no obviously not uh well so here what are they going to do with this jewish kid i mean jewish on my mother's side my dad no one knew what he was he was from oklahoma and that was enough they didn't want to know from that you know so uh what are you gonna how are you gonna have a bar mitzvah for this they didn't know what i was and like i tell you i was this kid it was kind of mixed up anyway so they decided to rent a loft downtown uh and bring lots of folk singers and call it a bar mitzvah that was the only that was the big compromise that everybody made was well we can't leave out this and we can't leave out there we could so they all brought everyone avoided me no one my dad had been in the hospital now for years he comes out everybody's hanging around with him i don't think anybody said anything to me i was just walking around with the other kids going when did we do something did you play music with it with your dad at all very little out in the backyard you know we were living in howard beach at the time and he used to come out which is a little suburban community around new york and uh we used to sit out there and we'd feed him hot dogs he'd come back from these hospitals starved and uh and every once in a while he'd show me something on a guitar but not not like going to a show or nothing i really missed that yeah what kind of relationship did you have with him well the kind i'm talking about my dad was was aside from being in a hospital he was also a wild man yeah i mean long before he got sick he was a wild man and uh and then very intelligent wild man so that he really got his way he really did whatever he wanted to do he couldn't keep any money couldn't keep possessions he was giving everything away or spending it and uh and i most of the stories that i know about him come third party they come from people who hung out with him so that's how i mostly know my dad by the time i was old enough to ask questions he was sick enough so he couldn't answer he died of huntington's disease and i suppose i'll to ask you this because it is a terribly hereditary disease you've you don't know whether you have it you've not is that correct well i know i'm not sick yeah i mean that i know you don't look at me i could be i mean a little weird maybe but you know how do you know see this was the problem with my dad he was nuts to begin with how do you know if that's a part of it could be sick or it could be naturally nuts you know and i think people have you have to at some point say look i don't care what people think i feel good about myself i don't know if i'm sick or not i mean you know there's all kinds of things that can happen to you in life you get run over by a truck you know you don't think about that it just happens and i that's how i think of huntington's disease and all these other things whatever's going to happen is going to happen and you gotta take each day and deal with it you know was his music an influence on your music well yeah to what extent i should say because clearly there would be some influence it's you know it's not like different kinds of music you know my mom was playing beethoven you know in one room and we were playing uh everly brothers that uh people like that those were the guys i loved i mean i grew up going to a typical city school here in new york i went to ps63 and the only things we listened to was the everly brothers because that was the only i mean when i kissed my first girl i wasn't listening to you know pete seeger or woody guthrie or something bob dylan wasn't even around uh i was listening to the emerald i was there yeah me too i mean i think we're the same age because i i learned kissing to the everly brothers myself that's the end there and i still love them and they're still great i mean these guys are uh and i'm happy they're still touring and then if i remember right when you were 13 somebody knocked on your door looking for woody a very strange person with hair weirder than mine and then you're talking 1961 having hair weirder than mine now i could get away with this you got 20 years of weird people this guy shows up with weird shoes too and he says where is woody you know nobody could understand them and uh so i'm not surprised i liked what 20 years later on the some kind of award show nobody understood them either so i mean bob dylan has remained consistent if anything over the years you know and uh and he showed up looking for my dad he found him he went to used to hang out and go visit him in hospitals in new jersey and the two of you became pretty good friends you and dylan didn't you when i was younger yeah yeah was he an influence in you was his music well bob dylan proved to me that you didn't have to be like an opera singer to make a living if anybody ever doubted you didn't have to have a voice in other words right i mean you didn't even have to be coherent i mean you could make a living that's wonderful thing about america you know is that what other country could you know there's nobody else there's nowhere else so he showed us that what was possible and everybody no one has been more influential not just writing the songs but as a personality as a single personality there may be groups like the beatles or rolling stones and stuff like that they're all sort of up there in who formed the way we are and he certainly is one of them uh you wrote a piece of rolling stone on the 20th anniversary of woodstock and you of course were at woodstock and you said once years ago they printed i don't know how do you know they did it because i read my research oh i forgot it let's see that's what we do in television we're sneaky people oh okay i'll pay attention though what well i forgot what i was going to say years ago that i read that you said talking about the 60s and i've never forgotten this although i'll probably mess the quote up asking whether the 60s meant anything and you said it's it's it's too late to know and too soon to tell is it still too late yeah it sounds real good if you don't say it let's go with it go with it if you didn't say it is it did it mean anything that whole business are you asking me now i'm asking from a fresh start yeah i'm asking you i mean it's 1991 now people have to understand this i'll give you my true uh sort of feeling because it's too early for an opinion if anything but my my my uh i got a sneaking suspicion that the 60s aren't over uh they're still going on in china and they're still going on in eastern europe and it's still going on in central and south america where people young people these are not older people trying to change the world from some kind of smarts they got or books they read these are people who have just an instinct that it's time uh for uh for liberty to be a real thing uh and i don't i don't mean to be real serious but it is serious because it was serious 20 years ago and it was serious for us and we made that possible this country is far more tolerant about a lot of things than than it was 25 years ago that's not due to uh people in the white house it's it's almost in spite of them or people in congress or church leaders or other people like that this is like a grant was a groundswell of we got to change it we gotta and it wasn't like let's get how will we do it well we'll do this it wasn't planned it just happened and anybody talks about people who are planning events and doing things or orchestrating this it's it's it's a lot of crap everything happened just sort of uh naturally sort of from nowhere we all changed the world just changed and it's still going on so arlo what you doing these days i'm doing the same old stuff i've been doing forever i'm on the road about eight nine months a year and these days i'm touring with my kid and his band some of the time and uh that's kind of fun because they're like a heavy duty rock and roll band and i get to tune their abs down a little bit yeah i've met your son and in fact a couple years ago when i talked to him and i said you know well what are you what are you going to be doing or are you going to be a musician like your father like your grandfather you know he just looked me straight down and he said no i'm a rock and roller he is it's true i hate i told him look guys you can come but you got to leave the spandex at home and uh they all had these mopey faces okay you know but it's fun do they ever look at you like god you're old no which is nice because i'm not i mean my i'm it's getting gray i know but uh i just i still feel like i'm having fun out there and there are a lot of young people coming to the shows too which is nice so and it's not just the age it's the spirit of the thing and the spirit of that's going on in the shows is wonderful arlo guthrie singer writer and all around good human being for anybody's generation good night you

Channel: clevelandlivemusic

Views: 43,474

Keywords: Arlo Guthrie, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Later with Bob Costas, Linda Ellerbee, interview, Alice's Restaurant

Id: Dbq_rvn1iVg

Length: 22min 19sec (1339 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021