You can get anything you want...
Anyone who is familiar with Arlo Guthrie and his late father, Woody, knows what to expect from these guys musically. Woody Guthrie was made famous by some of the greatest protest music America has seen, both in terms of being on message and having staying power. Case in point: everybody has heard "This Land is Your Land" at least once.
Arlo Guthrie is no slouch, either, when it comes to songs of social and political protest. His career was basically launched with "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," an 18-minute long talking blues about escaping the Vietnam War draft in the 1960s.
So it comes as no surprise that Arlo Guthrie, when interviewed by myself, Bob Stannard and the staff of WBTN AM last Monday, had something to say about the present war in Iraq. Actually, he had quite a lot to say. What follows is an excerpt from our interview dealing with the War in Iraq, which aired on WBTN last week.
Arlo Guthrie plays his first show ever in Bennington on Sunday, Sept. 30, at 7 p.m. at the Mount Anthony Union High School. And if my past experience at an Arlo Guthrie concert is any indication, he will most certainly have a whole lot MORE to say when he performs.
See you at the show!
"The times are eerily familiar to anybody who, I would say, is about 55 or older. And in some ways, it’s nice to see the differences as well as feel the fear of the sameness. I guess what I’m saying is, back in 1969, ‘68, ‘67, you know, it really did take years.
"That war in Vietnam was building for a long time, and it took many years for the anti-war movement to get going. And it really didn’t do much, until the vets came back from Vietnam themselves, and got up on those stages, and those platforms, and at those rallies, and said, ‘Here’s what’s going on, and here’s why we think it’s dumb.’ And when they started speaking out, that put an end to all the arguments about, ‘Oh, it’s just a bunch of hippies,’ or, ‘It’s just a bunch of old commies,’ or, ‘It’s just a bunch of these guys or just a bunch of those guys.’ When the vets came back themselves, and stood up and said, ‘This sucks,’ it ended all arguments.
"And we’re seeing that now. It didn’t take — I mean, we’ve been involved here now, what, four or five years. That’s nothing compared — that’s half the time that it took us 40 years ago to make room for these guys who had the experience, who had the knowledge, whose patriotism could not be questioned, whose service to the country was obvious. And now that we’re hearing from these guys, this situation’s not going to last very much longer, I hope.
"I think we’re beginning to realize now that the administration’s policy has been oil all along. That’s what it’s always been. It’s not any of these, building democracy stuff, it’s not any of these finding the weapons, it ain’t looking for this guy or that guy, it ain’t hunting down terrorists, or nothing like that. This is about oil.
"And when it first began, I didn’t want to believe that. I really thought, no, it’s gotta be something else, it’s gotta be more than that. And sure enough, it turns out that most people don’t really feel comfortable saying it, because it’s not politically correct quite yet. This whole thing’s been about oil, and I don’t know how many more Americans ought to be putting themselves in harm’s way for oil. That’s just dumb.
"So, I hope we’ll see an end to it soon, I hope the catastrophic results of us getting out of there are not the ones they’ve been predicting. I don’t think they will be, I think that’s just a bunch of B.S. I’d love to see people solve their own problems. That’s kind of like saying, if somebody came into this country and started telling us what to do, that if they left, it would be worse. But the truth is, we left out of Vietnam, and now we’re friends with them. And we lost over there. I think the best thing we could do is to lose over here, and become friends with them. Give them 10 years, they’ll be our buddies. That’s what we want ... All we have to do is lose and get out of there early, and in 10 years they’ll all be buddies.
"The same thing is true, by the way, of Iran. They got tens and thousands, hundreds of thousands of young people in Iran who don’t like what’s going on over there, just the same way as there are tens and thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of young people in Iraq who don’t like what’s going on over there. They will solve their own problems the sooner we get out of the way and let them do it.
"What we should be doing is being the country that is the inspiration for all of these people around the world who want to just get along with each other, have the commerce that we’re talking about, have the dialogues with other people, and if they want to live their own way, talk their own language, do their own religious thing, that’s great. That’s what we’re all about. So I have great hopes that it will work out fine. I don’t care who gets the blame or the credit, it’s not about that, and it’s not politics."