An evening with Arlo Guthrie. Great songs: 3 great stories and one line for the times
Except for Alice's Restaurant, he sang most of the songs associated with him. He said he sometimes still tours with a band. Here, he was solo.
Arlo story #1: one time, he was playing a gig in Tucson, and as he got off the plane, a reporter ran up to him and asked him if he knew that Bib Dylan was also playing in Tucson that night. He hadn't known that. The reporter asked him how he thought people would come to see him when Bob Dylan was in town. He thought for a second, and said that Bob Dylan was writing so many new songs, he wouldn't sing very many known old ones, and that if people wanted to hear old Bob Dylan songs, they would hear more of them coming to see Arlo. He thought he was "being a smartass," but the journalist repeated it world for word, and Arlo had a packed house!
Arlo story #2: He was playing in a small club in Chicago for over a week, and one night, around 3 in the morning, when he was tired and wanted just to go to bed, "some guy" asked him if he would listen to one song he had written. This happened all the time, and he REALLY didn't want to do this. The guy was really insistent, so Arlo said, "tell you what, you buy me a beer, and you do what you want while I'm drinking it." So, the guy bought him a beer, and sang his song. Arlo really liked it, and thought it would be a great song for him to record. He was crestfallen when the guy said he was glad Arlo liked it, and then asked him to get Johnny Cash hear it and record it. But Arlo did just that. Cash said he wouldn't record the song, as it was about a subject he had sung about many times, and he didn't want to get into a rut. Arlo then got the green light to record it himself, and became friends with the song's composer. The song was "City of New Orleans," and the composer was Steve Goodman. Johnny Cash said he had recorded too many train songs already, and didn't want to do another one. Biggest favor, I presume, that Johnny Cash ever did for Arlo.
Arlo story #3: When he was in elementary school, his class was singing a few well-known songs, until they started singing "This Land Is Your Land." Arlo was the only one in the class who DIDN'T know the words, because he had never thought it necessary to learn the words to songs his dad had made up and always sang around the house.
He then noted that Lady Gaga had sung lines from that song at half time during some football game (Super Bowl? I don't follow these things), and that she got in hot water for singing a "subversive" song. Arlo said, "if a song with the lyrics 'This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land' is subversive, then WE'RE FUCKED! I don't know any other way to say it."
Neither did I.
I love hearing these bits of history directly from people who had lived them (I always loved hearing Helen Thomas tell us her JFK stories, and WISH I had written them all down).
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