Arlo Guthrie is a Ron Paul Republican

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.

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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. Read more>>>>