"Nowhere Near the Threat
I Had Hoped to Become":
A Review of Arlo Guthrie and Family

October 19, 2006

Certain songs stir up memories, and it was the strangest thing last night in Oshkosh.. as Arlo Guthrie played "City of New Orleans" I remembered listening to it years ago in my 4th floor dorm room.. looking out over a cold and empty prairie. I remembered the swirl of emotions stirred by Guthrie's plaintive question: "Don't you know me, I'm your native son?" In the song that question seems to be directed at the landscape hurtling by in the Mississippi darkness. That was my question to the landscape also.

Last night the song took on a different meaning for me.. as this son of the folk singer.. the son of the 60s.. played to a small audience, and sang once again that question: "Don't you know me, I'm your native son?" As I thought about how mercilessly Arlo would be skewered by Bill O'Reilly or any right-wing talk host.. I wondered if his country really would know him.. if it would recognize this true native son.

Why skewered? Go back and listen to "Alice's Restaurant" again (which he sang for us!). The military is not treated with kid gloves, but criticized.. the morality of the drop-out comes up against the morality of the state, and wins. In our concert there was a humorous monologue about how airport security has always been around.. bringing up the drug use of the past—and making us laugh about all that. There was also the moment in which he mentioned how much convenient the world today is, because there has never been a time in history when it has been possible to do so much good for so many people with so little. How much less convenient it would be if the world was going right!

Refreshing as his views are, they struck me as being radically out of step with the America that is growing up around us. Underneath the self-effacing humor, one senses that Guthrie knows it. He recounted explaining to a young customs agent: "I am nowhere near the threat I had hoped to become." In that answer is all the drama of the lost 60s.. the fall from relevance.

But who cares about relevance? Better to listen to the message that comes through loud and clear in this music. There is a gentleness.. a love for peace.. that exudes from this long white-haired ex-hippy. A sense that he will do good. A sense that he loves freedom. As he closed with "This Land is Your Land" he introduced the stanza that his dad taught him specially:

Nobody living, can ever stop me
As I go walking
My freedom highway
Nobody living
Can make me turn back
This land was made for you and me...

And I guess that's why we and most of the people in the small Oshkosh opera house gave him a standing ovation. It was about a spirit that still believes.. not in celebrity, not in power.. not in art.. but in freedom and the core values: mercy, pity, peace, and love. These are native values too, although it is hard to see them watching tv. Why must we learn these things again?