Richter Scale Society; Interview With Peter Yarrow

anti american back again going to use those from new players and stuff before from fellow norwich really yes as a matter of fact not only did i write a number of songs for the soundtrack of the directly emerge from the needs of the movie with them making the movie itself was an experience of going into and being part of the world continues to the world that i had no more formal on a continuous basis then taught me at a great deal less eight taught me i don't mean the sun's going to school i mean rather than the sense of the sixties school in amir sentences culture of her that aren't super scored tickets formed in toronto when the general idea is that somebody who has turned on to doing something and analysts as something to do or whether it's in planting seeds in a and some are of color printing

ideas about mathematics in one's own mind are serious as mine that had that turned on to the process they are teachers in the most fundamental important sense of the word so the situation was very important teacher for that i think the whole world of film first of all i think film only archer has become the butt say the ultimate message of communications for the music is still very important the culmination of both seemed to get a more people with roots in this country or in every country i think is potentially right now music is far far more important and this is the reason for that anybody can can sing and play and can share in a musical experience you don't need one thousand dollars to put a song together you don't need a tremendous amount of training to order i mean even the

training after the tremendous amount of ability to extrapolate from other types of training and put a movie together and in singing there's an interesting thing you know if you walk down the street and you encounter somebody and you're open to them and direct them most of the time you're frightened them with your openness in your directness if you do not play the societal things that we have inherited from our cultural experience to believe in artistic games like a musician can make a movie or a writer like norman mailer's making movies and shouldn't make movies i kind of think what we're all of the gains are in extraordinary mean they're ever called the games and like games people play and the book and play our games i were talking on the radio five years ago and we have to maintain a certain pace a certain attitude a certain relationship to one another that is proscribed now in music these

relationships can be violated these cultural relationships can be violated and new relationships can be formed that anybody is getting uptight the type of openness for instance that a request when she sings would scare most people have to get it they were to be confronted by in just a verbal talking verbal fashion and music people are not protected by having established games to reject or accept experiences they haven't cloistered there are perceptions to such a great degree they're unable to really directly respond some music has become a vehicle for an expression other attitudes that are really an acceptable in most cultural traditional day of boating and i was interested in and i'm wired prince's when you deliberately to pull mary version of i did rock and roll music and the local fire was seen be seen in anybody from the folk trio it was

taboo to accept rattled even considered you know admitted it was there oh that was the case i remember that was one of the things that it seems ridiculous no one in retrospect do you think that was the case but it was there was a very very divisive i'm unhappy competitive competitive attitude and an important in the countries of the newport folk festival the drain and that that divisive issue is one of them where your ethnic or you are not ethnically pure not pure and those urban centers the new urban centers were considered to be on cutting out as far as the people who were traditional centers were concerned or the people and united the tradition as far as i was concerned it was always ludicrous because unless you're born with a homogeneous ethnic

tradition as part of your life and it's all you're doing is adopting another point of view or the house so why not find your own eclectic identity and live with it let it explode let it flower levitt boston and let that be appointed you know it's also true that at the time people resented rock'n'roll there were reasons for than the one at the time rock n roll and rhythm and blues are you had i think and the connotation to a large extent of the commercial exploitation most of the songs from a teenage dating behavior this is ten years ago and they weren't written and produced by people who wanted to make money period now when music became more important and i maintain that it became more important for the reason that i was just discussing because people needed a language which could be available to them in which they could be very open and honest with

one another and direct with i couldn't really hear emotion really hear commitment and really here feeling without being uptight about it when that happened all of us than for a rock and roll music really became artistically respectable because all of sudden people were not just using a popular is a field that is as a vehicle for making money all the sudden there was that same compulsive i must create involved in many of the songs and the unknowns to many of the folk enthusiast there were many artists who in spite of the fact that they had dollar signs perhaps in front of their eyes had a tremendous compulsive commitment to the music that they were singing the buddy holly phenomenon for instance they even elvis presley now is looked upon as being an extraordinary talent which she was and to one degree or another still isn't sure and there was a little respect at the time for the rhythm and blues tradition and of course that knows looked upon

as being you know the quintessence of the expression of snow oregonians are these inward so let's say the quintessence of the expression of real internal you know emotional turmoil travel it on mission and i was doing he experimented for a while and two which exposes the us will change it but he didn't do it in the home which which got into folk rock for instance and and now it's total of country do think it will marry weeks permanently well first of all i don't think he says experiments are it can be categorized in that way i think it's good to talk about them that way when i listen to john wesley harding oh i listen to a musical experience and i don't really make the distinction my mind whether it is part of one tradition or another it's not important in unison starring in their commission they might be really important for our experiments have taken us

into a lot of areas but to assist us any of the people things in our work and our singing guys if we'd no longer really a real interesting and i don't care what the point of you are taking its baloney it would be that band and that's that's the call lead primary equation that makes any sense in any creative as far as i'm concerned and any other type of consideration what will the audience think of the hallowed be received what market on appealing to these are not real considerations they're destructive they are compromising that as prostitution that as commercialization do you think that the reason people marry have been in front of what's a place in the college concert feel and stuff like that have been able to perpetuate themselves because they were always kept within themselves and the va tried to appease you know the music business by trying to switch languages and we can really really good

because whenever that we have to always dealing with yourself and you know once you've committed a certain act of her prostitution you know it's easy to do after it's hard to do it the first time and we were given i remember when we started we were given a song this admission record this it's going to hit love of god has all the elements moon moon june of nineteen sixty one and whatever that was and some of this and our managers know never own it then it's going to be great that we just made a decision then you know not to a virtuous adjusted in putting one foot in front of another that didn't feel comfortable and we were not forced to have to really consider compromising anything ever and one of that would be very few college concerts we do most of the concerts that we do are in a civic auditoriums or in concert halls a lot of the cancers that we do not have been

doing and then to support issues in order to be a part of events that didn't seem just to compel our participation could well last wednesday where a week where in carnegie hall and the chavez cesar chavez benefit for those people are missing don't know about chavez he was the leader of the boycott for the great pickers and the boycott grape situation was largely centered around his charisma and his capacity to a really different form he went on a hunger strike and former french approved of kennedy which was well celebrated and ted kennedy terms that senator mcgovern was at the situation however that isn't that's the traditional thing that we've been involved in around nineteen eighty there's just too much to do i mean it's incredible and i can spend all my time

deeply committed to doing all these things and there would be no time for anything else for instance we were in the part of the mccarthy campaign before i wrote the campaign song for senator mccarthy and if i were to sing it you know and you were involved in that campaign it would be a very strange experience because that era has not passed those issues are not resolved and the song is every bit as alive now as it was then because mccarthy was not just and that was the beginning of and the genesis of a type of new awareness which i hope will save us from becoming a fascist take on the other hand the last thing that most of friends we were in chicago i was in chicago isn't that in the streets that would go to help the candidacy mccarthy when i found myself finally ultimately where i had to be which was on the streets and in the middle of the gas attacks

on more recently in the street but i think that it's all right if i mean it's just the form that it takes to kill it in the incredible thing about something that i will explain and one second just have to mention one other thing before i don't think the question without really be more industries the answer's really strange the first you know that the prices that they offer a situation though i mean there are issues now that are present they're alive the day to day that we just have to live with and deal with two years ago a year ago many kids on the campus were talking about my generation and now we're just inundated with that divisiveness of the world that surrounds us which isn't in the world were delirious polarization i think a lot of the older generation that looks down into a trance as it is to criticize nixon as a well used prison unit in those contests people say you know which adjustments chance to beat you know it always asked

recently a chance in the lungs allison a chance i'm willing to accept or reject oh oh whatever it is based upon the merits of the things that he does need it i paid my pre condition attitude towards them as irrelevant the issues are live there now is made his stand is positioned quite clear that many things literally norman mailer in his open letter to nixon you know those plays that enough to fulfill his campaign at asians because it would be catastrophic i that's my own addition to norman mailer norman mailer was also in the street he also was singer talking over the same microphones over which are interesting but your question is an important one and this is the most incredible area discussion more important than a lot of the things we've been taught in the horrendous and where this discussion is now at a pace of thousands of discussions that are happening and of a similar nature

all over the country but let me throw into it very different concept to that is a little scary and really means that we are part of a different area that we cannot look at these events in the ways in which we i'm not talking about them because the rules that govern the way in which goes don't have changed now will it be more in the streets the answer is of course but remember this is is that what happened two summers ago there were riots there lee the urban centers in america and everybody predicted that the riots would be ten times worse this past summer there were no demonstrations used to be peaceful i was in selma montgomery march itself in march on washington in nineteen sixty three leaving tens of they had small ones like the martian frankfurt and things that aren't even not because i'm a professional demonstrated that

because my body is there somebody asked me i go there an important period of content wyoming demonstrations different why would the city's not the same answer is then that would be given by me for the reason that the city's remember in this lesson we are watching the era of personal social commitment commitment to social change much in the era of the commitment to the fact that snow longer groups no longer bright it's no longer new it's no longer cathartic it's no longer cataclysmic it's no longer a charismatic to have a repeat what it can only happen once i mean again happen once all over it and the burning in the looting happened once then it's over so that let's go on to something new because it has no drama i don't know if it's that i think it's keeping america and you know expecting you to do something notice no one it's no it's not real it's not

really theatrical it's not really a lot of that's the point is we're in the midst of a society that's becoming a series of theatrical situations unless the theoretical situation works for the participant it has no meaning and nobody will really get into the chicago situation was the most bizarre thing you ever see any skills were getting cracked anna andy and freedom landed been established right there in grant park in front of the hilton and a war was going on inside that the elton and the coffee line for the only cafeteria would equal the coffee shop was a national guardsman getting coffee and honors for his men and one other name members of the group who had been inside the so called the hippies or hippies you know in the end fifty dollars he's getting and they were also unwinding very polite and outside a war was going on and the contrast was extraordinary and it made me realize that it was the whole situation was absurd with a capital a the only reason it existed the only reason they were doing it was because it

was a new theater and what we're going to see is people committed to events the act of civil disobedience crossing a picket line you know it's it was civil disobedience and i mean a picket line passing year a police line in iowa civil disobedience has no longer theatrical and say we did that last last time when we didn't do this time but that coupled with this urgency to really solve real problems is the urgency to find new ways to think so that we will not be slaves to these perceptual categories that have inspired us for so long and the and the freer than the collaborator of the mind to kill you you know is going to be the mass media will not lose is very strange to recite lisa's back to almost a point on a rampage in that when i was watching the movie you are with what you eat the most famous of

that you know isn't this bizarre i was sitting in the situation room watching those beauty and flowers and happiness in things going on and i was watching this movie about two three weeks when she can and you know i know who you are know what you know the people in the film represent and i said there's no shows but we're saying for the achievements of the romans like you're sitting there and you try and watch something and just thinking wow that's closed days ago and this is the record of what is historical record right now that it was an but that's that's true about the events in chicago that's already over i they're the same person that really once again former to your would chewing gum and howard options for up to form second slain make that second city is improvisational theater group as the same person that done edited the the movie that in chicago bc forty filmmakers got together and said look take a movie and they will cut

that ultimately really leaving the job in our lord's hands and innocence really fit in everybody else but i mean i would say a substantial portion of the work were in the burden was carried by howard and i was watching this brilliantly cut will be the really really focused on what happened in chicago which i would like to address myself to in a second because i don't really think that people are looking at the situation in terms of what really happened noah neiman and peter i mean and i'm watching this and i say my god this is really past history that the times change so rapidly that i'm now looking at a phenomenon that could not occur today in that way and it won't there will be other demonstrations there will be other in the street think there will be other guerilla family will be whatever but we're watching that happening simultaneously a caucus a second avenue

services go was going to the announcers is go state students yes there were short thats thats true it's also true that mario savio was part of the the berkeley situation initially but if you analyze the situation you'll find that the only reason then it can happen there now who is number one because they haven't experienced that theory at birth or and because the mass media didn't bring if there's a strong enough which it might do when this movie gets shown because this movie was made to be shown by major media as equal time for the daily special wine and then daily special but we were positioning you know this is an intimate home and then we saw the images that were you know what he did he demanded time to answer the charges and then leveled against not chicago and of course with a report that just came out of what was a dead issue now is become alive again because awesome

people are being told us you didn't see what you saw you know it was a police riot that was more than we can explain to what it was and is he although i don't think it can happen again in that way it with the same people i mean just in that location i mean if everybody would there were really brought there by television it couldn't happen again in that way because they have to go do something else it used to be that there were certain prisons a strike was a strike when mass media were not involved in the strike picket students and mechanism in certain something to accomplish but what are the objectives of the movement today the movements and they're all related i think and how is it going to be a compost heap first of all the objective is not a simple unlike highway users be the cry is let the other piece of my environment the cry from the buyer get out was that i do not wish to be surrounded by a police state a mostly intellectually culturally or whatever

a police state is robbing me of my dignity is running about the same cries mary bailey and have beans as is as he won his the same cry from the hippies and still exist or did exist that the young people in czechoslovakia the french a revolution that recently occurred in the revolution on the campus in columbia all of that is the same let me have the peace of mind to me determine what is that israel it's valuable was beautiful let me have my freedom and that's more of a very subtle concept in the world of our mass media and press freedom and happiness is not the world of andy hardy and everybody knows that that was a rebellion in everybody gets involved and this cry the two cars in a garage or not can bring others some confusion in the black community and black journalist what freedom is that his visit evidently sociologists will tell you there's an identification with middle class barrios

on the part of the black community in the the current intelligence and to me that kind of home and that's freedom baby because then they got a bill to help us are finding out that that doesn't mean anything with isaacson was used by capitalism and it's there's an answer now shows you in that so we're trying to put more emphasis on that again and we see that that makes them is it doesn't know as far as an answer anything about describing the the right of the cultural the cultural objectives as it is something that he has to lease of scranton there are new objectives cultural objectives military weapon in chicago's far as i say because i see i see all of these as interrelated when chicago mayor daley you want to maintain his power is a politician either because it was brighter because intuitively

new ideas per hour decided that he was going to allow a particular kind of confrontation a confrontation to have to exist not only allow a poet precipitate it his attitude about the previous demonstrations in his as was pointed out in the report and his directive to the to the policeman to shoot to kill or maim arsonist you know that kind of thing korea descend on the instrumentality in the police force further the dissemination of the rumors of the attempted assassination i mean that is a continual fact of public life now that we know our eye and it doesn't doesn't alter the situation and yes there are reasons for security and we must respect those reasons and and maintain security ok those world gets less crazy until i met a man knows now he can kill a president a fact i did i can do it i can get me again like you know a

new president or senator in right ok so we know that exist a daily but daily did was he used police know what a policeman policeman a man with joblessness civil servant it's quite clear from studies of the authoritarian personality but they are very serious limitations know that their jobs are something that they're they deal with criminals and that's what they've been you know trying to do with it with criminal mentality is they are not they are not trained to do the situation where young patriot wishes to become participant to do is democracy and the ways in which young people want to be participants in a democracy recently and they'll use policemen were not suited to doing anything but carrying out the will of the law and they actually asked them to be the judges and the jury on the spot and it turned into a police riot he forced the confrontation in old town old town is on the outskirts of

the the centers of the hilton and people those who agree with village to characters right and he forced the confrontation here latitude for eleven mentality in the un the us and the pleas for stricter why why did he do what he did to maintain political power now how does that they have lightened they gain political power reading i'm saying is ludicrous because i can show you why that confrontation in that craziness got daily the power that you want because he in effect in precipitating these riots said to the people of chicago listen babies are keep the neighbors and the hippies and the abuse off the streets of the middle class neighborhoods for you if you'll give me control of the streets and it's my chicago that's what he got he got their blessing way seventy four though again as you go out chicago you'll see signs as i'm sure you saw it this building is being constructed by your mayor mayor

daley oversees another project of mayor daley that's just pure demagoguery yeah but wouldn't deal that he made no is the deal that makes a police state because once you tell anybody whats the merriweather it's the older man or whether it's the police chief or whatever it is it's your baby you determine not only the carrying out of the laws you know in the sense of i'm making arrests the execution in the sense of you know maintaining the piece and in certain disturbances but you are now free to do whatever you think you give people with a certain mentality the right to determine what is more what is good what is honest one is one is american one is an american what is acceptable behavior was unacceptable behavior it's not their jobs and their job is to prevent the regime of law and to arrest them if they break the law that's what the job placement and that and the

many many other jobs to the north peripheral to give a policeman a power that goes beyond that and you haven't trained afford to have been preparing for its not fair it's it's served at the policeman wears much poems is as the people of chicago but one a daily get out of it he got the power but now what chicago became was a police state where people were really intimidated because they learned is that it was always know that's what i feel and i've talked to people in chicago and dick gregory said this time and time again that he was he was telling people the story has been that when they get out you know essentially issued yet but the point is that if a deal is made throughout the country in other words let's say well it has been made in other cities but it's made everywhere but everywhere somebody says i was in a position of power give me control of the streets you'll be subject to my window and i can search

it a you know without a warrant or i can you know call call call the legal body calling out lot loitering or whatever if i can get anybody off the streets in reston about a wanted anytime and essentially when you make that kind of video that the people of chicago the middle class people of scotland for that's what you get you get a police state and we have that we're lost anyone really lost because that is really back against the wall phenomenon when you know that there's nothing that you can do that there's no read that you have no recourse and credentials that you can give the policemen there's nothing you can say to him to change his mind there's no amount of ugliness or blood or human suffering that will change his mind that he is totally know in control and mastered by this line the thing that's going on around him and you know that you've lost your freedom and you're living in a police state and that's the very sensation that everybody expressed and they fell in chicago we're living in a police state but the point is that the ultimate

responsibility lies with everybody who who i was listening who was talking to make sure that that deal is not made of people do not get power who are going to affect this kind of a deal the daily's wherever they exist will use people and policemen as pawns in order to maintain power and in order to maintain power hour they will create a police state that's nothing new it's happened a long time ago that happened frequently and that's the critical thing that went down in chicago to talk about the police's being one thing or another is talking about the poem isn't the situation they are not even the bad guys because they they never should have been allowed to have been involved in that situation that way more over it's also true that there has been a tremendous amount of violence in america's history they're at seven thousand having seven thousand national guardsmen actively shooting their their rivals in fighting in the pullman strike

in the civil war there were riots you know that killed two thousand people and a couple of days' draft riots read it below or approach says americans up upon well that's true but the point is also that that our culture is changing in subtle at the same time we see all this leading to really an intolerable stay on the other hand we see other lifestyle experiments that are very very salutary and very beautiful and very meaningful and can lead to a whole other way of being together and the people who were hurt crying let me be free let me have a piece of my environment are the exponents of the various ways in which people want to ride a new awareness a new society a new culture in that movie you are what you eat was wasn't a jaunt in a chair a way of participating in that other world for

awhile for me when i made it in for you when you see it as a movie and it is it's a shocking movie to somebody who's frightened of that kind of freedom is a shockingly attempted to somebody to see you know an interracial love seeing and that is a documentary seen you know yes super spain i was my dear friend you know was nuts and was murdered on the coast was yes there is making love to that your animal and that is carl's tongue and karl's tongue was coming out of his mouth and he's doing it fully knowing that dad's the way it looks when he comes out of his mouth and that is those girls yes those are young pretty girls and they are dancing naked good you know for that i'm not saying that that is beauty and love and light but i am saying that that terrific compulsion to break those the tyranny of that type of perceptual categorization world of andy hardy this that rita hayworth beauty as beauty that the dating

and pinning you know with a fraternity pain is love that success as do carson a grudge that it takes a traveler to leave home and america is a large segment of america is leaving on just like a kid leaves and goes to college and it takes a turn it doesn't just most of the time that it's very difficult for him internally to reject that other point of urine he's got a make a scene at home his cousin and leaving he can't just say sit down and talk about it in a gracefully and rationally and that's what the struggle is it's it's it's traumatic but it's important because unless we find an alternative were going to be stuck with an untenable culture a culture that knows that it is alive because kids are watching that culture parade itself on television and they watch the truth of that immediacy of that television ad revenue of pressure and her fortune have a much war movies then an interracial i've seen at times two the other one seems so

you know the scene of the kind of proportions has an attack on everything i've believed in knowing that a war movie it's something we believe in a new book and it's also true to know what the kids are going for the war movies that you know at the most that the favorite program as a kid of the kids in the news the news that they don't want to escape to un and in an illegitimate reality to work to a synthetic reality they want real life they want something real and that's the microbe up or whether they're not gonna go for it anymore and that was the handwriting on the wall and very frankly their commitment is is is is really part of the war were too weak people i mean that the people in this movie or are saying very very very very beautiful in many ways yes to certain things but they're also saying no to a lot of things and the people are committed to those know things are going to get frightening

to get uptight didn't get scared by the freedom and they're going to be i mean it's just like that just like sex you know that being something that you don't have to sweep on to the carp you know that's scary to people living their own ideas about sex and the fact of of our bodies being just embodies effective are our relationships with each other being truthful not by contract but by mutual consent to be honest commitment being being something that naturally occurs when human beings make choices and evaluations and judgment that these things we want to hold internally we will not subscribe to for instance the ritual of religious tradition in you organized religions and young people are saying is that one internally find their own internal religious beliefs again we see all these questions of the establishment of our culture breaking down the family unit itself constructed as it has been constructed is no longer functioning

properly the organized churches are no longer functioning properly they know they've got it out on the streets they know that they no longer really saying it to people they know that religion has has become internalized the secular city did say in a lot of the book the secular city when he greeted the tesla motors assembly of afflicted true music from puerto rican of imposing no no no that would be a pleasure because if it relates to a very very well this is this is a song that see it when i grew up i grew up in new york and i'm a new yorker and new york against jewish kid you know went to the high school musical or went to cornell afterwards which at the time was no school that i like very much also affected despised actually proves that i didn't disclose the girls who is this girl leslie invented the eye does a quantum minerals only one knows that was the time i was what this year has

only ones they get there right well that's joe but you know the point is that that's changed you know the whole scene is take even cornell is true but then it was just fraternity system social hierarchy and on one side of the iv room which was the common synonym of the christian for ten days inside the jewish fraternity and it was just really driving idea that time the only contact i really had done anything send truly spiritual any god convict it was through suffering you know the side of the boat book the last of the just well this is i mean the concept of adjustment the man in texas are on his own shoulders would be a christ figure in judaism that was the content that people used to have we don't know the new contract with god as it is

discussed are lived in the movie not been an intellectually believe me if you intellectual has been you know and in terms of your responses movie it destroys so you just gotta get lose you got a trip where the worst of the injury with chris realized that he's very anxious or twice she said no do you just gotta go into you know warts and she recognizes being meaningful well there's another way to get close to the center of the spirituals and in that way is through something that's not suffering and this is a song about the finding and then i found it in a very concrete real understandable since when i was making this movie in this song was written about that experience in people that help may share it and they get themselves no way

this is it one is to say they did a day playing games and they maintain or made a minute these things

these patients it is it is it's a resurgent japan it

is penny i will yeah i was covered so many things has had so much you know there i mean i know that many of the ideas that have explicit express to you in a shorthand for me because i can converse with him in this way and because you can converse with me in this way and that's the way people do converse when they can use a shorthand for him i mean i know that many of the things

that a certain parts of the subjects of long long discussion that can be very very interesting the breakdown of the institutions and the lead the real meaning of mass media in today's world and how people respond to it what events did happen in chicago what i mean in the whole story of it is one of the fascinating frightening and beautiful onion of affirmation of togetherness of real who we are concerned and we're together and we love one another and we love this thing we were trying to preserve in america all these things as the victim long long this cut the discussion and discuss with him and i liked him and i look forward to doing so and i advised you or i ask you personally and knowing that you have

to say that a second time in its peculiar tablet think it's ok to say listen to the beatles album the second time but when an art form does start to become abstract sometimes is not immediately all available on a first experience of it and unfortunately have to pay the rent to isis the heart of if there was some way to do and eventually you could say this movie can be seen twice you know for one price at that's the thing to do in the movie that i feel that strongly about something that in an event thank you for having the apparent to afford to keep it you know people are