Richter Scale Society; Interview With Peter Yarrow

we're here with peter yarrow in the studio talked about the folks in roxine movies because he's been involved in all of them and it's a fascinating guest here want to walk you welcome you to the Richter Scales Society. Hi. I'm here. I'm back again. Got into just playing. It's a nice sound. Isn't it a good sound on the guitar? That was from, you were playing some stuff before from the film You Are What You Eat. Yes. As a matter of fact, not only did I write a number of songs for the soundtrack album that directly emerged from the needs of the movie, but making the movie itself was an experience of going into and being a part of a world continuously, a world that I had known before but on a continuous basis that taught me a great deal. When I say taught me, I don't mean in the sense of going to school. I mean rather in the sense of the six-day school near San Francisco, which you may have heard of,

or the super school that the kids formed in Toronto, where the general idea is that somebody who is turned on to doing something and who has something to do, whether it's planting seeds in some earth or planting ideas about mathematics in one's own mind or somebody else's mind, that if they're turned on to that process, they are teachers in the most fundamental and important sense of the word. So this situation was a very important teacher for me. Well, I think the whole world of film, first of all, I think film of all the arts right now has become the, let's say, the ultimate message of communications, although music is still very important. The combination of both seems to get to more people, whether it's in this country or in every country. Well, I think it is potentially that. Right now, music is far, far more important, and this is the reason for it.

Anybody can sing and play and can share in a musical experience. You don't need a couple hundred thousand dollars to put a song together. You don't need a tremendous amount of training to... or, I mean, even if you don't have the training, you have to have a tremendous amount of ability to extrapolate from other types of training in order to 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 with them and direct with them, most of the time you'll frighten them with your openness and your directness if you do not play the societal games that we have inherited from our cultural experience. What about even artistic games, like a musician can't make a movie, or a writer like Norman Mailer is making movies now.

He shouldn't make movies, that kind of a thing. Well, we're all... The games are extraordinary. I mean, the games that I'm talking about are like games people play, the book games people play, or games like... We're talking on the radio five years ago, We have to maintain a certain pace, a certain attitude, a certain relationship to one another that is prescribed. Now in music, these relationships can be violated, these cultural relationships can be violated, and new relationships can be formed without anybody's getting uptight. The type of openness, for instance, that Aretha has when she sings would scare most people half to death if they were to be confronted by it in just a verbal, a talking verbal fashion, you know. So in music, people are not protected by having established games to reject or accept experiences. They haven't cloistered their perceptions to such a great degree that they're unable to really

directly respond. So music has become a vehicle for an expression of attitudes that are really unacceptable in most cultural, traditional games. Well, the thing that I was interested in, and when I heard, for instance, when you, the group Peter Paul and Mary version of I Dig Rock and Roll Music, and that whole goof on it, it was seen, it seemed that, you know, anybody from the folk field, it was taboo to accept rock'n'roll, to even consider it, to even, you know, admit that it was there. Oh, that was the case. I remember that was one of the things, I mean, it seems ridiculous now in retrospect to think that that was the case, but it was. There was a very, very divisive, unhappy, competitive attitude at Newport in the context of the Newport Folk Festivals. And that divisive issue was one

of whether you are ethnic or you are not ethnic, whether you're pure or not pure. And those urban singers, the new urban singers, were considered to be copping out as far as the people who were traditional singers were concerned, or the people who emulated 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, then all you're doing is adopting another point of view anyhow. So why not find your own eclectic identity, live with it, let it explode, let it flower, let it blossom, and let that be your point of view. Now, it's also true that at the time people resented rock and roll. There were reasons for it. Number one, at the time, rock and roll and rhythm and blues had, I think, the connotation to a large extent of commercial exploitation. Most of the songs

were about teenage dating behavior. This was 10 years ago, I'm talking about. And they were 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 and in which they could be very open and honest with one another and direct, where they could really hear emotion, really hear commitment, and really hear feeling without being uptight about it. When that happened, all of a sudden rock and roll music really became artistically respectable because all of a sudden people were not just using it, the popular music field that is, as a vehicle for making money. All of a sudden there was that same compulsive I must create involved in many of the songs. Now unbeknownst to many of the folk enthusiasts, 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. Even Elvis Presley now is looked upon as being an extraordinary talent, which he was and to one degree or another still is, I'm sure. And there was little respect at the time for the rhythm and blues tradition. And of course, that now is looked upon as being you know the quintessence of the expression of soul of or instead of using the word soul let's say the quintessence of the expression of real internal you know emotional turmoil trauma whatever well let me ask you something like with dylan uh he experimented for a while into uh well he's experimented with everything still you know, it's still changing. But he did do that Blonde on Blonde album, which got into folk rock, for instance, and now he started a little bit of country in the John Wesley Harding album. Yeah. Do you think Peter Paul and Mary will be experimenting that way? Well, first of all, I don't think his experiments

are, can be categorized in that way. I think it's good to talk about them that way, but when I listen to John Wesley Harding album, I listen to a musical experience, and I don't really make that distinction in my mind, whether it is part of one tradition or another. It's not important. I mean, as a historian and an academician, it might be really important. But our experiments have taken us into a lot of areas, but it's just us. I mean, if the people thing in our work and in our singing dies, if we no longer really are real when we're singing these songs, I don't care what point of view we're taking, it's baloney. It would be that. and that's that's the only primary equation that makes any sense in any creative act as far as I'm concerned any other type of consideration what will the audience think about it how will it be received what market am I appealing to these are not real considerations they are destructive they are compromising

that is prostitution that is commercialization well do you think that the reason Peter, Paul, and Mary have been in front of, uh, let's say, at least in the college concert, uh, field and stuff like that, have been able to perpetuate themselves because they've always kept within themselves and never tried to, you know, uh, appease, you know, uh, the music business by trying this or trying that, just, you know, so. Well, we couldn't. I mean, we really couldn't, because we never, we, you have habitual ways of, uh, of dealing with yourself, and, you know, once you've committed a certain act of, uh, prostitution, you know, it's easy to do it after that, but it's hard to do it the first time, and we were given, I remember when we started, we were given a song, and they said, you should record this, it's going to be a hit, blah, blah, blah, It has all the elements, moon, June of 1961, whatever that was. And this A&R man has never blown it, and it's going to be great.

And we just made our decision then. Not that we were virtuous. It's just that 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. In point of fact, we do very few college concerts. Most of the concerts that we do are in civic auditoriums or in concert halls. A lot of the concerts that we have been doing have been to support issues or to be part of events that seem to compel our participation. Like what? Well, last Wednesday we were in Carnegie Hall in the Chavez, Cesar Chavez's benefit, for those people who are listening don't know about Chavez. He was the leader of the boycott for the grape pickers, and the boycott grape situation was largely centered around his charisma and his capacity to really give it form. He went on a hunger strike,

formed a friendship with Bob Kennedy, which was well celebrated, and Ted Kennedy carries that banner, and Senator McGovern was at the situation the other night. However, although that's the traditional type of thing that we've been involved in, as I look around me today, there's just too much to do. I mean, it's incredible. I could 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 a part of the McCarthy campaign. I wrote the campaign song for Senator McCarthy, and if I were to sing it to you now, 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 a man.

He was the beginning of the genesis of a type of new awareness, which I hope will save us from becoming a fascist state. On the other hand, the last thing, for instance, we were in Chicago. I was in Chicago. I was in the streets. I went there to help the candidacy of McCarthy. But I found myself finally and ultimately where I had to be, which was on the streets and in the middle of the gas attacks. Do you think more of us will be in those streets in the next four years? I think that it's all around. I mean, it's just the form that it takes peculiarly. The incredible thing about it is something that I will explain in one second, but I just have to mention one other thing before I do it. The question is valid. Will we be more in the streets? And the answer is really strange. the first you know the the for instance that they offer a situation the I mean there are issues now that are present that are alive that are day-to-day that we just have to live with and deal with two

years ago or a year ago anyhow kids on the campus we're talking about Maharishi and now we are just inundated with the divisiveness of a world that surrounds us which is and the world word for the is polarization. Yeah, but I think, like, uh, I think a lot of, uh, the older generation looks down at you, like, for instance, if you start criticizing Nixon, and they say, well, he isn't president yet, you know, let's give him a chance, and, uh, people say, you know, well, we gave Johnson a chance, you, you know, we always ask to give somebody a chance, you know, when does that end? It's a question of chance. I'm willing to accept or reject, uh, whatever he does based upon the merits of the thing that he does. My preconditioned attitude towards him is irrelevant. The issues are alive, they are now. He has made his stand, his position quite clear about many things, whether he... Norman Mailer in his open letter to Nixon, you know, asked please that he not fulfill his campaign

obligations, because it would be catastrophic. That's my own addition to Norman Mailer. Norman Mailer was also in the streets. Yes, I know. He also was singing, talking over the same microphones over which I and Mary were singing. But your question is an important one, and this is the most incredible area of discussion, more important than all, I mean the things we've been talking about are all around us, and where this discussion is maybe a piece of thousands of discussions that are happening of a similar nature all over the country. But let me throw in a very different concept to you that is a little scary and really means that we are part of a different era, that we cannot look at these events in the ways in which I am now talking about them, because the rules that govern the way in which it goes down have changed. Now, will it be more in the streets? The answer is of course. But remember this is what happened. Two summers ago there were riots throughout the the urban

centers in America and everybody predicted that the riots would be ten times worse this past summer. They were not. Demonstrations used to be peaceful. I was in Selma Montgomery March itself and the March on Washington in 1963. I mean, tens of small ones, like the March on Frankfurt, you know, things that aren't even heard of, not because I'm a professional demonstrator, but because my body is there. Somebody asks me, I go there, and I'm part of it, period. And I travel continuously. Why are the demonstrations different now? Why were the cities not the same answer as would be given by me for the reason that the cities were not burned this past summer? We are watching the era of personal social commitment, commitment to social change. We're watching the era of the commitment to the fad.

It's no longer groovy. It's no longer bright. It's no longer new. It's no longer cathartic. It's no longer cataclysmic. It's no longer charismatic to have a repeat. It can only happen once. I mean, it can happen once all over. the burning and the looting happened once then it's over, it's old hat 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 the man off guard, you know, I mean if he's expecting you to do something no, it's just no fun, it's not real it's not really theatrical, it's not really alive, the point is we are in the midst of a society that's becoming a series of theatrical situations and unless the theatrical situation works for the participants, it has no meaning and nobody will really get into it. The Chicago situation was the most bizarre theater you have ever seen. Skulls were getting cracked and Freedom Land had been established right there in Grand Park in front of the Hilton

and a war was going on and inside the Hilton on the coffee line in the cafeteria, what do you call it, the coffee shop was a National Guardsman getting coffee and donuts for his men and one of the the members of the group who had been outside, the so-called hippies or yippies, and he had $50, and they were all standing in line being very polite, and outside, a war was going on. And the contrast was extraordinary, and it made me realize that the whole situation was absurd with a capital A. And the only reason it existed, the only reason that it worked, was because it was new theater. And what we're going to see is people committed to events look, the act of civil disobedience crossing a picket line you know, was civil disobedience I don't mean a picket line crossing a police line, you know, was civil disobedience it's no longer theatrical

we did that last time what are we going to do this time 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 slave to these perceptual categories that have enslaved us for so long and the and the freer the the the liberator of the mind peculiarly enough is going to be the mass media well now this is very strange because like it leads us back to almost a point that i wanted to bring up again that when i was watching the movie you are what what you eat yeah and I was saying to myself that you know isn't this bizarre we're sitting in a situation where we're watching all this beauty and flowers and happiness and things going on and I was watching this maybe about two or three weeks after Chicago right and um you know I know who you are and I know what you know the people in the film represent and I said uh and as a matter of fact was what we were saying before the interview started of the relevance like you're

sitting there and you're trying to watch something and just thinking well that's gone though those days are gone this is a record of what has gone you know it's like a historical document right you know that's it was and but that's that's true about the events in Chicago that's already over I they're the same person that really I would say gave form to you are what you eat fell by the name of Howard Auk who's for help to form Second City and make that Second City's Improvisational Theater Group is the same person that edited the movie on Chicago. You see, 40 filmmakers got together and said, let's make a movie, and they all copped out ultimately, really, leaving the job in Howard Ogg's hands. I don't know if that's really fair to everybody else, but I would say that a substantial portion of the work and the burden was carried by Howard. And I was watching this brilliantly cut movie That 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 What, in the film you mean? No, I mean in Chicago And I'm watching this and I say My God, this is really past history That the times change so rapidly that I am 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 things. There will be other guerrilla theater. There will be whatever. But we are watching two changes happening simultaneously. How can you say it's not going to happen again? I mean, San Francisco is going through that now with the San Francisco State students. It's happening there very realistically. yes they're very sure that's that's true and it's also true that mario salvio was part of the the berkeley situation initially but if you analyze the situation you will find that the only reason that it can happen there now is number one because they haven't experienced that theater yet perhaps

or and because the mass media didn't bring it there strongly enough which it might do when this movie gets shown, because this movie was made to be shown by Metromedia as equal time for the Daily Special, right? A Mayor Daily Special. But we... Does he sing at all? Does who sing? Mayor Daily. Mayor Daily. Well, you saw the Mayor Daily Special, didn't you? No, I understand. Oh, man. Well, you know what he did. He demanded time to answer the charges that had been leveled against him about Chicago. And of course, with the report that just came out, what was a dead issue now has become alive again because all of a sudden people are being told yes you did see what you saw you know it was a police riot but it was more than that let me let me explain to you what it was and you see although I don't think it can happen again in that way with these same people I don't mean just in that location I mean if everybody were there were really brought there by television it couldn't happen again in that way because they'd have to go do something else

it used to be that there was certain for instance a strike was a strike when mass media were not involved a strike, you had pickets you had a certain mechanism a 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 accomplished, first of all the objective is not a simple one like high wages or something like that the cry is let me have a piece of my environment the cry from the black ghetto is that I do not wish to be surrounded by a police state emotionally, intellectually, culturally or whatever a police state is robbing me of my dignity is robbing me of my life the same cry is heard by the hippies one hears the same cry from the hippies that still exists or did exist the young people in Czechoslovakia

the French uh revolution that recently occurred the revolution on the campus in uh Colombia all of it is the same let me have a piece of my environment let me determine what it is that is real what is valuable what is beautiful let me have my freedom and that's a very subtle concept in the world of our mass media because freedom and happiness is not the world of Andy Hardy and everybody knows it. Now, when I say everybody, I mean everybody that's involved in this cry. The two cars in a garage are not going to bring it. Now, there's some confusion in the black community and the black ghetto as to what freedom is because evidently, sociologists will tell you there's an identification with middle-class values on the part of the black community. Give me the car. Give me the television set. Give me that kind of home. And that's freedom, baby. And they've got to go through that whole process of finding out that that doesn't mean anything. Well, the fact that Nixon wants to use black capitalism as an answer shows you where that's at.

Trying to put more emphasis on that again. Well, you see that Nixon doesn't know, as far as I'm concerned, anything about this cry. The rut of the cultural objectives is something that he has totally subscribed to. there are new objectives, cultural objectives. Now, let me tell you what happened in Chicago, as far as I see it. Because, see, I see all of these things as being interrelated. Yeah, the census from there. In Chicago, Mayor Daley wanted to maintain his power. He is a politician, either because he was bright or because he intuitively knew how to use power, decided that he was going to allow a particular kind of confrontation to exist. Not only allow it, but precipitate it.

His attitude about the previous demonstrations, as was pointed out in the report, and his directive to the policemen to shoot, to kill, or maim, arsonists, that kind of thing, created a certain ambiance, a certain mentality in the police force. Further, the dissemination of the rumors of the attempted assassinations. I mean, that is a continual fact of public life now that we know, all right? And it doesn't alter the situation any. Yes, there are reasons for security, and we must respect those reasons and maintain security, okay, until this world gets a little less crazy, until a man knows now he can kill a president. Hey, that guy did it. I can do it. I can get me a gun, and I can get me a president. Or a senator or a minister. Right. Okay. So we know that exists. But what Daley did was he used policemen. And what are policemen? Policemen are men with jobs.

They're civil servants. It's quite clear from studies of the authoritarian personality that they have very serious limitations, that their jobs are something, and that they deal with criminals, and that's what they've been trained to deal with, with criminal mentalities. They are not trained to deal with the situation where a young patriot wishes to become participant to his democracy in the ways in which young people have wanted to be participant in their democracy recently. And Daley used policemen who are not suited to doing anything but carrying out the will of the law. He 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 centers of the Hilton and Lincoln Park For people who don't know, it's sort of like an east and west village together, I guess, in Chicago Right, and he forced the confrontation

He allowed it to occur He allowed the mentality and the ambiance in the police force to occur Why? Why? Why did he do it? He did it to maintain political power. Now, how does that let him maintain political power? I mean, everything I'm saying is ludicrous unless I can show you why that confrontation and that craziness got daily the power that he wanted, because he, in effect, in precipitating these riots, said to the people of Chicago, listen, babies, I'll keep the niggers and the hippies and the yippies 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. Well, it came way before, though. If you go around Chicago, you'll see signs. I'm sure you saw. This building is being constructed by your mayor, Mayor Daley. This is another project of Mayor Daley. That's just pure demagoguery. But the deal that he made now is the deal

that makes a police state because once you tell anybody whether it's the mayor or whether it's the alderman 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 making arrests the execution and in the sense of you know maintaining the peace 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 moral, what is good, what is honest, what is American, what is un-American, what is acceptable behavior, what is unacceptable behavior. That's not their job. Their job is to prevent the breaking of law and to arrest somebody if they break the law. That's what the job of a policeman is. And there are many, many other jobs too that are peripheral to it but give a policeman a power that goes beyond that and you haven't trained him for it you haven't prepared him for it it's not fair it's it's it's not if the

policemen were as much pawns as as the people of chicago but what did daily get out of it he got the power but now what chicago became was a police state where people were really intimidated because my point is that it was always that way that's what i feel i know i've talk from people from Chicago and I mean Dick Gregory has said this time and time again that he was he was telling people this three years ago it's been that way in the ghetto yeah but especially in Chicago yeah but the point is that if that deal is made throughout the country in other words let's say well who says it isn't you know that's the point well it has been made in other cities but if it's made everywhere if everywhere somebody says who's in a position of power give me control of the streets you'll be subject to my will and I can search I can you know without a warrant or I can you know call call call it legal by calling it loitering or whatever if I can get anybody off the streets and arrest anybody I want at any time and essentially when you make

that kind of a deal that the people of Chicago the middle class people of Chicago went for that's what you get you get a police state and if we have that we are lost I mean we're really lost because that is really back against the wall phenomenon when you know that there's nothing that you can do that there is no re that you have no recourse there are no credentials that you can give a policeman there is 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 now in control and mastered by this blood thing that's going on around him, then 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, they felt, in Chicago. We're living in a police state. But the point is that the ultimate responsibility lies with everybody who is listening, who is talking, to make sure that that deal is not made, that people do not get power who are going to affect this kind of

a deal. The dailies, wherever they exist, will use people and policemen as pawns in order to maintain power, and in order to maintain power, they will create a police state. It's nothing new. It's happened a long time ago and has happened frequently, but that's the critical thing that went down in Chicago to talk about the police as being one thing or another is talking about the pawns in the situation. They are not even the bad guys because they never should have been allowed to have been involved in that situation in that way. Moreover, it's also true that there has been a tremendous amount of violence in America's history. There were 7,000, I think 7,000 National guardsmen actively shooting their rifles and fighting in the Pullman strike. In the Civil War there were riots, you know, that killed 2,000 people in a couple of days. Draft riots. You know what Rat Brown said, that violence is as American as apple pie.

Well, that's true, but the point is also that our culture is changing in such a way. At the same time that we see all this leading to a really intolerable state, 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 are 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 arrive at a new awareness, a new society, a new culture and the movie you are what you eat was was a a jaunt and a trip uh a way of participating in that other world for a while for me when i made it and for you when you see it as a movie it is it's a shocking movie to somebody who's frightened of that kind of freedom it's a shocking movie to to to somebody to see you know uh an interracial love scene and that is a

documentary scene you know yes super spade it was my dear friend you know who was nuts and who was murdered on the coast was yes there he is making love to that girl you know and that is Carl's tongue and Carl's tongue is coming out of his mouth and he is doing it fully knowing that that's the way it looks when it 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 them I'm not saying that that is beauty and love and light but I am saying that the terrific compulsion to break those the tyranny of that type of perceptual categorization of world of Andy Hardy that this that Rita Hayworth beauty is beauty that dating and pinning you know with a fraternity pin is love that success is two cars in a garage that it takes a trauma to leave home and America is a large segment of America is leaving home just like a kid leaves home and goes to college and it takes a trauma and he

doesn't just most of the time it's it's very difficult for him internally to reject that other point of view and he's got to make a scene at home and he's got to say I'm leaving he can't just say you sit down and talk about it you know gracefully and rationally and that's what this struggle is it's it's it's traumatic but it's important because unless we find an alternative we're going to be stuck with an untenable culture a culture that knows that it is a lie because kids are watching that culture parade itself on television and they watch that truth of that immediacy of that television sure you know the parents would rather them have watch them have them watch war movies than an interracial love scene i mean that to them is the other one seems so uh you know a love scene of that kind of proportions is an attack on everything they've believed in you know and yet a war movie is something they can easily believe in sure hey and but and it's also true do you know what the kids aren't going for the war movies they're not going to do you know what the most the favorite program is of the kids no the news the news man

They don't want to escape to an illegitimate reality, to a synthetic reality. They want real life. They want something real, and that's the micro-bopper. They're not going to go for it anymore. And that is the handwriting on the wall. And very frankly, their commitment is really part of you-are-what-you-eat people. I mean, the people in this movie are saying very, very, very beautifully in many ways yes to certain things. But they're also saying no to a lot of things. And the people who are committed to those no things are going to get frightened and they're going to get uptight and they're going to get scared by that freedom. And they're going to be, I mean, it's just like sex, you know, that being something that you don't have to sweep onto the carpet, you know. that's scary to people with victorian ideas about sex the fact of of our bodies being just our

bodies the fact of our of our relationships with each other being truthful not by contract but by mutual consent to be honest the commitment being being uh something that naturally occurs when human beings make choices and evaluations and judgments that these things we want to hold internally. We will not subscribe to, for instance, the ritual of religious tradition in organized religions, and young people are saying this. They want to internally find their own internal religious beliefs. Again, we see all these bastions 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 to get on the streets they know that they're no longer really saying it to people they know that religion has has become internalized that the secular city did say it you know the

the book the secular city well i think we could uh pass i don't know if that's a segue but if we could uh hear a little music from uh you are which week would i be imposing on you no no no it would be a pleasure, because it relates to it very, very well. This is a song that, see, when I grew up, I grew up in New York. I'm a New Yorker, New York, I guess, Jewish kid, you know, went to the high school music and art, went to Cornell afterwards, which at the time was not a school that I could like very much at all. As a matter of fact, I despised it. Especially the girls there. I didn't despise the girls I was girl-less I was Cornell girls are unbelievable at the time I went to Syracuse oh you went to Syracuse and you didn't go down to Cornell for girls you went down there for the parties

you had to bring girls with you well that's true but the point is that that's changed too I mean the whole scene has changed even Cornell is groovy now but then it was just fraternity system and social hierarchy and on one side of the ivy room which was the commons you know there were the christian fraternities and on the side the jewish fraternities and it was just really a drag and i at that time the only contact i really had to anything centrally spiritual any god contact i had was through suffering you know this the book the last of the just well this is i I mean, the concept of the just man, the man who takes the sorrow on his own shoulders, whether it be a Christ figure or the just man in Judaism, that was the contact that people used to have with God. Now, the new contact with God, as it is discussed or lived in the movie, not in an intellectual way, believe me, if you intellectualize in terms of your response to this movie, it destroys itself.

You've just got to get loose. You've got to trip with it or it's no good. And Judith Christ realized that. She's very hip. She saw it twice. And she said, you know, you just got to go with it. And she recognizes it as being meaningful. Well, there's another way to get close to the center or the spiritual center. And that way is through something that's not suffering. And this is a song about the finding of it. And I found it in a very concrete, real, understandable sense when I was making this movie, and this song was written about that experience and the people that helped me share it and who live it themselves. . Moments of the soft persuasion Chiming bells the first occasion

Tell the rest a smile awaken Till the last reminder shake in From whatever rude and sorrow Now the time is now tomorrow In the instant of remaking Just the giving of the taking In the instant of the living Just the taking of the giving Nothing more than earth and water

Smiles of spring from barren daughter Who at last in perfect motion Turning round embrace the ocean Gracious calf of mankind's suffering Sacrifice of old is ending In the instant of remaking Just the giving of the taking In the instant of the living Just the taking of the giving Moments of a soft persuasion

Chiming bells the first occasion Till the rest a smile awaken Till the last reminder shaken From whatever rude and sorrow Now the time is now tomorrow Peter Yarrow. You've been with us these last few minutes on the Richter Scale Society, and we want to thank you, Peter, for dropping by. Are we all through? Yeah. How long have we been talking? We've been talking quite a while. Yeah, we've covered so many things. We've said so much. I know that many of the ideas

that I've expressed are expressed to you in a shorthand form because I can converse with you 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 form. I know that many of the things that I've said are subjects of long, long discussion that can be very, very interesting. The breakdown of the institutions or the real meaning of mass media in today's world and how people respond to it. What events did happen in Chicago and what, I mean, the whole story of it is one of the fascinating, frightening, and beautiful, I mean, the affirmation of togetherness, of real, we are concerned, and we are together, and we love one another, and we love this thing that we're trying to preserve in America, you know. All these things are subject to a long, long discussion.

I hope you come back and discuss it with us again. I'd like to, and I look forward to doing so. And I advise you, or I ask you personally, knowing that you have seen the movie once, to see it a second time. I mean, it's okay to say, listen to the Beatles album a second time. But when an art form does start to become abstract, act, sometimes it is not immediately all available upon the first experience of it. And unfortunately, you have to pay the bread twice to see it twice. If there were some way to work it out so that you could say, this movie can be seen twice for one price, maybe that's the thing to do in the movie, if I feel that strongly about it. It's something to think about. In any event, thank you for having me up here. And I do look forward to talking to you again. OK, Peter Yarrow, Peter, Paul, and Mary. Thank you.