A Searchlight special feature: Woody Guthrie a tribute to a voice against fascism and racism
Woody Guthrie: Legend lives on Mermaid Avenue
Nick Lowles interviews Nora Guthrie
In a small office apartment only a stone’s throw from New York’s Time Square, Nora Guthrie is talking excitedly with colleagues at the Woody Guthrie Foundation. The previous evening US President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore appeared on television in front of hundreds of Democratic Party supporters singing This Land is Your Land, a song written by Nora’s father, Woody, many decades before. While this song has become an unofficial anthem to many in the US, Guthrie himself has largely been forgotten by mainstream USA. Until now, that is. Stacked high on Nora’s desk are requests for interviews and information about Woody and the Foundation formed to keep alive his work and politics.
The resurgence of interest in Woody Guthrie follows the release of Mermaid Avenue, 15 previously unpublished Guthrie songs reworked and sung by Billy Bragg and the American folk band Wilco, led by Jeff Tweedy. The album is named after the street where Guthrie once lived.
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“The reaction from the CD exceeded even our wildest expectations,” says Nora. “I would be driving in my car and I would hear Woody Guthrie on the radio. Even though it was sung by Billy Bragg and Wilco, the words and meaning was the same.”
Over 800 reviews of the CD have been written, almost all favourable. “It reminds us what hopeful music used to feel like,” said the New York Times. “Almost an instant classic”, added The Times, while The Sunday Times noted: “The most enjoyable history lesson you could ask for”. Even the Daily Telegraph, not known for its radical politics, was quick to praise the work as “a triumph”.
Since the release of the CD, the volume of requests for information from the Woody Guthrie Foundation has been immense. Nora was especially keen to spread the word among young people. The purpose of the CD, she says, was to “break out of the dust bowl culture. It was to get the message over to two generations, to people who would never have heard of Woody Guthrie before.”
There was widespread surprise when Nora asked Billy Bragg to work on Guthrie’s material. Some thought someone like Pete Seeger would be a more suitable choice; others were against the project altogether. “They said that he had produced so many great songs so why dredge up poor ones,” she remembers, noting that opposition was strongest from some sectors of the US folk scene.
“It was a bit mischievous on my part, it certainly made heads turn. I said I wanted someone who would attract younger people.” Undeterred by the doubters, Nora pressed ahead with her project. “It was a wake-up call for us here.”
Nora talks affectionately of Bragg, especially what she describes as his honesty and unwavering commitment to his beliefs. “He is absolutely not afraid to say what he wants to say. Some in America try to say things without offending anybody. Billy, on the other hand, has achieved a degree of success without it going to his head.”
She likens Bragg’s frankness to that of Woody himself. “My Dad was exactly who he wanted to be. If he was told to tone down his language he would have said ‘fuck off’.”
This is not to say there were no problems in producing the CD. Anyone who saw the accompanying television documentary could not help but notice the regular confrontations between Bragg and Tweedy. “I had to be brought in as a mediator,” Nora remarks with a grin.
“It was a difficult project. We all came in as equal partners, but we all had our own way of doing things. No one had ever told Billy how to do an album, but at the same time no one had ever told Wilco what to do. Here were three socialists and three individuals,” says Nora, including Guthrie as an equal partner. “The bottom line came down to the fact that if we can’t work together on an album, how do we expect our leaders to do it internationally?”
To compound the problems everyone involved brought their own prejudices to the work. “Jeff told me that he never realised how nationalistic he was. He was initially outraged that Billy Bragg could even think that he could sing a song about Joe Di Maggio. It made us all look at ourselves.”
Many thought the difficulties experienced during the album’s production would kill future collaboration, but after a period of reflection and no doubt swayed by the good reviews of Mermaid Avenue, Bragg, Wilco and Nora have agreed to release another CD. While most of the songs were recorded during the production of Mermaid Avenue, further teamwork is still required.
The success of the CD has unleashed a wave of interest in Guthrie. Hoping to capitalise on this, the Foundation has organised an exhibition which is presently on a three-year tour of the US. Portraying his life, music and politics, the exhibition contains interactive video and music. It is a tribute not only to him but also to a generation of working-class people who lived, and suffered, in US society.
The exhibition, which has now moved to New York, proved a great success on the West Coast. Nora says she has even had a request from people in Germany wanting the exhibition brought there.
Spurred on by the success of the CD and the exhibition, the Foundation is preparing to open up more of Guthrie’s work. Plans are under way for some of his music to be adapted to jazz, children’s books and even the publication of his own drawings.
Nora is quick to stress that the Foundation is reminding people not only of Guthrie as a person but also of what he stood for. “It is to invoke a community togetherness that isn’t there at the moment. It is trying to achieve everything Woody strove for.
“You have to go where people are,” she adds, “emotionally and politically. It’s a gradual and slow process. It’s not blaming people. If they like chocolate then you give them chocolate and only then explain where the chocolate is from.”
Woody Guthrie’s transformation from the neglected man of music to a living legend is almost complete with the recent announcement by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences to give him a Lifetime Achievement Award. While Nora is happy with the adulation he is finally receiving, it is his political message that she is most keen to get across and nothing more so than his anti-fascism. “Woody was an anti-fascist. No one calls themselves that these days, but fascism still exists.”
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