The Bobby Bones Show - One man’s mission to celebrate the music scene of Greenwich Village

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

Richard Barone is the author of the terrific book "Music and Revolution-Greenwich Village in the 60's" and he joins Buzz Knight for this episode.Richard is a musician and professor and he is passionate about the village music scene.Show Notes here to learn more.One Man's Mission to Share his Love of the Greenwich Village Music Scene with Richard BaroneWhen we think of the term “musical range,” I think you have to actually think of Greenwich village in the sense that in the 60s, the village was such a hotbed of styles and personalities. The village is accorded the backbone of singers, song writing, and folk singing, because of this incredible range of poets and a live feeling of what was going on. You still feel it today, but it is different from the 60s. So, it’s rather fitting that our guest today, on taking a walk, is not a stranger to the musical range. Richard Barone is an acclaimed recording artist, performer, producer, and author. Since pioneering the indie rock scene in Hoboken, NJ, as frontman of The Bongos and then helping to launch the chamber pop movement with his solo debut “cool blue halo,” Barone has produced countless studio recordings and worked with artists in every musical genre. Richard has spent decades navigating the musical neurons of the village with his great new book, Music and Revolution. This book is about Greenwich Village in the 60s. By the end, Richard will transport you in time. You will feel as if you are going through a meditation, you are part of. Get the experience of this amazing village with Richard Barone. Tune in! Key Highlights from the Episode[00:01] Meet Richard Barone from Greenwich Village[01:45] Richard’s inspiration for authoring his book, Music+Revolution[03:21] Save the village movement[04:47] How a Sunday afternoon in a restaurant felt like in the 1960s at the village[06:43] Big poets at Greenwich Village in the 50s[11:00] A lunch Richard had with Barry Kornfeld[12:30] Several musical figures that you should know, as Barone mentions in his book[12:50] Richard Farina[19:51] Janis Ian[23:31] José Monserrate Feliciano [25:10] Fred Neil[28:09] Philip David Ochs[32:44] Comparing the music of the 1960s to that of 2020[35:34] Ending the show and call to actionNotable QuotesCompared to the 1960s, many songs do not address anything. Older songs were guided by a message or theme.Many people sing songs in 2022 but it does not bring togetherness of people to enjoy and feel it. In the 60s, concerts were packed with people of all races and ages.Get Richard’s BookMusic + Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B4FDSY5B/Connect With Richard BaroneWebsite: http://www.richardbarone.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richardbarone/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/RichardBaroneFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/RichardBaroneOfficialEmail:[e-mail]: https://www.youtube.com/richardbarone                  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Well, hi, this is Buzz Knight, and I'm the host of the Taking a Walk podcast series. Welcome to our special Greenwich Village series. Now, when we think of the term musical range, I think you really do have to think of Greenwich Village in the sense that in the 60s, the village was such a hotbed of styles. personalities. There was a core backbone, certainly, around singer-songwriting and folk singing, but it was really this incredible range. There were poets, and it was just this alive feeling that was going on. You still feel it to this day, but definitely different in the 60s. So it's rather fitting that our guest not taking a walk is no stranger himself to musical range. Richard Barone is our guest that has a recording artist with the band The Bongoes,

He has demonstrated that. Also, as a producer, he's demonstrated his range. As a professor, he has demonstrated his range. And as an author, he also demonstrates his musical range and his passion for music. He spans decades navigating the musical nuances of the village with his great new book, Music and Revolution. And it's about Greenwich Village in the 60s. and by the end you will be transported in time.

You will feel like through a meditation that you were part of it. So Richard, it's so awesome to meet you and thank you for taking a walk. Thank you. I love taking a walk. It's great to meet you. And what made you write the book? It was a long process. And like you said, it was a meditation. And it was a growing obsession for me, living in the village,

wanting to know what made it the village what made it such a hotbed of creative styles and you know it's a big story it's a big story almost too big for one it's rarely put in one place

and you put it that way because it really starts with this community that grew over a long period of time that was not part of New York City yet that was a little apart from what Manhattan was

much lower Manhattan. This was sort of, this was a tobacco field, whatever. It was always a unique landscape. And with the Native American, the Lenape tribe that was here,

the pads that were built are really the streets of the village still. So if you look on any map of New York, you'll see a grid. You'll see a grid for most of Manhattan, except for Greenwich Village and a few areas below Greenwich Village, in which the streets are winding

because they're paths based on Dutch traders, paths, and Native American paths. And when the grid was built, the residents of Greenwich Village refused to be on the grid. And that's symbolic of just simply one element of what makes Greenwich Village just always unique. It's not on the grid. I mean, that's the symbol.

Just that is such a metaphor. It sure is. And can you talk about the Save the Village? Sure. Actually, there was more than one. There was one that we see signs of in photos if you look online and save the village. There was always attempts to get rid of the village.

There is now. I was talking to my students yesterday at the new school, and they were talking about how some of them were complaining. This is not in classroom. This was just in a lobby area where I was visiting and saying hello. They were talking about how musicians being arrested now for playing music in Washington Square Park. This is something that was resolved really

in 1961 with what they call the Beatnik riots that I cover in the book, in which musicians stood up to authorities and said, we do have every right to play music here. So, it's, but yet still, in 2022, some musicians for playing a guitar or bongo drum in the park are being arrested. So there's always this kind of trying to, and it's futile because the village is always, hello, thank you, the village is always going to be the village, no matter what, no matter what authority, you can't play music here, or you can't do this, or you can't have this kind of nightclub or whatever, it's going to be defied by the villagers,

by the people that live here and people that come here. Now, if we were here on a Sunday in the summer in the 60s, in the 50s. In the 50s. With Sundays in the square, as you describe it, what would we be seeing and feeling and sensing? A fantastic gathering of musicians. of every, of not every style, but of many styles.

Let me put it that way. Flamenco guitarist in one corner. Bluegrass banjo players in another corner. Folk singing, folk traditionalists in the center, maybe by the fountain. Trading folk songs. You know, you mentioned, we were talking early, and you mentioned the singer-songwriter movement. Well, that evolved, because at first it was not about writing your own songs.

It was retaining and almost like musicality in a way of studying and interpreting very old songs. So you'd be at Washington Square Park and you'd hear some really old folk songs. You know, people trading them. Say, have you heard this? And have you heard that? And then the thing that happened

that was magical is that these styles merged. So that the folk singers would hear the bluegrass banjo in their next corner or hear the flamenco guitar or hear the blues guitar players and the styles are emerging because they're in a park

in the same park. It's not that big of a part. and yet every sort of every faction of music had a pocket in it you know but the music started to merge because they would notice wow that's pretty cool or that's pretty nice and they would so you got a lot of mixing of styles it could only happen here it seems well it seems like it could only happen here New York especially had such an influx of different types of people

and immigrants and everything that the park was a meeting place for all those different things you know so that's why the music came together in that way Yeah, there's a great picture in the book of, which really lays it out to me, and I'm sure there's other, you know, examples of it, where there's this picture of Patty Smith. Oh, yeah, I love that. With Eric Anderson. I love it. I mean, you know, two people coming at the world definitely from a different space, wasn't Patty doing poetry at that point?

She was doing poetry, but, you know, slowly putting music into her poetry. And that was, that was really, there was a precedent for that in the late 50s. when the beat poets were performing here in the village on McDougal Street at the Gaslight, for instance, and other places. That was really a poetry club. It was the Gaslight Poetry Club. And they had musical intraludes.

So a poet would read or recite, and then they'd take a 15-minute break and there would be a musician. So that came together there, too, the idea of the music and poetry. And, of course, Jack Kerouac, and other beat writers befriended David Amram. Do you know who David Amram?

So David Amram, who's performing with me, he does often, I love him. And he's 90, he's in his 90s. To me, he's a teenager. But he's a 91-year-old teenager. I love it. He played with Jack. He composed music for Jack Kerouac's writings,

and they did a very famous Beatnik movie called Pull My Daisy. that's quite fascinating. I saw it when I was in film school. And it was just a thrill then to later meet David Amram. Like many of the artists that I met in my life and career, I studied them first. Jonas Meekus, who I write about it in the book,

with the avant-garde film movement of the 60s. I had already studied his work, and then ended up being mentored by him. And Pete Seeger, who I adored on television as a child and seeing him, you know, perform his songs that really moved me, I got to produce his last single. Wow, that's awesome. So I've been blessed with that,

and I was able to use some of these friendships in the book in different ways. Their voices come through me throughout the story. Well, yeah, I love it how Donovan's voice comes through you. Don't know, Don't forget Tiny Tim. Yeah. Don't forget Tiny Tim. And he was a great early mentor when I was a teenager.

And also, happy trauma. Happy trauma is great. Happy trauma, you know, has the last scene in the book, too. I love that. Yeah, I think you. I do, too. Well, you know, it was my, I love that part of the book. I didn't know how to end the story, because it is a story.

When people read music and revolution, they're going to find it as almost like a novel, I think, in some ways, except that it happens to be all true. Right. It's a nonfiction novel. And I didn't know how it ended. to me, it doesn't end because the village continues. I'm here. We're here now. But the ending hit to me from my students,

we were studying the Beatnik riot in which the musicians had an uprising to, it was not really a riot, by the way. It was just a protest to allow music to be played in Washington Square Park. But my students, one student raised her hand and said, you know, Professor, can we go there? And I'm going, for a moment there was like, go where? Go to the park. And I said, okay, and she said, and play music on a Sunday.

And I thought, yes, let's do it. It's awesome. So Happy Traum happened to be our guest that day in the classroom. On Zoom, because of the pandemic. He was on Zoom, but he was in our classroom. And so I said, Happy, would you like to join us there? So he did. So we got together on a Sunday in the park, and it was just a beautiful, well, meaning of generations also.

My young students, they're roughly 20 years old. And Happy, you know, as you know, they was here in 60, He was at those, he was nearly arrested at the riots. He was roughed up by cops. It's in a film called Sunday. People can find on YouTube. Oh, wow. The film is called Sunday by Dan Drazen.

I believe this is the correct pronunciation it was last name. We even had Dan Drazen on FaceTime on the phone while this is, while we remet on that Sunday in 2021. Oh, wow. That's special. So, and Happy Traum was there, and I handed him my guitar, and it just felt such like a, it would have had, it could have happened 50 years ago. Or whatever, whatever the, that. time frame is. It was timeless. A timeless moment. And that ending came to me from my students, because as we met in the park, it just seemed to wrap up my story. Yeah, it did beautifully.

Thank you. I love the lunch that you described with Barry Cornfield. That was here. Right where we're right now. Right where we're sitting. Talk about that. Well, Barry Cornfield, you know, people kept mentioning to me, oh, I should interview him. I did 80 interviews for the book. But not 80 different people. Some of them were multiple interviews as the book progressed over a period of a year. I would call them at all hours of the day and night to say, wait a minute, what is that? Or, wait a minute, what did you say about this? Help me understand this. Because some scenes were hard for me to really get my head around.

Some competitions between artists, some romances. It's like, but wait, I mean, how does this, how did this work? Or Terry Thal, as an interviewee, who managed Bob Dylan and others, was a wealth of information. But she recommended, I speak to Barry Cornfield. Now, I knew his name from records because on Simon and Garfunkel records, I think Bob Dylan, on some recordings with Bob Dylan, I believe, but other records, I always saw Barry Cornfield's name. So I thought I should meet him, and I really had a fantastic talk with him,

the way that we're talking now. But he opened up about just how, I got a great sense of how it felt to be there, and also to be not a celebrity, but to be the accompanist. celebrities. See, he really, the story comes through him in a beautiful way. It was Donovan who told me, speak to the ones who no one knows, the names that are not known, because that's where the story is. That's where your story is. That's what Donovan told me. I love that. Well, so let's talk, there's so many names that, what I think is so beautiful about the book, there's names that people may know, and then there's names that may not know. There's some, obviously, that are alive.

There's many. Many have passed. So maybe we can touch on a few of these names that certainly resonate in my heart. Richard and Mimi Farina. Yeah. Well, it's one of the... That story has an element of scandal.

Because Richard was married to Carolyn Hester. At the time, now that's another name who some people may not know, but she was, I think, a superstar of folk music. She was on the cover of magazine. Saturday evening post. Rather ravishing, I might say. Beautiful, beautiful.

And known as the Texas songbird. She was head of the ravishing voice as well as her physical appearance. She was beautiful. And she had a great look with, you know, folks in her wearing high heels. She was a very sexy gal. Yep.

Still is. A fabulous singer, personality, and, you know, an archetype of the female singer-songwriter of the early 60s. I think, who created a template that was then copied by others. I don't want to say Joan Baez imitated her, but Joan Baez does sometimes really sound like her,

and she did come after. I can say that, and I didn't interview Joan for this book. For some characters, especially ones who did not live in Greenwich Village, I went to other sources. For instance, footage of interviews they did, especially if it was contemporaneous to the book, or 60s interviews, but even if it was more recent, for Joan, I got some wonderful,

footage from BBC television and they had done a special on her in which she really opened up and certain things were so personal I don't think I could have asked but she did talk about them in-matched program so that is in the book I was able to use some wonderful sources besides my own interviews and I interviewed almost every day so I was I did a lot of talking during the writing of this book and in and a lot more listening um but Yes, you were asking about, we talked about Barry Cornfield, but you were asking about, I'm sorry, because you... Rimmelow Richard and Mimi, of course. So Carolyn Hester was married to Richard, and he blew into town a wild, kind of a wild man, a wild guy, you know, and he was, she met him at an Irish public bar, Irish legendary tavern called the White Horse Tavern. Now, that was a hangout. Dylan would be there and soaking in a lot of the Irish folk songs that then became his.

his familiar songs, to be honest. And Richard Farina was there, the Clancy Brothers, who were very, very important figures in the early Greenwich Village scene in the 60s. Clancy brothers were an Irish bunch of brothers who were actually actors. They were actors, and they had set up camp at the Cherry Lane Theater in the village,

which is still there in a great theater. And they were trying to bring Irish plays. But they also loved music. They were musicians as well, and they started doing shows at night to raise money to fund their theater, to fund their theater rental and fun putting it on plays. And so they were important, and they were often at the White Horse Tavern. It was an Irish pub, and Richard was hanging out there, met Carolyn Hester,

swept her off her feet, off her high heels, and they had a whirlwind romance and a marriage. They got married. But, you know, it was troubled. And the book lays it out. I did a lot of interviews with Carolyn. I adore her, and her stories were just so colorful and fantastic. But she had a whirlwind romance and marriage, but, you know, he had his ways.

He was very, he wanted to be part of the act. Now, Carolyn was already established as quite a fantastic solo folk singer. Yes. But he kind of found his way on stage with her, and I think there was some awkward, there was something awkward about it. Also, he wasn't really a focusing. She didn't consider him a folk singer. She's from the tradition where you really learn the songs.

You play hootnannies. If the listeners don't know, hootnannies are like the equivalent of a jazz jam session, but for folk music. And people just pick up an instrument and play, and everybody trades songs. Well, you know, he never did all that. Like, he didn't pay his dues, let's put it that way.

So it wasn't appropriate in her mind, and maybe in my mind, that he would join her on stage so much and become her manager and agent. It was just too much. It became troubled. But then, she was rolling with that, but it was then somehow then in France on a trip, he met Mimi Farina, who I believe was 16.

Oh, my God. I'm telling you. And that's the sister of Joan Baez. So it's Mimi Baez, and, you know, she's adorable. In fact, other people I interviewed, and I'm not sure if I put this in the book, because I couldn't write everything. I only had 300 pages to work with. So John Sebastian and others told me that he,

Let me just say, he would be speechless in Mimi Baez's presence because of her beauty and charm. Speechless. And John Sebastian is rarely speechless. Well, and, you know, obviously, Joan Baez rather. Fabius. Commanding presence. Commanding, right? And her sister in a different way also.

So, anyway, Richard fell for Mimi. And, you know, they had a world when marriage. They had a world when marriage that ended in a country. tragedy on Mimi's 21st birthday you know it was a whirlwind but they but I do think

and this is where I may be in disagreement maybe with Carolyn Hester even though I love her is that I think he did some amazing music and I play it from my students he was able to we talked about the poetry he was very poetic in his lyrics

he was a writer and had written a novel which Carolyn had the type most of it for him really yes wow she had a rough time I think with him but Yes, his songs were interesting, and I mean, he was, I think, and I say in the book that I think he was giving Bob Dylan a run-first money during a certain period. I think that's right, yeah. I think it was a certain moment of his timing maybe that wasn't quite there.

And they weren't, you know, they weren't, you know, the Columbia Records. Dylan was signed to Columbia. Yes. They had, he had the clout of Columbia Records. Richard and Mimi were on, like, was it Vanguard or some other label, which would not have had the, facilities to promote in the same way. I'm just saying that as an aside. That's not to say inequality,

that's not about the quality or anything. But I do think they make some wonderful records, and they had such a charming presence as the do, as the husband and wife, Richard and Mimi. I couldn't help thinking about them maybe a little bit with some of the characters in the Coen brothers inside Lewin Davis a little bit. Yeah, and especially with them,

I see them reflected in the movie A Mighty wind. Oh, definitely. Exactly. Actually, on a earlier version of the Take on a Walk podcast,

Ed Begley Jr., was part of it who was part of that whole troupe. Now, a few of their names, Janice Ian. Oh, Janice Ian. What a story.

And I love her too. I've worked with her. And have sang, I believe we've been sung together at the bottom line here in the village. Wow. Because we wrote songs

for a woman named Marty Jones in the 80s. We both wrote for her and then we had a concert in which we sang then the songs that we wrote for Marty Jones together. It was really cool. But Janice is was, because now she's

an adult so we can't call her a prodigy. But she was a prodigy. I think she was 13 when she first performed in Greenwich Village. And I believe she was 13 when she started writing Society's child. Oh, no kidding. But, you know, of course the thing was, it's a

quite a story about how that song then the difficulty it had being played on the radio because it was about interracial romance between teenagers. And she, you know, say 14-ish, 14, you know, it came out when she was 15 but she had already had the song

written and had gotten a producer. They just couldn't land a record deal. And when they finally did, then they had, it was almost blacklisted that couldn't be played until Leonard Bernstein Bernstein. Bernstein?

Leonard Bernstein. Let's say that. I like either. They're both great. It's a great name, and his name is so weighty. Lenny. Yeah, right. Well, you know, to some, to me, I never actually met him even though I met his daughter many times, Jamie.

But Leonard had a television special about pop music and presented Janus Ian as a then 14 or 15 year old on his show. And he analyzed the song musically and lyrically and explained it to the country. This was on a CBS or NBC television special. And so when he did that, then people had to accept it because, you know, they had the sign of approval, the seal of approval of Leonard. And it was able to be then a hit record for Janice at a young age. So she was by 15 and she was touring in large, you know, good venues promoting. promoting it, but she took a lot of backlash on the stage

because of this subject matter. Interesting. Yeah, and it was just, it was something, and I write about it in the book, it came out of a personal experience at her own school that she witnessed. And that was the beginning, certainly, of FM radio, which allowed for some of the handcuffs to be taken off. Right, so a lot of this music, that, a part of the scene, the reason this scene took off.

Now, one thing about the Greenwichville is very, very important that we should not miss out on some. saying on the show is that this was the, not just singer-songwriters, this was the origin of the singer-songwriter movement, I believe, here, because it was a folk scene. You know, there's jazz in the neighborhood, and they were, musicians were always listening to jazz. Some of these folk singers, they get off stage and go right to a jazz club. And then when they made records, the musicians that are backing them are jazz musicians, like Bill Lee, who was Spike Lee's father. And other musicians who were jazz players were the backing bands, but it was folk music.

Carolyn Hester had Bill Lee on her albums. He was a great bass player, but jazz. You know what I mean? Yeah, well, also, too, I mean, you talk about this. I mean, you know, the Chambers Brothers breaking out in terms of what, you know, their music signified. It was really this explosion of different things all coming together. Just fantastic. So this, yeah, everything was really cranking here in terms of just, you know, influences.

Yeah. Like you said earlier. Yeah, yeah. colliding. Jose Feliciano. Wow. Well, he blew people away. He was this blind kid, Puerto Rican,

comes in, and again, different, they're all different. You know, we don't think of it, but all these people are different ethnic backgrounds. I mean, you know, Ritchie Havens is on the scene. There are a few African Americans. There's not so many,

but there's, like, Native Americans with several, Patrick's Guy, and of course, Buffy St. Marie. And, you know, and the one you just mentioned was Jose, you know, Latino. and he is blind, and he is flying on the guitar. People, John Sebastian always has the quote.

He was like, oh, no, actually, this quote might come from Dave Van Runk, where you can't do that with a guitar. Right. It's impossible, you know. Yeah. But, of course, he did. He was a great. It is still a fantastic player.

Yeah. And he was a wonderful interview. I got to, a lot of these artists I got to meet when I produced a concert in Central Park in 2018, also called Music in Revolution. Okay. And I had John Sebastian, I had Chessie Collin Young, I had, oh, many, and Jose Feliciano, and Melanie. And a lot of the artists that I write about,

or at least mention Melanie came a little bit later in the scene, so she's not part of the story of Greenwich Village that I write. But she's there, and she appears in the later part. But they performed together on stage. Some of these little tiny bits of interviews sometimes happened during the concert, because we would talk, and I was on stage announcing, and I was playing with them. I'm playing bass for many of the artists.

Oh, wow. And I would say, well, John, what about this? And he was, yeah, I don't like that. You know, some of these little mini quotes that are in the book sometimes came from what happened on stage with me, with them. Yeah. Fred Neal. Fred Neal.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, wow. Well, Fred Neal. Fred Neal was a very, not just a talent. He was also a great host of the Café Wah afternoon shows, which was the first Bob Dylan performance in the city playing harmonica for Fred Neal. he had these afternoon, they became a little scene, an afternoon scene. It was a 24-hour circus here. It wasn't just nighttime. So by the after breakfast or lunch, there was already the

club scene happening at the Café Waugh, and Fred Neal was the host. So he was a fantastic songwriter, but also took his, I believe, took that job as being the host, it was the afternoon shows and the ringmaster as a serious, he took it seriously. So he was bringing in, And he brought in artists like Dylan, or allowed them to be. And Karen Dalton is a name now nearly forgotten, but fantastic artists. There's a recent documentary about Karen Dalton. She's like Billy Holiday or something. She sings in this scorched earth kind of expressionistic vocal style that's now modern.

Wow, interesting. Yeah. I mean, think Amy Winehouse or some other artists that have this very stylized way of singing, well, Karen Dalton was doing that as well. in the early 60s. Fred Neal brought her into the scene. She would sing with him. Fred Neal was a great,

what's the word, like a conduit, as well as being a fantastic songwriter, not just everybody's talking. But the unique thing about him, and I wrote about it in the book, is that many of his songs are about leaving New York, where other people were quite,

other people on the scene were quite thrilled to be, especially like Van Runk, who said, why would I go anywhere else? I'm already here. Fred Neal is always talking about, you know,

going where the sun keeps shining, through the pouring rain. He was going, he wanted to go to Florida or something, you know what I mean? And his songs are fantastic, and they'll last forever. How great is it that David Chase

and his musical advisors for the Sopranos put that scene, the dolphins? Yes, yeah, because he was so interested in the dolphins and he gave all the money to dolphin protection.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's just so beautiful that people get to, to rediscover or discover an artist like that for the first time. I love that. And one last thing about Fred Neal that's interesting too is that his songs became known not by his own performances so much, but by the cover versions also.

Because even the Jefferson Airplane did his song, The Other Side to This Life. That's the correct title. They might have messed up it. The other side to this life, which is about being a musician in the city. It's very specific. It's about the, it's not an easy life.

It's not as glamorous as it may look. kind of story. And they took it and they made like a jam, a San Francisco style jam session out of it. But it actually was written by Fred Neal. Yep. Wow, I love it. Yeah. And then there's somebody else that I mentioned when we spoke on the phone that I love how you told the story of Phil Oaks. Oh, yeah. What a brilliant performer, singer, songwriter, obviously, tremendously tortured in his own regard as well.

but just a brilliant musician. And talk about him, and in particular, his view of the world, which led to certainly, you know, protest songs that he wrote and led the way on. And he also wrote many other types of songs. And he was very poetic, but people know him for his political songs,

because he was the most political on the scene, the most outwardly political. Now why do I say that? because other ones, Buffy St. Marie was too. Well, Phil was visibly on the front lines at many of the Vietnam protests and other. Phil was always there in the front lines, visibly as a protester. And his songs, he wrote, sometimes he wrote anthems that would just, I think they're timeless.

Now, some people say, well, that's just suited for the Vietnam War era. But they're not. Like, I ain't marching anymore. Doesn't mention Vietnam once. It just says, I ain't marching anymore. I'm not going to war. And he did, you know, he wasn't the ROTC when he was in high school or early the years of college. He got out of it.

But he did march. Right. And he became, you know, he didn't believe in the war machinery. And what is the word, the industrial, the military industrial complex? I think that's the phrase. You know, he really was against that. Now, his, all of that was, it was painful when his message didn't, maybe he felt it wasn't always coming. through. And, secondly,

there's many folds to this drama. Secondly, that he wasn't also taken seriously as a poet because I think he saw himself as a writer, not just of protests, but of poetry. Like his song, for instance, changes. It's really one of the most beautifully poetic songs of that era. Sure is.

And he wrote that. I mean, I think, you know, sometimes I perform that as a mash-up with Blown in the Wind. I do it as a conversation between Bob Dylan and Phillips. Oh, wow. Because, in heaven, Of course, Phil and Heaven, Bill here. I mean, Bob here.

You know, because, why? Because they were at odds with each other. Often, Phil Oaks deeply admired Bob Dylan and thought he was the best. He said that, because when Phil Oaks arrived in New York, he said, my first goal was to be the best songwriter in the world. A couple of Ferraris. but

so Phil Oaks arrived in the village wanting to be the best songwriter I think he said in the world I don't think he's it Justin Greenwich Village or in New York I think he said in the world and then he met Bob Dylan and said okay I'll be the second best

so he was he gave credit where credit was due but Bob gave him a hard time Bob Dylan I mean I shouldn't say first name because I don't know him but Dylan gave him a hard time and often said you're not really a poet, you're just a journalist.

Now, it's true that Phil Oaks was a journalist student and a journalist who wrote for many magazines around. Did you know that? He wrote for many magazines. He wrote for a lot of these, I guess you call fanzines of the folk music scene. He wrote reviews of the albums. He was a journalist. He was a writer. So Bob Dylan wasn't really wrong. I had to qualify

that in the book. Wow, is this the loudest corner ever? Yeah, well, when Ferraris go by. Yeah, everything happens. Yeah, all hellbreak. I live at the far end of Waverly the last block, so it's much quieter. But I do live on the street. But yeah,

I think Phil never believed, I didn't never felt he got the, was given the credit he deserved. And I think that's true. I think that's accurate. I do. So, in closing, I think about

certainly somebody like Phil Oaks. Yeah. And I think about the times that we live in, today. Yes. And are you surprised that at such a crazy time that we're living in, that we're not seeing a bubbling under of music, I'm not saying it would be identical as the 60s, but in its own form in 2022 and beyond. Does this surprise you? It stuns me. It stuns me that people aren't, you. You using their voice, that musicians are not using their voices more to protest in a poetic way or in any way more. When I say this to my students, they say, yeah, but there's this rapper who does it.

I know, but I've never heard it. Like, you know, there's a, one of the differences is that in the 60s, there were only three television networks and a certain limited number of radio stations in each town. and everyone was hearing the same music more so than today because now everyone has their own private channels and streaming services. There's so many or networks, there's so many on cable, that we're not all hearing the same messaging and the same songs so that you really have to go seek everything out.

So it spread us. There are artists doing music with messages, but we're not all experiencing. them together, we're not really experiencing any music together anymore. I mean, think of it this way when the doors went on, and this is not a Greenwich Village group, but it's at the same era, it's during the same time, when the doors are on the Ed Sullivan show or something, so many people of different ages and locations would see it at the same, or the Beatles, that's really in the book, would see them at the same time.

So they would reach, their message would reach so many people. And now we don't have that. We don't have that. We don't have that concentration of media. It's so spread out that it's hard to get a message through in the same way. I think that's part of it. But again, I don't see that many artists. I hear a lot of music.

My students play music from me. Friends, I hear new stuff daily. And I haven't heard much. I've heard very few songs that really address anything. Well, maybe things will come around. Well, that's one of my dedications of the book. And it's to my mother and to my students. And I say, you know, for my students,

may their music create a revolution of its own. I mean, I really want this book, I want this book to be a call to arms as well as a historical book. I want it to be an inspiration that things can change and that you can make things happen. I mean, this era that we're talking about in this book did change history.

Yeah. It opened up a lot of freedom for young people. It changed the way songwriters could write their own songs without record company interference as much. Because before that, you were given music to sing. A&R people would go choose your songs and then you'd just sing them. And this made it, this era in the village changed that dynamic forever, I think. It's beautifully done. It's all about the passion for music, which is what I love about it as well.

Thank you. And I totally believe others will love it. Richard Barone, thank you so much. Thank you. Keep jamming. All right. Keep rocking. We'll do.

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