Richie Havens

0:00Hello. Hello Matt. Hey, how's it going? I was down in New York about one place I wanted to see with my friends was Greenwich Village. Just to walk around, just to see it, to see what the scene was and you know, try and understand what happened back then. Mm-hmm. Someone who actually lived through it, how do you describe it? I'm sure you're sick of talking about it. You've talked about it a million times. No, not at all. It's really where we're supposed to be over there, about a year and a half later.

1:46And along with me from the audience for about a year and a half now. Go learn the damn songs.

3:05So I did. I went home. I didn't get off dead stage. People we know were down there at the time. You mentioned the guitar playing. You've got on your website how to play the way you play. Yes. Did that just come up? You were saying you don't?

3:56Keeping everybody on key, you know. I had a sense of jazz harmony. I had a sense of how about ear. So I kind of inherited hearing music well. Do you still play that way now? Yeah, but you know.

4:41I have this movie at home. It's called Don't Look Back in... Oh yeah. Don't Look Back is completely dead silent during a Dylan show. Was it like that for you guys as well? Oh yeah. What's that like playing in front of a crowd? I know now people want a crowd and people are jumping. So you get into it and you get energetic. What was it like just playing in front of people sitting there completely silent? Really wanted to hear the words that are coming out. Yeah, they were the f***ers.

5:57The feeling really was reaching a whole new audience. Like that.

6:49They still had that same feeling and meaning that it had back then?

7:45Well, you know, there might be something else I'd like to do and I'm having too much fun. You know, it's so easy for me to just keep... Was the last time you were there?

9:26Sort of like you had his own show. I can't think of his name right now, but he was the home. I mean, you could go blocks away from each other, you know, and taxi drivers get track of them out, you know.

10:44But like people own. Let's play a song. Your choice. You know, I think 88.3.

12:04So you're talking with Richie Havens, the legendary Richie Havens. We spoke about Greenwich Village before. Obviously you're also very famous for Woodstock. You just mentioned that, you know, the first and last song you're going to play. You don't... Do you go...

13:03A lot of... Inhaling, exhaling. I mean with that... Oh, that's all there was. Like I have the Woodstock and you weren't even supposed to play first at all. No, not any young guys would go,

14:01Oh, 500,000 New Yorkers would go, No, no, no. Seven miles away in the two-hole. And I go, I'm right in the parking lot of the Hollow.

15:38I hear a knock on the... Richie, you know, you got the least instrument and the least guys. Would you go over now? On the farmer down the road who had his own helicopter.

16:30About an hour. About an hour. I kept dodging, you know, going, oh no. And Michael says to me, okay, they want to hear something. You know, please. And I went, okay, Michael. I think I was in Walk-Off.

17:40And I sat down on the stool. I was stuck to do up. That's down through the glass. The operation has been looking for since then.

19:17And then Motherless Child, which I hadn't sung in 14. No, I couldn't go home and watch it.

20:36I'd never seen myself. I didn't even know what to think. You know, I just moved. Once the time went up on me in Midwest out of college, I didn't end the show. Didn't sing the free. A couple other things I know you...

21:31Besides just music, you've been working a lot of things. We're talking about all that kind of stuff. Let's play both those tunes for more stuff, then we'll play Freedom and Handsome Johnny. The beautiful Richie Haven.

27:36The beautiful Richie Haven.

31:5888.3, you just heard Handsome Johnny and Freedom live at Woodstock. Talk to you here with Richie Havens. Working with the Natural Guard. You started something called The Natural Guard. Do you want to explain to people what that is and how maybe they can help?

32:44Went under sea, one mile island.

33:29Down on the other side, his new kid's a year through there. Until they shut down the money on the... And that's when the Natural Guard was youth species in it,

34:26which is... At that point, the kids go, and that's the way it was.

36:32You know, what is this going to be? And we go, we got a choice. Land is natural that could happen in the Mr. Grove 3.

37:59And that book became a coloring, and they did this tree.

39:41And it didn't matter. It was... They came from rich communities. They came from poor to the job for themselves in the summertime

40:31by asking people, kind of, plants, who were amazed that they were... The idea is using your own community as the endangered environment. The national mentions in the Congressional program,

42:21what they want to become, you know. Let's play another song. Something that reminds you of that, the whole... Let's play the happiest song I know.

43:41Right. Sitting here talking with Richie Havens. You just heard, here comes a son to cover, of course, the Beatles classic. You've covered a lot of tunes. What's the deal with covering? Why do bands cover songs? Well, you know, for me, I didn't... Because the son's coming up with names, you know, just a story to tell about them,

48:32or, you know, somehow you met them, maybe... The person I had heard sing that song,

49:38and one of the coffee and a song written by Gene Michaels. And I started... At the end of which day, I said,

50:35thank you, and I ran again, because I'd never had anything like that happen to me. I get to the door, and Dave Van Runken stands out, I go, no. I didn't know the guy. He says, he wrote that song you just sang. I said, no, he didn't. Gene Michaels, we had to be Bob Dylan, a poet that got to get the same time.

51:40So we run into each other in places like his reunion, and I call it... Next name on the list is Paul Simon. Yeah, I got to meet him in a very strange way, too.

52:50I think that's also when the I just go down and hang out with them, and I got to the bottom. I don't want to say hi to you, so you name it.

54:14He walks in there with... He's driving them around, and he walks in there, and they all sit, hey, Rich, how you doing, man? And it was like, and I'm going, I'm telling you guys, but I couldn't even speak, but I learned something, and I got up and walked,

55:18and I asked you something, and he goes, sure. If he says yes, what a bruise that you have here, you know, with only being underneath it said, man. They're normal guys. They're not God.

56:06They're Hylawite, the same years, and to hang out a while when he had elephant's memory. Next name on the list is Roger McGuinn.

56:58I did my first gig in Detroit, and she actually, there was another song,

58:49I think Judy Collins. You know, that's how we met. I do music, songs that have changed.

60:14My pleasure, for sure.