Pastures of Plenty: A Self Portrait The Unpublished Writing Edited by Dave Marsh and Harold Leventhal

Pastures of Plenty: A Self Portrait
The Unpublished Writings
Edited by Dave Marsh and Harold Leventhal

"Woody is just Woody...He sings the songs of a people. And I suspect that he is, in a way, that people...There is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of a people to endure and fight against oppression. I think we call this the American Spirit." - John Steinbeck

In 1988, Dave Marsh, author and music critic, was invited by Harold Leventhal, Woody's agent, to peruse Woody's writings in the hopes of publishing a new book. At that time, there was no "official" archives. There were simply file drawers, boxes, scrapbooks, and portfolios each filled to the brim with Woody's writings, notebooks, diaries and correspondence.

Dave wrote: "When Harold Leventhal asked if I'd be interested in editing what he called "the Woody Guthrie scrapbook,"' a collection of previously unpublished material, my reaction was cool. Woody's words had already been collected so many times over that it seemed unlikely the leftovers would add anything new to our picture of him. And it was the end of the eighties: Who needed more agitprop?...

When I walked into his office that afternoon in the winter of '88, the first thing that struck my eye was a framed 8" x 10" photograph on his desk. It was a picture of Woody unlike any I'd ever seen. He was precisely groomed, his shirt nearly buttoned to the very collar, and he stared straight into the camera with a glint in his eye. I know that look; it was the gaze of a man seeing the Main Chance. He could have been a movie star - or a rock and roller. The picture told me something about Woody Guthrie, his ambition and his determination, that I'd learned from none of this records or books or any of the books about him."

It's not easy to get Dave Marsh's attention. His noted books on such infamous musicians as Bruce Springsteen (GLORY DAYS), The Who (BEFORE I GET OLD) and Michael Jackson (TRAPPED: MICHAEL JACKSON AND THE CROSSOVER DREAM) might have numbed him to less popular artists. However, a blowup of a small photo taken in a 25 cent photo booth in 1940 hooked him. His intuitive reaction led him on an eighteen month journey through Woody's writings.

"Part of what makes this new assortment of Woody's writings so fascinating is the frequency with which the words here conflict with his image as it has been passed down over the three decades since Huntington's chorea stilled his public voice", Woody writes:

Dave muses, "For Woody,...this pursuit of socialism may well begin in the search for a solution to a dilemma more existential than economic or political.

"To be lonesome is one of the first mistakes you can make and lots of fellers make a business out of it and claim that it's a good thing. No, it's a bad one." - Woody Guthrie

Dave Marsh's selection of writings is a profound and historic addition to our understanding Woody Guthrie. He has opened a door for us to enter, to read what was in Woody's mind, to feel his process, that no one since has ever done.

Dave Marsh, rock critic, historian, anticensorship activist, and "Louie Louie" expert, has written more than a dozen books about rock and popular music, as well as editing several others. He co-founded Creem, the legendary Motor City rock and roll magazine that helped launch heavy metal, glam and punk, among other styles, and spent five years as an associate and contributing editor of Rolling Stone, where he was chief music critic, columnist and feature writer. Marsh writes monthly record reviews for Playboy, and for the past decade has written and edited the monthly music and politics newsletter, Rock and Rap Confidential. He has lectured widely on music, politics, and censorship. He compiled 50 Ways to Fight Censorship (Thunder's Mouth, 1990), and was coeditor with Don Henley of Heaven Is Under Our Feet: A Book for Walden Woods (Longmeadow Press, 1991), essays in honor of Walden Woods and Henry David Thoreau, written by everyone from Jimmy Buffet and Jimmy Carter to Janet Jackson and Jesse Jackson. Marsh also edited the first two editions of The Rolling Stone Record Guide, and Pastures of Plenty, the papers of folksinger Woody Guthrie.

In 1969, the nineteen-year-old Marsh dropped out of Detroit's Wayne State University to edit Creem. He departed in 1973 to become Newsday's pop music critic, music editor of The Real Paper, and then joined Rolling Stone as the associate editor. He and several others started Rock and Rap (then Rock and Roll) Confidential in 1983. (Marsh edited an anthology of material from the newsletter, The First Rock and Roll Confidential Report, in 1985.) From 1987 to 1992, Marsh served as acerbic rock critic for the weekly syndicated radio program, "Rock Today."

Marsh's first book, Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story (Doubleday) was published in 1979. It made the New York Times best-seller list. He has also written Trapped: Michael Jackson and the Crossover Dream (Bantam, 1986), Before I Get Old: The Story of the Who (St. Martin's Press, 1983), Elvis (Times Books, 1982; Thunder's Mouth Press, 1992), The Book of Rock Lists (Dell, 1980), Sun City: The Making of the Record (Penguin, 1985), Rocktopicon (Contemporary, 1982), and Fortunate Son, a collection of his journalism and criticism (Random House, 1983). Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s, a sequel to Born to Run, appeared in 1987, and became a national hardcover bestseller. The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made (Plume/NAL, 1989) remains the world's lengthiest act of rock criticism; Louie Louie: The History and Mythology of the World's Most Famous Rock'n'Roll song; Including the Full Details of Its Torture and Persecution at the Hands of the Kingsmen, J.Edgar Hoover's F.B.I, and a Cast of Millions; and Introducing, for the First Time Anywhere, the Actual Dirty Lyrics (Hyperion, 1992), may be the strangest.

Marsh's most recent books are Merry Christmas Baby: Holiday Music from Bing to Sting (Little Brown, 1992), co-written with Steve Propes, The New Book of Rock Lists, created with James Bernard, and Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America with Three Chords and an Attitude (Viking), a book about the experiences of the all-author rock band featuring Stephen King, Amy Tan, Dave Barry and Barbara Kingsolver, for which Marsh served as general editor and also wrote a chapter; and The Great Rock'n'Roll Joke Book (St. Martin's Press, 1997). He also edited the oral history series, For the Record for Avon Books, and wrote the first of its nine volumes with Sam Moore of Sam and Dave Marsh, now 48, lives in Connecticut with his wife, Barbara Carr, and two cocker spaniels. He serves on the board of The National Writers Union and of the Kristen Ann Carr Fund for Sarcoma Research, named in honor of his late daughter.