Barry McGuire Quotations

Marches alone won't bring integration when human respect is disintegratin

There's only one drummer. We all travel to his beat. Well, I couldn't sing his song. Because for me, it wasn't a truthful statement. Well, Linda sang it, and it was a monster for her.

And a friend of mine in the Christys, we used to sit up at night and talk and read and wonder if reincarnation, and if it wasn't reality, what would happen to the human spirit when the body dies? Is there an afterlife? Just questions like that.

I did about a 100 concerts this year. All over the United States. We're cutting back next year to about 40. We generate money for an organization called Mercy Corps.

And there was a real shedding of the old dogma, like boundaries of morality were being broken down and everybody was into the new party mode of just loving on each other. Which destroyed thousands of us. I lost 16 of my personal friends through that lifestyle.

But times changed, and I changed, and I didn't feel that way anymore. The Beatles were happening. I think that was probably the main thing. The Beatles just changed the whole world of music.

My buddies worked with me for weeks, and I went up to take my test, and started crying because I couldn't remember the words. I can remember songs. If you put it to a melody, I would have sung it to 'em in a minute.

The big turning point, really, was the Beatles' influence on American folk music, and then Roger took it to the next step, and then along came the Lovin' Spoonful and everybody else.

Hate your next-door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace.

When I wrote 'Green, Green,' it was like a really a statement of where I was at philosophically in my life.

I remember we woke up one morning at Denny's house and John Phillips called. He said, you guys okay? We said, yeah, what's wrong, what's going on? He said, well, everybody's dead over at Sharon's house at Terry Melcher's place.

You know, the music business is like the Lotto. Just put your numbers down and sometimes they hit, and sometimes they don't. There's just no rhyme or reason.

Ah, you may leave here, for four days in space, but when you return, it's the same old place.

I was very laced with drugs myself, but Fred seemed to be even more so than me. That might have had something to do with it. That might have had something to do with nobody wanting to play my records, too, I don't know.

If you listen to the left track on their album, if you get The Best of the Mamas and Papas, you listen to the left track, you can still hear a little bit of my voice. My son discovered that once.

It was really fun. Well, Bobby was just basically a folk singer. He didn't play with any bands or anything, like all the rest of us. Just played his guitar and sang his songs.

So gradually, and then I had an Italian roadster that I built, it took me five years to build it, it was stolen from me and stripped. I said, well maybe we should have another where we shouldn't steal from each other.

That's why I had to leave Hair on Broadway, because I did it for about a year, and one night I was doing the show, and I realized, well, this is not real. I told the director. He says, man, it was a killer show tonight.

There was a report that used to come out back in those days, I don't know if it was the Gavin Report or something like that. And they said, no matter what McGuire comes out with next, we're not gonna play it.

To have a songwriter that wrote so specifically what I felt to be true... I've never been much of an actor either. If something is real for me, then I can do it.

He was an entrepreneur. He was the one who hired the musicians and booked the sessions and he had the ear. He heard the Mamas and Papas and said yes, immediately, yes! And so he did have, I guess, that producer's gift.

We're all sitting at the same table. Sloan is, and Adler, and Dylan. I spent most of the time dancing. I kind of forgot about it.

You tell me over and over and over again, my friend, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.

You may leave here for four days in space, but when you return it's the same old place.

Think of all the hate there is in Red China, then take a look around to Selma, Alabama.

You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'.

I know great songwriters. Fred Neil would come up when he was in L.A., we all used to hang out. He would sit there and sing, and we would just melt. I mean, we would go to his recording sessions.

So he was opening night... I was out of a job, and I'd been to every producer in Hollywood trying to get a job singing. But nobody wanted to know me.

I've never been much of a musician. I'm kind of like, you've got a bunch of guys out on surfboards. Well, some guys really calculate the waves.

I never gave it a second thought. In fact, you saying it right now is the first time I've ever considered it. No, not at all. Not for me.

I know great songwriters. Fred Neil would come up when he was in L.A., we all used to hang out. He would sit there and sing, and we would just melt. I mean, we would go to his recording sessions.

Gene Clark was in the Christy Minstrels. He left. And so when Gene and David and Roger got together with Chris, and then off they went.

For me, it was a whole search. There was an undercurrent. And this is only my personal perspective. I can't say everybody would answer the same way.