W.H. Auden's Poem 'September 1, 1939' Still Resonates In Times Of Crisis

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. In the new Ken Burns PBS series on the history of country music, my guest, Doug Green, talks about the era of the singing cowboy as epitomized by the most popular one, Gene Autry. Cowboy lore, folk ballads, jazz, Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood are all ingredients of the music of the singing cowboys who were movie staples in the '30s and '40s and then on TV in the '50s.

A lot of the music has been forgotten, but Green wrote about its history in his book, "Singing In The Saddle." And he performs the music with his Western band, Riders In The Sky, which is celebrating its 42nd anniversary. They've won two Grammys and, in the movie "Toy Story 2," performed the song "Woody's Roundup," the theme for the toy cowboy's TV puppet show. Green also plays Western music on the show he co-hosts, "Classic Cowboy Corral," on the Sirius XM channel Willie's Roadhouse. He's brought some great recordings for us to hear. I love this music, and I hope you will too.

Doug Green, welcome to FRESH AIR. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for playing me so much good (laughter) cowboy music on your show Saturday nights on satellite radio. So let's start with a song.

DOUG GREEN: OK.

GROSS: And since Gene Autry was the first popular singing cowboy in the movies, and since I love his singing, let's start there. And we'll start with a song that I always thought was a really corny song, but I love it so much now. I love this recording so much. It's Gene Autry's "Back In The Saddle Again." So what's this - what's the importance of this song historically, and why do you love it?

GREEN: Well, I love it because - partly because a friend of mine wrote it, Ray Whitley, who was one of the singing cowboys that followed Gene into the movies. And...

GROSS: Wow. You know the guy who wrote "Back In The Saddle Again?"

GREEN: Yes.

GROSS: Whoa.

GREEN: It was a great story. Do you know the story?

GROSS: No.

GREEN: They called him up early one morning and said they need another song for the movie he was doing, which was a George O'Brien movie. He was the sidekick, kind of. And he jumped up and said to his wife, well, honey, I'm back in the saddle again. She said, well, there you've got your title. He wrote it on the way to the studio. (Laughter) That's kind of a great idea.

GROSS: Yeah. So tell me why you love this song, besides knowing the songwriter.

GREEN: Well, it - you know, it's very evocative of the West. A lot of Western music was very escapist and came to flower and fruition in the Depression era. And I think songs like "Back In The Saddle" just reminded people of being free, and free of mortgage, and debt, and depression and unemployment - just out there and out there in the West answering to nobody but your own conscience and roaming the West. That's why I love "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" because it's, lonely but free, I'll be found drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds. And "Back In The Saddle" has much the same message.

GROSS: But talk about it musically too.

GREEN: Well, it's got a nice yodel (laughter).

GROSS: Oh, and Gene Autry's voice is so great. And there's such a kind of, like - the band has such a kind of lilting swing to it in this.

GREEN: Gene Autry's records from the '30s are a little more stiff. But by the time he started getting a really nice little band in the '40s, those records are just lovely. He had a voice that was just friendly, you know? He just was - you felt comfortable listening to him. He was a marvelous communicator in song.

GROSS: So here's Gene Autry, "Back In The Saddle Again."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN")

GENE AUTRY: (Singing) I'm back in the saddle again, out where a friend is a friend. Where the longhorn cattle feed on the lowly jimsonweed, I'm back in the saddle again. Ridin' the range once more, totin' my old .44, where you sleep out every night and the only law is right, back in the saddle again. Whoopee-tie-aye-oh (ph)...

GROSS: That's Gene Autry's recording "Back In The Saddle Again" from which film, Doug?

GREEN: Well, he recorded it several times. That was his Columbia recording of 1946. But he had recorded it earlier in the '30s, and he made a film of that title as well.

GROSS: OK. So Doug Green is an expert on cowboy songs and also sings them with his band, Riders In The Sky. So where do singing cowboys fit in in the history of American music?

GREEN: Well, it's interesting. The West has always been a fascination of Americans. And Western - and it has always been associated - singing has always been associated with cowboys, for whatever reason. When sound came to films - there had been cowboy songs recorded on record as early as 1925 - but when sound came to the movies in 1929, the - actually, the first sound Western had singing in it. It was "In Old Arizona," and Warner Baxter sang in it. And it was so that - and it won an Oscar.

And so it was the first sound Western was the singing cowboy Western (laughter), and people associated the songs with cowboys and with the West and the romance of the West, the wide-open spaces. And people like Bob Nolan and Tim Spencer with the Sons of the Pioneers began writing songs that were not about the day-to-day life of the cowboy, and roundups and branding, and instead were about the wide-open spaces, and the beauty of nature, and the outdoors, and the free life and fresh air of the cowboy.

GROSS: Well, you mentioned Sons of the Pioneers. Roy Rogers was, for a while, with the Sons of the Pioneers, and then he replaced Gene Autry in the movies. He had been in some Gene Autry movies, I think as the bad guy in some of them in fact, right?

GREEN: Yes, he was.

GROSS: So since Roy Rogers was also a very famous singing cowboy, and since he sang with Sons of the Pioneers, let's kind of combine them...

GREEN: OK.

GROSS: ...And have a Roy Rogers song with Sons of the Pioneers - you know, Roy Rogers is singing lead on this. And this is "Blue Shadows On The Trail." Do you want to say anything about this song or this recording before we hear it?

GREEN: Well, it was featured in a Walt Disney picture called "Melody Time," and it - that had three episodes. And this one was set in the West. He sang "Pecos Bill," and then he and the Pioneers gathered around the campfire while animated critters frolicked in the background and sang this beautiful, beautiful song, "Blue Shadows On The Trail."

GROSS: And the animated critters are kind of echoed by the whistling (laughter), and that we'll hear at the opening of this song. So this is Sons of the Pioneers with Roy Rogers.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLUE SHADOWS ON THE TRAIL")

SONS OF THE PIONEERS: (Whistling, singing) Shades of night are fallin' as the wind begins to sigh and the world is silhouetted 'gainst (ph) the sky. (Whistling) Blue shadows on the trail, (whistling) blue moon shinin' through the trees, (whistling) and the plaintiff wail from the distance (whistling) comes a-driftin' on the evenin' breeze. (Whistling) Move along blue shadows, move along. Ooh. Soon the dawn will come and you'll be on your way. But until...

GROSS: That's Sons of the Pioneers with Roy Rogers singing lead. And we're talking about cowboy music. My guest, Doug Green, is an expert in cowboy music. And he sings lead in the cowboy music band Riders in the Sky. He also hosts a cowboy music show on satellite radio on Willie Nelson's channel Willie's Roadhouse. And also he's been on Ken Burns' "Country Music" series on public television. Well, we should hear a woman singing cowboy music. And...

GREEN: Let's do that.

GROSS: Yeah. And there were - there - you know, the famous cowboys were men. But for instance, in a Gene Autry movie, there was always a love - or usually a love interest. And she was usually a really strong woman who could also sing (laughter). So there's some interesting singers in those movies. But here's somebody - here's a great recording that you've chosen for us to hear today. And this is Rosalie Allen singing "Wide Rolling Plains." So tell us about Rosalie Allen.

GREEN: Rosalie Allen was a little Polish girl from Pennsylvania who fell in love with the music of Patsy Montana and became a great yodeler. And again, I was very lucky to know her and to be able to sing with her. She did a number of great duets with a singer called Elton Britt, who was well-known in his day. And Rosalie went on to become a disc jockey and is a member of the disc jockey - Country Disc Jockey Hall of Fame.

She was a wonderful singer. And this song was written by the great Cindy Walker, who people who know country and western music know she wrote a lot of music for Gene Autry and Bob Wills and for Eddy Arnold. And Ray Charles recorded her songs. She was - this is just one of her many, many wonderful tunes, "Wide Rolling Plains." Great yodeling.

GROSS: OK. So here's Rosalie Allen.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WIDE ROLLING PLAINS")

ROSALIE ALLEN: (Singing) I want to ride, ride and yodel while I'm riding on those wide rolling plains. I want to ride, ride with a cowboy beside me on those wide rolling plains, let the world go by beneath the sunny sky where it never, never rains and settle down, down in some little cow town on those wide rolling plains (yodeling).

GROSS: That was Rosalie Allen singing "Wide Rolling Plains." And with me is Doug Green, who's an expert in cowboy music. So a lot of the women seem to be yodelers and some of them, like, really fancy yodelers..

GREEN: Oh, baby.

GROSS: Yeah (laughter).

GREEN: (Laughter).

GROSS: Is there reason why so many women became known for their yodeling?

GREEN: I suppose we can trace that back to Patsy Montana again, as she just popularized it the way Jimmie Rodgers popularized it for men. And Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and Elton Britt and Rex Allen took it to whole other levels.

GROSS: So let's get to another great woman country singer, and she's a great songwriter. You referred to her because she wrote the Rosalie Allen song that we just heard. So now we're going to hear Cindy Walker sing one of her own songs. And, you know, among the songs she wrote, she wrote "You Don't Know Me," which Ray Charles has such a great recording of. It was a big hit for him.

A lot of our listeners might know "Blue Canadian Rockies" that was on the Byrds' album "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo." And as you mentioned, she wrote for Bob Wills and Gene Autry. So - oh, and she wrote Roy Orbison's song "Dream Baby."

GREEN: Right.

GROSS: And Willie Nelson did a whole album of her songs. That's how much he appreciates her. So you've chosen a song for us to hear by Cindy Walker called "Ridin' On Down." And the album that it's from is even called "The Swingin' Cowgirl From Texas" (laughter).

GREEN: (Laughter).

GROSS: And I have to say, listening to this, it sounds very much like she loves Bessie Smith.

GREEN: Oh, yes. She was very influenced by a lot of the performers of the '20s and '30s.

GROSS: Yeah. OK. So here's Cindy Walker singing one of her own.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RIDIN' ON DOWN")

CINDY WALKER: (Singing) Hey, Cotton. Have you seen Joe? Yes, I saw him about an hour ago. He was looking sad, riding alone, singing this song. Goodbye, gal. Goodbye, baby. You're going to miss me some day maybe. But I'm riding on down. Yes, Lord, I'm riding on down. Don't know where I'm going, but I know I'm somewhere bound.

GROSS: That was Cindy Walker singing her song "Ridin' On Down," one of the songs selected for us today by Doug Green. And he is an expert in cowboy music and hosts a show on cowboy music on satellite radio on Willie's Roadhouse, Willie Nelson's channel. And he's also featured in the Ken Burns series on country music. So this is just a great chance to catch up on cowboy songs. So we're going to do more of that after we take a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF CINDY WALKER SONG, "RIDIN' ON DOWN")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, we're listening to some great cowboy songs with a great expert in cowboy songs, Doug Green, who sings cowboy songs with his band Riders in the Sky and plays recordings of cowboy songs on his satellite radio show, which is called "Classic Cowboy Corral," on satellite radio on Willie's Roadhouse. You may have also seen him on Ken Burns' "Country Music" series.

So there's also movies that were - that starred black singing cowboys. Probably the most famous of the black singing cowboys was Herb Jeffries. And a lot of his movies have, like, Harlem in the title (laughter). So what was the premise of some of his movies that enabled Harlem and cowboy to be in the same sentence?

GREEN: Well, as you sort of referred to, once Gene Autry became popular, then every studio had to have a singing cowboy. And there was a Mexican singing cowboy. There was a woman singing cowgirl, Dorothy Page, and there were four singing cowboy movies starring Herb Jeffries, who is African American. And the interesting part of it is, if you see those movies, there are just no white people in them. It's just like any other Western, except the entire cast is African American. And I've run into many, many elderly African Americans who loved Westerns, and I think Herb Jeffries had the idea that there was no singing cowboy movie expressly for that audience. So that's why he made those four movies, and he was known as the Bronze Buckaroo.

GROSS: So Herb Jeffries ended his movie career to join Duke Ellington's band.

GREEN: He did, and he did that very popular Duke Ellington record, "Flamingo." He's the one that sang that. And he had a great career as a singer. He was - had an incredible voice. And a wonderful guy. He lived to be 100.

GROSS: So we're going to hear "The Cowpoke's Life Is The Only Life For Me." And I think this is actually from the film, as opposed to from a record.

GREEN: Yes, it is. I've - on my show, I've taken a stripped - you could call it - I've stripped the songs out of movies for the show, and this is one of them. It's - he has a beautiful voice, as you'll hear, and I chose it because it just shows off his vocal talent and the kind of songs he sang.

GROSS: OK. So this is Herb Jeffries.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE COWPOKE'S LIFE IS THE ONLY LIFE FOR ME")

HERB JEFFRIES: (Singing) When the cowpoke's day has ended, and the sun has gone to rest, and the prairie seems so peaceful and so free, yet there is no one to greet him at his cabin in the West. Oh, the cowpoke's life is the only life for me. With his tried and trusted bronco and his saddle and his gun and the blanket rolled to pillow his head. Yet there is no one to meet him when his daily work is done, and it's time for all the West (ph) to go to bed. Now I know...

GROSS: So that was Herb Jeffries, one of the black singing cowboy, singing "The Cowpoke's Life Is The Only Life For Me," a song selected for us by my guest Doug Green, who is an expert in cowboy songs and sings them with his band, Riders in the Sky. I think we need to get in some Western swing...

GREEN: OK.

GROSS: ...And play some Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Where does Western swing fit into cowboy music? Because it's not really cowboy music.

GREEN: No, it's not. There is a lot of cross-fertilization, but Western swing is essentially dance music. And while there's - a lot of the outfits are Western, and a lot of the themes of many of the songs are Western, it is really, essentially, dance music, whereas what I call Western music or you call cowboy music is more about the West and more about the harmony than it is about the dance beat.

GROSS: And do you want to talk a little bit about the instrumentation in Bob Wills?

GREEN: Well, sure. The - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys started with a fiddle or two, and they added drums and piano. And at his peak, Bob, of course, had a very big band with two or three singers and three fiddles and two guitars and a steel guitar and horns. It was a hillbilly big band. I mean, all the players in the band were influenced by the big bands and Dixieland and jazz that they had absorbed off the radio, and they just put - instead of horns, they put their fiddles to those beats and that kind of jazz approach.

GROSS: So we're going to hear one of Bob Wills' most famous songs. This is "New San Antonio Rose." You want to say a few words about it?

GREEN: Sure. It was an old fiddle tune that they - he released in the late '30s. And the publisher decided that they needed lyrics, and so they came up with some new lyrics, and it's become one of the great all-time standards in swing music and country music.

GROSS: So here's Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NEW SAN ANTONIO ROSE")

BOB WILLS AND HIS TEXAS PLAYBOYS: (Singing) Deep within my heart lies a melody, a song of old San Antone (ph) - San Antone - where in dreams I live with a memory beneath the stars, all alone. It was there I found, beside the Alamo, enchantment strange as the blue up above, a moonlit pass that only she would know. Still hears my broken song of love.

GROSS: That's Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. My guest is Doug Green, lead singer of the western band Riders in the Sky. He's featured in the new Ken Burns PBS series on the history of country music. We'll talk more after a break. We'll also listen back to my 1988 interview with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. He died Monday. And Maureen Corrigan will review a book about one of the most famous poems of the 20th century. She says it's the kind of poem people reach for in times of trouble. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NEW SAN ANTONIO ROSE")

BOB WILLS AND HIS TEXAS PLAYBOYS: (Singing) San Antone.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Doug Green. In the new Ken Burns series on the history of country music, Green serves as an expert on cowboy songs, focusing on Hollywood's famous singing cowboy Gene Autry. Green is also the author of a book about the history of the singing cowboy. He's best known as the lead singer of the western band Riders in the Sky, which has won two Grammys. With a fellow band member, he co-hosts the SiriusXM radio show "Classic Cowboy Corral" on the channel Willie's Roadhouse.

How did you get interested in cowboy music?

GREEN: A lot of different ways. My grandparents were Finnish immigrants and lived in the northern peninsula of Michigan, and they listened to the "National Barn Dance." So a couple of my uncles ordered cheap guitars from Montgomery Ward and began wanging (ph) away at them. And when I was about 11, I pulled that guitar, Uncle Hank's (ph) guitar off the wall and began wanging on it myself. And he sang, and my uncle Arvid (ph) sang. And we lived in California for a couple of years because my dad was in the Navy for a while.

And in those days, in the '50s, there was a lot of music on television. I used to run home from school to see Sheriff John. I wanted to be in the Fun Brigade. And he sang. Doye O'Dell had a TV show. Spade Cooley had a TV show. "Town Hall Party" was on.

And I just fell in love with the image and the music of the West. You know, a kid doesn't know a lot about broken hearts and feeling sorry for yourself and falling off a barstool, but a kid can relate to being on a horse and singing with your friends in the great outdoors. And I just fell in love with Western music. And I heard it live first with a band at Knott's Berry Farm, which has become a big amusement park now. But they had a campfire at night, and a cowboy band would sit around singing songs. And the romance of it completely entranced me.

GROSS: On your satellite radio show on Willie's Roadhouse, where you play cowboy songs, your partner in the band plays the role of the sidekick because there's always a sidekick in Westerns, you know, whether it's like Pat Brady or - you know, with Roy Rogers or Smiley Burnette with Gene Autry.

GREEN: Right.

GROSS: So the sidekick is named, in your work, Sidemeat. And every time I hear that, I think how did they come up with that name? So you can explain that to me.

GREEN: Well, every sidekick has to have a name. You know, nobody - they're either Fuzzy or Gabby or (laughter) have some sort of funny name. And, you know, Sidemeat has a very fascinating story. He was one of the original cowboys that drove the herds up the Chisholm Trail after the Civil War. And after the cowboy days were over, he went panning for gold in the Yukon, where he fell into the crevasse of a glacier and was flash frozen for 75 years.

GROSS: (Laughter).

GREEN: And - but with global warming, he - we found him just as he was thawing out and added him to our crew as our cook and our sidekick.

GROSS: I love that you came up with such an elaborate backstory for him.

(LAUGHTER)

GREEN: Yes, he co-hosts with me. I provide the information, and he interrupts and asks the obvious question.

GROSS: Yeah, he's got the voice of the grizzled old prospector.

GREEN: He certainly does.

GROSS: Yeah.

GREEN: Gabby Hayes was his hero, no doubt about it.

GROSS: Let's talk a little bit about the fun and the absurdity of some singing cowboy movies. I mean, like, the Gene Autry movies for the most part are really, like, cheap looking, you know, and all the big fights, there's, like, somebody punching each other, throwing a chair over someone or jumping out the window.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: There's, like, standard tropes that were in all of them. But, you know, you had to have a way for the singing cowboy to sing. So sometimes he'd be singing in the saddle. Sometimes he'd be serenading his girlfriend. Sometimes he and his girlfriend would be singing duets on their horses. But sometimes he'd be singing with his guitar, and suddenly, this invisible string orchestra is behind him.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: So can you talk about some of the beauty and some of the absurdity of the singing cowboy films?

GREEN: Well, they were fantasies. You know, nobody dressed in - with those glorious outfits that they wore. And they would have a fight, and then his hat was completely clean, and his clothes were completely clean. It was just a wonderful fantasy of living in the West. And as far as the orchestra (laughter) coming up behind the sagebrush, I think Mel Brooks did that beautifully in "Blazing Saddles," when they - riding through the desert, and there's the Count Basie Orchestra behind the cactus (laughter).

GROSS: One of the ways of getting music into Western movies that didn't have singing cowboys in them - they just had cowboys - was to have a theme, a title theme, that was a song. And I think the most successful version of that was the theme for "High Noon," which was sung for the movie by Tex Ritter, and later Frankie Laine had a big hit of it. So we should hear that.

GREEN: Yes, let's.

GROSS: But talk about it a little bit. Talk about the importance of that song.

GREEN: There's a very interesting story on that because they - it wasn't part of the original movie. And when they screened it, they just felt they needed something really special, and it happened to be Tex Ritter, who just had that magnificent, unique voice. I mean, you knew who it was the second you heard him. And he just really brought it home, with that pounding beat and the sense of - I don't know how to say this.

GROSS: Doom?

GREEN: (Laughter) Yeah, that's a very good word for it. There was - yes, there was a sense of doom that he brought to that and a great sincerity, which he projected always in his songs. He was a brilliant communicator. And he was actually my favorite singing cowboy when I was a kid.

GROSS: There's a sense of doom because the song is about what the movie is about, which is that bad guys are coming to seek revenge against the sheriff.

GREEN: Right.

GROSS: And the sheriff knows he's going to be outnumbered. But he can't die a coward, so he has to stand up to them, even though it might be the end.

GREEN: Right. His wife, played by Grace Kelly, is a Quaker. She doesn't believe in violence. The town is all afraid of Frank Miller and his gang. And Gary Cooper has to stand up to him.

GROSS: It's a great film. It's really beautifully shot.

GREEN: It sure is.

GROSS: And Dimitri Tiomkin, who's one of, like, the great movie composers, wrote the score for this, and I think he wrote the song, too.

GREEN: He did. Ned Washington was the...

GROSS: Lyricist?

GREEN: ...Wrote the lyrics.

GROSS: OK. So this is Tex Ritter singing "High Noon." And one more thing about Tex Ritter - he had a really low bottom to his voice when he wanted to.

GREEN: Yes. Yes, he did.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: OK, so here's the theme from "High Noon."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HIGH NOON")

TEX RITTER: (Singing) Do not forsake, oh, my darling, on this, our wedding day. Do not forsake me, oh, my darling. Wait, wait along. I do not know what fate awaits me. I only know I must be brave. And I must face a man who hates me or lie a coward, a craven coward, or lie a coward in my grave.

GROSS: That was the theme from "High Noon" sung by Tex Ritter. Doug Green, it's really been great to talk with you. Thank you so much for playing some music for us. It's been great to hear the songs.

GREEN: Oh, Terry, this has been great. Thanks so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HIGH NOON")

RITTER: (Singing) We made a vow while in the state's prisons...

GROSS: Doug Green is the lead singer of the western band Riders In The Sky. He's featured in the new Ken Burns PBS series on the history of country music. After we take a short break, we'll listen back to my 1988 interview with Robert Hunter, who wrote the lyrics to many of the Grateful Dead's best-known songs. He died Monday.

This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF FLORATONE'S "FRONTIERS")
TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Robert Hunter, who wrote lyrics for many Grateful Dead songs, died Monday. He was 78. We've dipped into our archives so we could play back my interview with him. Hunter wrote lyrics to songs Dead fans know by heart like these.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UNCLE JOHN'S BAND")

GRATEFUL DEAD: (Singing) Well, the first days are the hardest days. Don't you worry anymore because when life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door. Think this through with me. Let me know your mind. Whoa. What I want to know is, are you kind?

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHINA CAT SUNFLOWER")

GRATEFUL DEAD: (Singing) Look for a while at the China cat sunflower proud walking jingle in the midnight sun. Copperdome bodhi drip a silver kimono like a crazy quilt stargown through a dream night wind.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FRIEND OF THE DEVIL")

GRATEFUL DEAD: (Singing) I lit up from Reno. I was trailed by 20 hounds, didn't get to sleep that night till the morning came around. Set out running, but I'll take my time. A friend of the devil is a friend of mine. If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight. I ran into the devil, babe, he loaned me 20 bills...

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EASY WIND")

GRATEFUL DEAD: (Singing) I been balling a shiny, black, steel jackhammer, been chipping up rocks for the great highway. I'll live five years if I take my time, balling that jack and drinking my wine. I been chipping them rocks from dawn until doom while my rider hide my bottle in the other room. Doctor say better stop balling that jack. If I live five years, I'm going to bust my back, yes I will.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRUCKIN'")

GRATEFUL DEAD: (Singing) Trucking. Like the do-dah man once told me, you've got to play your hand. Sometimes your cards ain't worth a dime if you don't lay them down. Sometimes the light's all shining on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.

GROSS: Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia met when they were teenagers and played folk music together. After Garcia formed the Grateful Dead in the mid-'60s, Hunter started writing most of the lyrics for Garcia's songs. In the mid-'60s, the Grateful Dead were the house band for Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, parties in which people were tripping out on LSD, parties that helped bring acid into the counterculture.

Hunter's first experience with LSD and other psychedelics was when he was given them as part of a Stanford research project that he did not know was funded by the CIA, which was looking for a mind control drug. The CIA's mind control program was the subject of an interview we did just a few weeks ago on FRESH AIR. My interview with Robert Hunter was recorded in 1988, seven years before the death of Jerry Garcia.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: When you're writing a song with Garcia - and he's writing the music, you're writing the lyrics. Let me ask that age-old question of, which comes first?

ROBERT HUNTER: Well, what's happening right now is Jerry's coming over to the house every day. We're getting some songs together for a new album. And I give him some starter ideas, and he looks at those. And we just batter it back and forth and back and forth. The songs for Grateful Dead are true collaboration for the most part.

There are times when I've handed him lyrics and he's set, then other times when he's handed me accomplished changes and I've put words to those. But when it works best is when we actually get our heads together and battle it back and forth until there's something that we mutually agree on.

GROSS: When you were traveling with the band and the people who were onstage would get so much attention, would you ever feel a little left out (laughter) as the lyricist who wasn't on the stage basking in all the glory?

HUNTER: Oh, you bet I did. Oh, oh, it was misery...

GROSS: (Laughter).

HUNTER: ...All those jerks up there getting all that glory and all the girls and everything like that and just miserable. All I had was my spiral notebook. Yeah, boy - well, I'll get even.

GROSS: (Laughter) Can you confirm this for me? I read somewhere that you were one of the participants in the Stanford University program of government experimentation with LSD in the early 1960s.

HUNTER: Yeah. They paid me $140 to take - first, LSD, second, psilocybin, I think, third, mescaline, and then the fourth week, all three of them together...

GROSS: No kidding (laughter).

HUNTER: ...Which was a joy in one way. But they also came and took five cc of blood every two hours. And when you're hoined (ph) out on acid - here comes Dracula again.

GROSS: (Laughter) Oh, gosh. What did they tell you about LSD before they gave it to you the first time?

HUNTER: Nothing. They didn't want me to know a thing about it. And I lied to them. I told them that I knew nothing about it, and I had read "Doors Of Perception," in fact.

GROSS: Oh, and that's why you wanted to be in the program probably.

HUNTER: Yeah. And they called it - the word at the time was psychotomimetic drugs, miming psychosis. And they wanted to find out if it increased your ability to be hypnotized and to take suggestions. And I don't know what they found out from that. I was sitting there, and they were trying to run these little hypnotic things on me, I remember. And all of a sudden, tears began running out of my eyes. And the psychologist said, well, what's happening here? And I said, well, it's kind of hard to describe, but I'm out in the fifth dimension somewhere. And I'm a great, jade green Buddha. And there's a pool growing out of my lap. And it's just - and the water of the pool is running out of my eyes. I'm not really crying.

I think they began twigging that they were onto something a little bit more than a simple heightening of suggestibility here.

GROSS: Do you think that tripping a lot changed the kind of lyrics that you were writing?

HUNTER: Oh, it had to.

GROSS: Yeah.

HUNTER: It had to. I mean, it was - I was tripping around in mystic space and making the mystic connections, which I think were right for the time. I look back on that stuff with a great deal of affection. And I know where it comes from. I think people do as part and parcel of that generation. Don't write like that anymore, but I don't take the drug anymore.

GROSS: I figure if I had a nickel for everyone who got really high and listened to your lyrics and tried to figure out the more elliptical imagery, I'd really be a wealthy woman. What are some of the crazier interpretations you've gotten of some of your song lyrics?

HUNTER: Oh, heavens. Well, there was a time - it may still be so - when people would swear that I was writing about them. And if something is personal enough, there's a certain line where it becomes universal. It's - you never know which ones will and which ones won't. You know, I've written things which are so personal nobody could ever have the slightest idea, like, you know, look at - look for a while at the China Cat Sunflower proud walking jingle in the midnight sun. Now that gets into kind of Joycean word salad. And some people strangely enough know just what I mean by it. But don't - I couldn't explain that.

GROSS: Can I ask you about a song - another song, "Uncle John's Band?"

HUNTER: Mmm hmm.

GROSS: One of the lines is when life looks like Easy Street, there's danger at your door.

HUNTER: Oh, God, is that true.

GROSS: Can I ask you - have you ever thought - were you thinking of something specific when you wrote that?

HUNTER: I was thinking about the - sort of the hippie, self-congratulatory thing that we'd really conquered all this. You know, here, we've got - we've ended the Vietnam War. We've done this, the other thing. And then, you know, things looking rosy. No, no, it's - liberty, the price is eternal vigilance.

GROSS: My interview with Robert Hunter was recorded in 1988. He died Monday at the age of 78. After we take a short break, Maureen Corrigan will review a book about one of the most famous poems of the 20th century, written as World War II was beginning. This is FRESH AIR.

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TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. In times of trouble, people reach for all sorts of things to help make sense of the world. Sometimes they even reach for a poem. Critic Ian Sansom explores one such poem in his new book called "September 1, 1939." Book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BYLINE: It's one of those poems people reach for in times when it feels like the sky is falling. It's also generally regarded as one of the great poems of the 20th century. "September 1, 1939," as its title signals, was written by W.H. Auden in the days immediately following Germany's invasion of Poland, which marked the start of the Second World War. Auden had left his native England and moved to New York City some nine months earlier. And the famous opening lines of the poem are rooted in the dingy geography of his new home. I sit in one of the dives on 52nd Street, uncertain and afraid as the clever hopes expire of a low, dishonest decade.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, all or part of Auden's poem about the unthinkable happening was printed in newspapers and read on the radio. Decades earlier, Lyndon Johnson drew on another line from the poem in his famous 1964 Daisy campaign commercial, where the image of a young girl plucking daisy petals is obliterated by the image of a nuclear explosion. Johnson's commercial lightly tweaked Auden's most cherished line - we must love one another, or die.

Writer and critic Ian Sansom has been reaching for "September 1, 1939" for at least 25 years. That's how long he says he's been trying to write a book about the poem. That book, also called "September 1, 1939," has just been published. And I feel confident in saying that readers will either get a huge kick out of Sansom's kooky, rambling, self-conscious and often inspired writing style, as I did, or they will loathe it.

Though he's a regular contributor to The Guardian and The London Review of Books, Sansom is not your standard issue literary critic. Here, for instance, is a short conversation with a friend that Sansom quotes in his opening by way of trying to describe what kind of book he's written or hasn't written. (Reading) Is it one of those - how so-and-so changed my life type of books, asked a friend. No, I say. That's a shame, they say. People really like those sorts of books. It's more about my relationship with language and literature and ideas, I say. Hmm, says my friend. Well, good luck with that.

Good luck, indeed. Actually, Sansom is underselling his book in that self-deprecating manner the Brits wear so well. "September 1, 1939," the book, is a deeply informed and unapologetically digressive dive into Auden's life, as well as into the life of this singular poem. Along the way, we readers hear a good deal of nattering about Sansom's own life - how, for instance, his sister in Australia thinks he should buy a barbecue grill or how he, unlike Auden, lasted only two weeks on a misbegotten pilgrimage to New York City. Sansom says of Auden, the poet, that he's a terrible fidget. It's what makes his poems entertaining and infuriating. Much the same can be said of Sansom, the fidgety critic.

In his own erratic and largely entertaining style, Sansom ruminates on what he calls the showing-off structure and extraordinary language of Auden's poem, especially the meanings packed into phrases like blind skyscrapers and the folded lie. Sansom is also refreshingly blunt about parts of the poem he thinks are weak, like the end, which he dismisses as twinkly (ph). Auden himself eventually disowned the poem; he even tried to change the - we must love one another or die - line, which he came to regard as dishonest. But it was too late. Sansom says that "September 1, 1939" is undoubtedly the most famous example in literary history of a writer attempting to revise his work and of readers refusing to allow it.

And a good thing, too. There's something uncanny about Auden's poem that continues to make it necessary reading in times of crisis. Or, as Sansom neatly puts it, talking specifically about the poem's service during the weeks after September 11, 2001 - it was the right poem in the right place for a wrong time.

Maybe, in our own present "Age Of Anxiety," it's still the right poem. Here's the rest of that first stanza - (reading) waves of anger and fear circulate over the bright and darkened lands of the Earth, obsessing our private lives; the unmentionable odour of death offends the September night.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed "September 1, 1939" by Ian Sansom.

Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, as the formal impeachment inquiry poses the greatest threat yet to the Trump presidency, we'll look at the life and career of Vice President Pence. Our guest will be veteran political reporter Tom LoBianco, who has covered Pence for decades. He's just written a new book called "Piety & Power: Mike Pence And The Taking Of The White House." I hope you'll join us.

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GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our associate producer for digital media is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. I'm Terry Gross.

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