To commemorate its 50 year anniversary, the Vinyl of the Day is ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ by Arlo Guthrie, 1967. What do you do when your father (Woody Guthrie) is a legend of folk rock with his songs of human rights and rebellion, and you’re going to record your own debut album of your own music? Why, you create your OWN legendary folk rock song about human rights and rebellion, of course! And that’s what Arlo Guthrie did here, with his amazing, rambling, black-comedic story that lasts over 18 minutes and takes up the entirety of Side 1, ‘Alice’s Restaurant Massacree’. The song immediately struck such a chord with the Vietnam-era youth of the day with it’s political and anti-war statements (or as Arlo puts it, anti-stupidity), served up with a heavy helping of satirical comedy, that it became a staple of the counter-culture and anti-war movements. It made such an impact that it was turned into a film, with some radio stations still playing the song each Thanksgiving, and Guthrie now has a tradition of performing it once a decade. Guthrie told Rolling Stone, “I never expected it to even be on a record, let alone get airplay, let alone have it made into a movie. I mean, that was all like a whirlwind of events that were way beyond my control.” A VERY quick synopsis of the lyrics: On Thanksgiving 1965, Guthrie and some pals went to throw out garbage from the church where the titular Alice lived, but the dump was closed for the holiday. So he instead tossed the waste at an unsanctioned site, was caught and arrested, and his arrest prevented him from being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. In the song he tells this story with heapings of humor and twang, and it culminates in him advising would-be draft-dodgers to go into their draft office and sing the chorus of the tune to show themselves unfit for service.
Of course there’s a lot more to the song than I can tell here - if you’d like to learn much more of the history of it, I urge you to check the Wikipedia site;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Restaurant
With the enormous success of ‘Massacree’, the rest of the album can be easily forgotten or overlooked, but it also contains two far more lyrical pieces: “Chillin’ of the Evening” and the gorgeous, sweeping “Highway in the Wind”, which really show the range and songwriting ability Arlo had. Most will turn to this countercultural classic for side one’s epic, but it’s the exceptional songs on side two that will offer finer rewards.
Admittedly, the song and format are pretty tough to listen to for audiences of today - but it’s a worthwhile listen for the history, and to gain insight to what your parents or grandparents were thinking and feeling. You don’t have to be of a certain age to enjoy this album, but if you lived through the ‘60’s and thought that the Vietnam war was a tragic mistake, or are living through today’s time of endless war with yet more meaningless wars looming close on the horizon, this album might still speak to you. Remember, if you want to end war and stuff, you gotta sing LOUD.
50 years later, and so much remains the same.
AllMusic Review by Lindsay Planer
Although he’d been a fixture on the East Coast folk circuit for several years, Arlo Guthrie did not release his debut album until mid-1967. A majority of the attention directed at Alice’s Restaurant focuses on the epic 18-plus-minute title track, which sprawled over the entire A-side of the long-player. However, it is the other half-dozen Guthrie compositions that provide an insight into his uniformly outstanding, yet astoundingly overlooked, early sides on Warner Bros. Although arguably not 100 percent factual, "Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” – which was recorded in front of a live audience – is rooted in a series of real incidents. This decidedly anti-establishment saga of garbage dumps closed on Thanksgiving, good ol’ Officer Obie, as well as Guthrie’s experiences with the draft succeeds not only because of the unusual and outlandish situations that the hero finds himself in; it is also his underdog point of view and sardonic delivery that maximize the effect in the retelling. In terms of artistic merit, the studio side is an equally endowed effort containing six decidedly more traditional folk-rock compositions. Among the standouts are the haunting “Chilling of the Evening,” which is given an arrangement perhaps more aptly suited to a Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell collaboration. There is a somewhat dated charm in “Ring-Around-a-Rosy Rag,” a sly, uptempo, and hippie-friendly bit of jug band nostalgia. “I’m Going Home” is an underrated minor-chord masterpiece that is not only reminiscent of Roger McGuinn’s “Ballad of Easy Rider,” but also spotlights a more sensitive and intricate nature to Guthrie’s craftsmanship. Also worth mentioning is the first installment of “The Motorcycle Song” – which was updated and discussed further on the live self-titled follow-up release Arlo (1968) – notable for the extended discourse on the “significance of the pickle.”