"You can get anything you want....
… at Alice’s Restaurant.” Way back in 1965,
Arlo Guthrie, son of folksinger
Woody Guthrie and called by many an “American troubadour,” celebrated
Thanksgiving at a deconsecrated church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. After
dinner, he and some friends decided to take out the trash. There was a
lot of trash. They loaded it up in a red VW minivan and drove to the city
dump. The dump was closed for the holiday, so they drove some more and
found a pile of junk at the bottom of a cliff. They contributed to the
pile of junk. And got arrested for littering. When Arlo was drafted and
went to his physical, he had to admit he’d been arrested for littering…and
the rest, as they say, is history. Or at least it’s a hugely popular “
talking guitar blues” that lasts 18 minutes and a
1969 movie directed by Arthur Penn and starring Arlo (who was 19 years
old at the time) and Matthew Broderick’s father.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,
and Arlo is touring the country singing the song in his concerts. I’ve
been a fan of Arlo’s for most of those 50 years and bought my ticket for
the concert about an hour after I received the announcement from the Irvine
Barclay Theater. I went to see Arlo about ten days ago. It’s the fourth
time I’ve seen him in person in five years. Arlo’s stage persona is a sort
of hillbilly folksinger, and he sounds a lot like his father, who, in case
you don’t know, wrote “
This Land Is Your Land.” (Click on the link and you can see the famous
sign on Woody's guitar.) He sits downstage center and sings, plays guitar
(six and 12-string), harmonica, and piano. And he tells stories, hilarious
and touching stories. He’ll be singing along and suddenly stop and tell
a story, then go back to the song. He toured with
Pete Seeger, who I think was one of the major heroes of the earth,
for more than 40 years. I got to see them once back in the late 80s. Because
“Alice’s Restaurant” is so long, Arlo had stopped singing it at his concerts.
He says he forgot the words. Now he’s singing it again.
Who else was in the audience? A lot of old folkies. I sat next to a couple
of Vietnam vets and got to hear a few of their stories before the concert
began. There were also some younger folk music fans in the audience, but
as Arlo noted from the stage, very few millenials or younger people. Well,
gee—the Vietnam War is Ancient History now. The Tet Offensive might as
well be Thermopylae.
It was a lovely concert. Arlo sang and played and talked and sang some
more and talked some more. Backing him up were another guitarist, his percussionist,
his bassist, and his son Abe, playing another keyboard. The concert was
also a majorly cool light show, and there was a screen upstage on which
they opened the concert with an old, old claymation movie of Arlo’s “
Motorcycle Song.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJpKA... He also
sang songs by friends of his father’s, like
Lead Belly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Belly He says that his
earliest memory is standing next to Lead Belly, who died when he was two
years old. But they didn’t say anything. Which always gets a laugh. One
song he sang was the “
St. James Infirmary Blues.” I first heard this song my freshman year
in college when I met the guitarist I married three years later. He courted
me with classical guitar (I can still recognize the Sor Etudes) and folk
songs. As a newlywed, I cut my fingernails and learned to play the guitar.
My repertoire consisted of “Jesus Loves Me” (because it was easy to play)
and Tom Lehrer’s “
The Old Dope Peddler” (just because). But then I let my nails grow
again. (How Dolly Parton can play the guitar with her long fingernails,
I have not a clue.)
Arlo also talked about Woodstock. While that was happening, I was in southeast
Missouri, having just finished my M.A. and getting ready to move to Carbondale,
Illinois, to start my Ph.D. I don’t think the famous Sixties ever reached
southeast Missouri or central Illinois, at least not while I was teaching
high school English, speech/theater, and French in two small towns in those
locations. I got my own, private Inquisition in the small town in central
Illinois when I was accused of being a communist and an atheist and haled
before the school board. It was actually a case of xenophobia (I was the
only person in town who'd been born more than 50 miles away), and after
I was acquitted, I resigned and went back to Cape Girardeau to start graduate
school. Woodstock was on the news in the summer of ’69, but that’s all
I know about it. But Arlo was there. His stories are hilarious.
He opened the second half of the show with “Alice’s Restaurant” with scenes
from the movie projected on the screen behind him. It lasted 26 minutes
and the refrain turned into a sing-along. The lyrics were projected, but
I’d bet serious money that not a person in the audience needed to read
them. We sang along and we sang loud. And we repeated the refrain several
times. Another song Arlo sang is one I especially love. This is Steve Goodman’s
“
City of New Orleans,” which is about the Illinois Central Railroad’s
train that travels (I think it still does) between Chicago and New Orleans.
I’ve been on that train. The railroad goes right through the middle of
Carbondale, and when I was a student there, having to wait for the train
was a legitimate excuse for being late to class. After I finished my Ph.D.,
I treated myself to a trip to New Orleans. I flew down (with a stopover
in Memphis) and took the train back.
By the end of Arlo’s concert, I was soggy with nostalgia, and I bet everyone
else in the audience was, too. We clapped and whooped and hollered. Arlo’s
encore was one of his father’s songs, “
My Peace.” We sang along, and then we clapped and whooped and hollered
some more.
