'Alice's Restaurant:' Arlo Guthrie's Arrest Spawned Anti-Vietnam War Anthem

By | November 25, 2019

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Arlo Guthrie in October 1968. Source: Bettmann / Contributor, via Getty Images

Riding the folk-music wave, singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie found his moment of fame in the late '60s with "Alice's Restaurant," a talking blues that begins with a story from his life and leads up to a statement on the Vietnam War. It was a rambling, 18-minute track, combining rural folksiness and hippie irreverence, and its profile was boosted by the fact that Arlo Guthrie was the son of legendary folksinger and activist Woody Guthrie. In a time of musical experimentation, Arlo Guthrie's humorous tale struck just the right countercultural note, and became an anti-war anthem. Eventually, it also became a film, starring Guthrie himself.

The Events In The Song Are Mostly True

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Source: (discogs.com)

In 1965, Arlo Guthrie was a freshman at Rocky Mountain College in Montana, with plans to study forestry although he did not finish out the first year. During Thanksgiving break that year, he went to stay with Alice Brock and her husband in their renovated, deconsecrated church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.