Lots of people, if they pay any mind to her at all, only think of Alice in late November. It’s a shame really because her story is way cooler than, say, Lola’s or Gloria’s or Maggie May’s. Most of the girls you hear about on the radio will break your heart, but Alice isn’t like that. She’s more down to earth, has a better sense of humor. Alice is, on the surface, a humble cook, yet if you take eighteen minutes or so to listen to her tale you’ll discover that she’s a revolutionary. Anyway, I can’t imagine spending Thanksgiving Day without her.
Fifty years ago Arlo Guthrie released his first album, Alice’s Restaurant. It revealed a knack for storytelling, apparently gifted to him by his dad, Woody, and a song called “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” – an unlikely spoken monologue tune with a fingerpicking guitar part that has taken on a life of its own, and frankly, is pretty much the best thing about Thanksgiving.
“Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” (massacree is an old American term for something so wild and absurd that it’s unbelievable) was first sung by Guthrie in the summer of 1967 at the Newport Folk Festival, and the recorded album version of the song is also a live performance. At eighteen minutes and thirty-four seconds, the song takes up one entire side on the LP. The performance is a wonder, funny, nuanced, satirical. There are 2,636 words and every time I hear it I’m amazed at how he tells the story, how he remembers the details, how his tiny inflections and phrasing cast a spell. He recites these words in a style that can never be duplicated, all the while fingerpicking a little ditty inspired, he says, by roots players such as Mississippi John Hurt. Masterful.
The event that inspired the song really happened, in 1965 in Massachusetts where Guthrie went to visit a real gal named Alice around Thanksgiving. He offered to dump the trash for Alice but finding the dump closed, it being a holiday and all, Guthrie dumped the trash onto a bigger pile of trash that was nearby. He got arrested for littering and, well, the rest of the magical details are in the song. Many people today consider “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” to be a protest song, an anti-war song. Guthrie always considered it “a song about stupidity.”
The album ended up reaching #17 on the Billboard charts. Guthrie got his first harmonica lesson from Bob Dylan. Dylan, of course, idolized Woody Guthrie and one day he came to the house looking for Woody and ended up teaching Arlo a thing or two about the harp. Arlo only had one song as popular as “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” a song called “The City of New Orleans” (#4 on the Billboard charts). Someone brought the song to him while he was sitting in a bar in the early 1970s. When he asked Guthrie if he could play him the tune, Arlo said only if you buy me a beer and when the beer’s gone that song better be over. It’s a great song, a great song to enjoy with a beer.
Hardly anyone knows that Thanksgiving has a theme song, but now you know, it’s called “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” It’s a groovy, brilliant piece of Americana and I hope tomorrow you’ll be able to listen to it. I’m thankful that our nation is built upon thoughts and ideas that have always been communicated through the American song.