Arlo Guthrie – Alice’s Restaurant

Arlo Guthrie is an American folk singer-songwriter, known for singing songs of protest against social injustice, and storytelling while performing songs, following the tradition of his father Woody Guthrie. Guthrie’s best-known work is his debut piece, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”, a satirical talking blues song about 18 minutes in length that has since become a Thanksgiving anthem. Guthrie pointed out that these 18 minutes were also the exact length of one of the infamous gaps in Richard Nixon’s Watergate tapes, and that Nixon owned a copy of the record. Alice’s Restaurant is his debut album, released in September 1967 by Reprise Records. The Alice in the song is Alice Brock, who had been a librarian at Arlo’s boarding school in the town before opening her restaurant. “Alice’s Restaurant” was heavily played on U.S. college and counterculture radio stations. It became a symbol of the late 1960s, and for many it defined an attitude and lifestyle that were lived out across the country in the ensuing years. Its leisurely finger-picking acoustic guitar and rambling lyrics were widely memorized and played by irreverent youth.

50th Anniversary Edition
180 gram Vinyl
Label: Reprise Records
Cat. # 081227937959