Arlo Guthrie Anniversary Tour makes stop at NDSU
By the time Arlo Guthrie hit pop charts in 1969 with “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” he had been playing the song on the East Coast for years.
Now, more than 40 years after he wrote the song, he’s still drawing crowds with it.
Guthrie will perform at NDSU as part of the song’s 40th anniversary tour.
Guthrie, 58, has played music almost from the time he was born. He is the oldest son of Woody Guthrie, a music legend who wrote hundreds of folk songs, including “This Land is Your Land.” As a child, Arlo learned to play many instruments, including the piano, harmonica and guitar.
Like his father, Guthrie uses his music not only to entertain audiences, but also to spread his message of “freedom, peace, justice — the usual stuff” across the country.
On Thanksgiving 1965, Guthrie began writing “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” an 18-minute song and one of the most famous folk-rock songs of the ’60s.
On the surface, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” is a humorous story about a Thanksgiving gone awry. But his songs are seldom without a message.
As the story goes, Guthrie gets drafted in the army only to find he won’t be allowed in because he had been arrested once for littering. The scenario was an attack on the Vietnam War, which was occurring when the song was written.
In 1967, Guthrie released the album “Alice’s Restaurant.” The title track was so long that it took up the entire first side of the original LP, and was longer than the other six songs combined. Although “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” was too lengthy for radio, the album still managed to make it to No. 17 on the pop charts.
Guthrie’s popularity grew after the release of the album, and in 1969 he was invited to play at Woodstock. That same year, “Alice’s Restaurant” was made into a film starring Guthrie himself.
Over the years, Guthrie changed some of the lyrics and added new jokes to “Massacree” in order to fit his audiences. To celebrate the songs’ 30th anniversary, Guthrie rerecorded the entire album in 1997.
Guthrie will perform “Massacree” alongside some of his more well-known songs, including “City of New Orleans,” “The Motorcycle Song” and “Coming into Los Angeles,” a controversial song that was banned from radio stations in 1969.
Joining Guthrie on his tour are his son Abe, who has played keyboards with him for the past 15 years, and musician Gordon Titcomb, a multi-instrumentalist who plays pedal steel, mandolin and banjo.
Tickets for the show are $15 for students and $30 for adults and can be bought through the NDSU Division of Fine Arts or Ticketmaster.