The son of Woody Guthrie, also a folk-song legend, grew up surrounded by folksingers and songwriters -- Pete Seeger, Lee Hays from The Weavers, Ramblin Jack, and Leadbelly, to name a few.
Guthrie is best known, of course, for his “Alice’s Restaurant Masacree,” the 1967 hit that inspired a 1969 movie by the same name. The song, lasting a full 18 ½ minutes, recounts a true, albeit a little exaggerated, story in Great Barrington Massachusetts.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1965, the 18-year-old Guthrie and his friend Richard Robbins, 19, were arrested by Stockbridge police officer William "Obie" Obanhein for illegally dumping some of Alice's garbage after discovering that the town dump was closed for the holiday. Two days later they pled guilty in court, were fined $50, and told to pick up their garbage.
The song goes on to describe Guthrie's being called up for the draft, at the New York City induction center on Whitehall Street. Because he had a criminal record for littering, he is sent to the “Group W Bench,” in the company of thieves, rapists, and assorted other felons. "I'm sittin' here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough to join the Army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug,” he says in the song.
He encourages his listeners to sing along, to resist the draft, and to end the war.
Guthrie first performed the song publicly in a live broadcast over New York radio station WBAI 99.5 FM one evening in 1967. It is now regularly played on Thanksgiving by many classic rock radio stations
He revised and updated "Alice's Restaurant" years later to protest President Ronald Reagan’s policies, but this second version has not been released on a commercial recording. He sang a third version during the Bush Administration that was recorded and released by the Kerrville Folk Festival.
Guthrie said he learned that Richard Nixon had owned a copy of the song, and he jokingly suggested that this explained the famous 18½ minute gap in the Watergate tapes.
"A lot of people think Alice’s Restaurant was an anti- war song,” Guthrie once told the New York Times. “It’s not. It is an anti-idiot song.”
