Alice's Restaurant: History and Key Facts

"Alice's Restaurant Massacree", commonly known as "Alice's Restaurant", is a satirical talking blues song by singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie. Released as the title track to his 1967 debut album Alice's Restaurant, the song is a deadpan protest against the Vietnam War draft in the form of a comically exaggerated but largely true story from Guthrie's own life. While visiting acquaintances in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, he was arrested and convicted of dumping trash illegally, which later endangered his suitability for the military draft. The title refers to a restaurant owned by one of Guthrie's friends, the artist Alice Brock. Although Brock is a minor character in the story, the restaurant plays no role in it aside from being the subject of the chorus and the impetus for Guthrie's visit.

The song inspired the 1969 film Alice's Restaurant, which starred Guthrie and took numerous liberties with the story. The work has become Guthrie's signature song and he has periodically re-released it with updated lyrics. In 2017, it was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Alice's Restaurant by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.