“`html
“Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”: How an Anti-War Song Became a Thanksgiving Tradition
Despite a wealth of Christmas music dominating the airwaves each year, dedicated Thanksgiving songs are remarkably rare. In fact, for many, only one piece of music truly embodies the holiday spirit – and it’s not traditionally about Thanksgiving at all. Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” inspired by a real-life incident on Thanksgiving Day in 1965, has become a beloved, if unconventional, tradition since its release in 1967.
The nearly 19-minute-long song,a rambling and humorous account of Guthrie’s arrest for littering – an event that ultimately exempted him from the Vietnam war draft – is fundamentally an anti-war anthem,not a party of turkey and stuffing. So how did this unlikely tune become a Thanksgiving staple?
The song’s initial breakthrough came in February 1967 with a live radio debut on New York City’s WBAI-FM. As one performer recalled, “I’d been a big fan of WBAI. I’d been to their studios a few times and one night they asked me to perform live. I had no idea they were taping it, although it wouldn’t have stopped me from performing. I loved those guys.”
By spring, demand for “Alice’s Restaurant” surged, and WBAI cleverly used the song to bolster fundraising efforts. “WBAI…would play it after they’d been pledged enough money,” Guthrie explained, adding, “Eventually they were playing it so frequently enough, they took pledges to stop playing it, and…raised even more money.”
The song’s popularity further exploded at the Newport Folk Festival later that year. An enthusiastic afternoon performance led to a second evening set, this time featuring a remarkable lineup of renowned folk musicians. “It would take a few paragraphs just to name all the artists who ended up playing with me,” Guthrie noted, “But I was simply amazed that so many of my heroes were willing to participate. I learned later, from Oscar Brand and Pete Seeger that they were worried that I was so young and inexperienced that performing for such a large crowd coudl’ve become a bad situation. So, they wanted to show some support by sending out the performers who were willing to sing with me. I was thrilled.”
Over the decades, repeated radio broadcasts and Guthrie’s annual Thanksgiving concerts at New York City’s Carnegie Hall have continued to introduce “Alice’s restaurant” to new generations. In 2017, the song’s cultural importance was formally recognized with its inclusion in the National Library of Congress, lauded for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Tragically, the woman who inspired the song’s title, restaurant owner Alice Brock, passed away on November 21st, 2024, at the age of 83, just days before Thanksgiving. Guthrie shared on facebook, as reported by Far out, “This coming Thanksgiving will be the first without her. Alice and I spoke by phone a couple of weeks ago, and she sounded like her old self. We joked around and had a couple of good laughs even though we knew we’d never have another chance to talk together.”
while Brock will be deeply missed by her loved ones, her legacy will endure through the enduring power of what remains
