"Alice's Restaurant" - Story of a Song Quiz

Answer: Woodrow Wilson

Arlo Guthrie was a son of Woody Guthrie, the "dust bowl balladeer". Woody was one of the most influential songwriters of his generation and inspired scores of admirers to pick up their guitars.

Woody was born in Oklahoma in July 1912 and was named after Woodrow Wilson who was at the time the Democratic Party's Presidential candidate

Arlo was born in New York City, the son of Woody and his second wife Marjorie Greenblatt. Woody died of Huntington's Disease in 1967. Arlo graduated from the Stockbridge School, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

"Alice's Restaurant Massacree" was one of Arlo's earliest songs and it was based on fact.
In succeeding years, Guthrie built up a successful recording and performing career, often working with his father's good friend and collaborator, Pete Seeger.

Answer: In an old church

As Arlo Guthrie explained in the lyrics: "Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog."

Alice Brock and her husband, Ray, ran the "Back Room Rest", which, as Arlo pointed out, was half a mile from the railroad tracks.

Answer: Thanksgiving

"Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on
Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the
restaurant," explained Arlo in the lyrics.

The events happened in 1965. At that time Guthrie was 18 and, like many other young Americans, was subject to the Draft. It was his claim that an arrest for littering and making a public nuisance was enough for the Army to deem him unfit for active service.

Answer: Take the garbage to a dump

"And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin' all that room, seein' as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn't have to take out their garbage for a long time. We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it'd be a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump."

Coming in at some 18 minutes and 34 seconds, "Alice's Restaurant" was a long song, one of many lengthy works Guthrie wrote.

Its anti-draft message struck a chord in America at the time, and the song received a lot of radio airplay.

Answer: Stockbridge, Massachusetts

The events happened in the adjoining towns of Great Barrington (where the restaurant was located), Lee, and Stockbridge, although the crime and trial elements focussed on Stockbridge.

"I want tell you about the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where this happened here, they got three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars, being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it."

The three wrong answers all also feature in songs: Portland in Jackson Browne's "Nothing But Time"; Boise in Harry Chapin's "W*O*L*D" and Jackson in Johnny and June Carter Cash's "Jackson".

Answer: William J. Obanhein

"...a thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from Officer Obie. He said, "Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And I said, "Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage."

William J. Obanhein, October 19th 1924 to September 11th 1994. was chief of police at Stockbridge for 32 years. He played himself in the 1969 movie version of "Alice Restaurant", in which Arlo Guthrie played himself. They became great friends in succeeding years.

The three wrong answers were all fictional sheriffs.

Answer: The judge was blind

"We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten
colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back
of each one, sat down. Man came in said, "All rise." We all stood up,
and Obie stood up with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy
pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he
sat down, we sat down.

"Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the
twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows
and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog.
And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry,
'cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American
blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it..."

Guthrie was fined $50 and had to pick up all the garbage he and his friend had dumped off the side of the road.

Answer: Littering

Guthrie recounted that when called to the Draft Board he was asked if he had ever been to court and was directed to sit with other miscreants in Group W.

"I walked over to the bench there, and there is Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly looking people on the bench there....And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one...said "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench..."

Answer: Whitehall Street

"They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected". (To borrow a comment from Arlo himself, the song was worth it for that lyric alone).

Situated at 39 Whitehall Street, NYC, the building was used by the US Army from about 1886. After Pearl Harbor, thousands of volunteers flocked to the building to join the Army, a stark contrast to the many who went there under protest in the 1960s, when it became a focus for the anti-war movement to vent their spleen.

Of the nine million men and women who served in the US Forces in Vietnam, 25 per cent were draftees.

Answer: Alice

Much of the song is spoken by Arlo Guthrie, with the verse sung a few times. Towards the end he often sings "You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant -
Excepting Alice...."

As Arlo Guthrie explained at the very start of the song: "This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the restaurant, but Alice's restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song Alice's Restaurant."