Being the son of one of the most revered folk singers in the United States hasn't always been easy for Arlo Guthrie. It's not every child who has to come home from school and ask his dad to teach him the lyrics to a song he wrote because everybody else in his class knows the words to "This Land Is Your Land". It sounded funny at the time, hearing Arlo recount that story during a documentary television special about his famous father, Woody Guthrie. Some people never overcome the shadows cast on their lives by the deeds of their parents, and an incident like the one described above could have been a disaster. However, in this case it didn't take long for the son to establish himself as a singer and songwriter in his own right.
It was in 1966 that he wrote the song that would make him famous the world over, "Alice's Restaurant", and later released an album and starred in a movie of the same name. For those of you who somehow might have missed hearing about it, the song recounts - in detail - the story of how Arlo and some friends of his were arrested for littering on Thanksgiving Day and his subsequent visit to the draft board and how his criminal record from the incident impacted on that visit. Of course "Alice's Restaurant" was only one song in Arlo's arsenal, and by 1969 songs like "Coming Into Los Angeles" and "The Motorcycle Song" had further cemented his reputation by the time he appeared at the Woodstock Music Festival in Bethel, New York in 1969.
Now that big concert in 1969 wasn't the only gig Arlo had that year, and the folk at Rising Son Records, the label Arlo put together for his family and friends, have uncovered some old tapes in the basement from another concert he gave just before he went down to Woodstock. They've done all the usual magical stuff that can be done with digital re-mastering, and the result is Tales Of '69 which is scheduled for an August 18 release, pretty much forty years to the day that Arlo would have been saying "New York State Freeway is closed, man" before singing "Coming Into Los Angeles" for 500,000 people.
As anybody who has ever seen Arlo in concert knows, half the fun is the stories he uses to introduce the songs. So aside from the fact that three tracks on this disc are songs that have never been released before, if you were wondering about the attraction of buying a 40-year-old collection of live songs, it's for the way Arlo performs them and introduces them. Sure we've all heard "Coming Into Los Angles", his cautionary tale of trying to bring controlled substances through LAX, but you've never heard it introduced with Arlo giving the audience real estate advice in advance of the quake that's supposed to move the West Coast further east. Suffice to say he's talking about buying beach front property somewhere in the midwest.
Article comments
1 - Cody Conard
sweet review, I was just thinking about him lately, with Woodstock coming up and everything.
2 - Richard Marcus
Funny thing is this disc is slated for release exactly forty days to the day when he performed at Woodstock - 18th of August.
3 - Bliffle
I used to sit around listening to "Alices restaurant" with my kids at Thanksgiving. It was a big favorite of theirs. Another favorite was Hoyt Axton: "work your fingers to the bone and whatdya get...bony fingers, bony fingers". Now they're much too mature and adult for such nonsense. Maybe I should try "Dead skunk in the middle of the road".
4 - Cindy
Great review Richard. I think I'll get it. I loved Alice's Restaurant. My uncle used to play it and sing it for us. It would be interesting to hear another version.