Arlo Guthrie

Arlo Davy Guthrie is a retired American folk singer-songwriter. He is known for singing songs of protest against social injustice, and storytelling while performing songs, following the tradition of his father Woody Guthrie. Guthrie’s best-known work is his debut piece, ‘Alice’s Restaurant Massacree’, a satirical talking blues song.

About Arlo Guthrie in brief

Summary Arlo GuthrieArlo Davy Guthrie is a retired American folk singer-songwriter. He is known for singing songs of protest against social injustice, and storytelling while performing songs, following the tradition of his father Woody Guthrie. Guthrie’s best-known work is his debut piece, \”Alice’s Restaurant Massacree\”, a satirical talking blues song about 18 minutes in length that has since become a Thanksgiving anthem. His only top-40 hit was a cover of Steve Goodman’s \”City of New Orleans\”. His song \”Massachusetts\” was named the official folk song of the state in which he has lived most of his adult life. He converted to Catholicism in 1977, before embracing interfaith beliefs later in his life. In 1997, Guthrie pointed out that this was also the exact length of one of the infamous gaps in Richard Nixon’s Watergate tapes, and that Nixon owned a copy of the record. He was awarded the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience award on September 26, 1992. He has also made several acting appearances. He is the father of four children, who have also had careers as musicians. Arlo’s father was from a Protestant family and his mother was Jewish. His maternal grandmother was Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt. He attended Woodward School in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, from first through eighth grades and later graduated from the Stockbridge School, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1965. He spent the summer of 1965 in London, eventually meeting Karl Dallas, who connected Guthrie with London’s folk rock scene and became a lifelong friend of his.

He briefly attended Rocky Mountain College, in Billings, Montana. He received an honorary doctorate from Siena College in 1981 and from Westfield State College in 2008. As a singer, songwriter and lifelong political activist,. Guthrie carries on the legacy of his dad. The song lampoons the Vietnam War draft. In the song, Arlo is called up for a draft and rejected as unfit for military service as a result of a examination of his criminal record. The Alice in the song is Alice Brock, who had been a librarian at Arlo’s boarding school in the town before opening her restaurant, She later opened an art studio in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Two older sisters died of Huntington’s disease, an older brother died in a train accident and a third sister died in childhood. His sister is the record producer Nora Guthrie, his mother is a professional dancer with the Martha Graham Company and founder of what is now the Huntington’s Disease Society of America. Guthrie has stated in multiple interviews that the song was more an \”anti-stupidity\” song than an anti-war song, adding that it is based on a true incident. He also has stated that the events of the song all happened in the event of 1969, but generally the truth of the overall story is implied at certain points in the story, only when she bails a friend out of jail.