History Music / AlicesRestaurant

A 1969 film, also called ''Film/AlicesRestaurant'', was based on the song. Not to be confused with 1969's "Alice's Rock & Roll Restaurant", which is basically "The Alice's Restaurant Massacree" without the talking-blues about the garbage, arrest, etc. It's also not ''Film/AliceDoesntLiveHereAnymore'' which had a {{Spinoff}} ''Series/{{Alice|1976}}'' -- though the title character works in a restaurant.

* BasedOnATrueStory: The events of "Alice's Restaurant" actually happened, and there's even [[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/5db9acd2159d3b6d37f8ab81/1575400527054-LGYLL4GRXD6US4ZY5QGR/image20.jpg?content-type=image%2Fjpegg evidence to prove it]]. Although on the song, Arlo is exaggerating a few details to [[PlayedForLaughs make it more funny.]]

** Arlo mentions that the town that the littering took place in had multiple police cars and officers show up, along with bomb-sniffing dogs and aerial photography. As Arlo puts it, the littering was "the biggest crime of the last fifty years" in the small town where it happened, hence why it was treated as such a big deal.

** In-story as well, seeing how much effort the police put into twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, only to see the judge and their seeing-eye dog.

* DangerousClifftopRoad: "The Motorcycle Song", which explains the bizarre circumstances of a motorcycle accident, begins like this:
-->''This song is about the time that I was ridin' my motorcycle.\\
Going down a mountain road, at 150 miles an hour, playin'\\
My guitar. On one side of the mountain road there was a\\
Mountain, and on the other side there was nothin' - there was\\
A cliff in the air.''

* AluminumChristmasTrees: The court hearing is two days after Thanksgiving -- which was a Saturday, when most courts do not hold session. However, the [[http://www.captainfatherjohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/image20.jpg contemporary news report]] in the Berkshire Eagle newspaper states that they were indeed in court on the Saturday.

* {{Motormouth}}: The DrillSergeantNasty who hands out the forms on the Group W bench and "talked for forty-five minutes, but nobody understood a word he said."

The song is talking-blues-style with a sung refrain[[note]]The refrain, confusingly, is introduced with the words, "This song is called Alice's Restaurant"...[[/note]]. It's a recounting of a [[EpicRocking long-winded]] and exaggerated but [[BasedOnATrueStory basically true story]] of a young Arlo's experience one Thanksgiving. Arlo tried to do [[ASimplePlan a simple favor]] for his friend Alice by taking her garbage to the dump, but since it was Thanksgiving Day, the dump was closed. He threw the garbage over a cliff instead after finding another pile of garbage had already been thrown down, only to be arrested and fined for littering by the trigger-happy policeman Officer Obie in the small town where it happened. Later in life, Arlo ended up being judged "morally unfit" to fight in the Vietnam War because of this littering charge. Arlo points out the absurdity that a person with a conviction for a relatively harmless crime is considered morally unfit to "burn women, kids, houses and villages", and ends it with an anti-war message. Or maybe a "pro-common-sense" message.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: The court hearing is two days after Thanksgiving -- which is to say, ''Saturday'', when most courts do not hold session. However, the [[http://www.captainfatherjohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/image20.jpg contemporary news report]] in the ''Berkshire Eagle'' states that they were indeed in court on the Saturday.
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: Or in this case, mother-raping, father-stabbing, father-raping... and littering.
** ...and creatin' a nuisance.

** The "twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us."

* SocietyMarchesOn: Lampshaded in more recent performances.
-->''Imagine one person, I mean even today, walking in singing some "Alice's Restaurant", walkin' out... They're gonna say "That guy's 30 years too late, get him out of here!" Imagine two of 'em walking in [[HoYay hand in hand, singing in harmony]]? I don't care what the president says, unfortunately, to a lot of people that's still a problem. So you can imagine 50 people a day walking in, singing some "Alice's Restaurant", walking out... Friends, they might think it's a movement! And most of 'em will be too young to know what a movement WAS!''

* TakeAThirdOption: Lampshaded. Officer Obie does this when Arlo and his friend show up at the police station on their littering charge. Arlo expects that Obie will either give them a medal for being honest about the crime (not likely), or bail them out with a warning and tell them to never drive garbage nearby again (which is what Arlo expected to happen). Instead, "there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon:" they got arrested.

A cliff in the air.

* DangerousMountaintopRoad: "The Motorcycle Song", which explains the bizarre circumstances of a motorcycle accident, begins like this:

--> ''I went over to the sergeant and said, "Sergeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean...I mean...I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sitting here on the Group W bench, 'cause you wanna know if I'm moral enough to join the army and burn women, kids, houses and villages after being a litterbug.''

* JaywalkingWillRuinYourLife: Subverted. In this case, it quite possibly saved Arlo's life, since his littering conviction got him out of serving in the Vietnam War.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Arlo mentions that the town that the littering took place in had multiple police cars and officers show up, along with bomb-sniffing dogs and aerial photography. As Arlo puts it, the littering was "the biggest crime of the last fifty years" in the small town where it happened, hence why it was treated as such a big deal.

* SelfDepreciation: Despite being an anti-war song, Arlo pokes fun at the idea of a song ending a war in the recorded version:

''Just want to ride on my motorcycle''

* AudienceParticipationFailure: On the recorded version, Guthrie's first attempt to get the audience to sing the chorus is too quiet. He even remarks "that was horrible."

* BasedOnATrueStory: The events of "Alice's Restaurant" actually happened, and there's even [[http://www.captainfatherjohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/image20.jpg evidence to prove it]]. Although on the song, Arlo is exaggerating a few details to [[PlayedForLaughs make it more funny.]]

* BasedOnATrueStory: The events of "Alice's Restaurant" actually happened, and there's even [[http://www.captainfatherjohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/image20.jpg evidence to prove it]]. Although on the song, Arlo is clearly making a few scenes more exaggerated to [[PlayedForLaughs make it more funny.]]

* ASimplePlan: All Arlo and his friend were planning to do was take a bunch of garbage to a dump. It ended up getting the two of them arrested, as well as getting Arlo out of the Vietnam War.

* MyCountryTisOfTheeThatISting: The title track is a fierce critique of the Vietnam War, and of overly-nitpicky police and military bureaucracy. Not only does Arlo get himself arrested and temporarily thrown in jail for [[PokeThePoodle a relatively harmless crime]], but it also gets him lumped in with "mother-rapers, father-stabbers, and father-rapers" at a draft office for being a litterbug. Throughout the song, Arlo is repeatedly incredulous at all of the red tape he has to deal because he littered.

* NoNameGiven: Arlo had a friend go along with him on the garbage trip, who was also visiting Alice. Arlo's friend ended up going through all of the same thing that he did, but this person (whomever they are) never gets named.

There is a long-standing tradition of radio stations playing the song on UsefulNotes/ThanksgivingDay, because the littering incident takes place on that holiday (and, originally, because the song is so long that it gave the DJ on duty time to slip off and gobble down some food).

The song is talking-blues-style with a sung refrain[[note]]The refrain, confusingly, is introduced with the words, "This song is called Alice's Restaurant"...[[/note]]. It's a recounting of a [[EpicRocking long-winded]] and exaggerated but [[BasedOnATrueStory basically true story]] of a young Arlo's experience one Thanksgiving. Arlo tried to do [[ASimplePlan a simple favor]] for his friend Alice by taking her garbage to the dump, but since it was Thanksgiving Day, the dump was closed. He threw the garbage over a cliff instead, only to be arrested and fined for littering by a trigger happy police officer in the small town where it happened. Later in life, Arlo ended up being judged "morally unfit" to fight in the Vietnam War because of this littering charge. Arlo points out the absurdity that a person with a conviction for a relatively harmless crime is considered morally unfit to "burn women, kids, houses and villages", and ends it with an anti-war message. Or maybe a "pro-common-sense" message.

** The entire title track is one. Arlo starts out telling an amusing, but seemingly pointless, tale about getting arrested for littering before moving on to talk about his draft experience. And when Arlo finally meets the "last man" at his draft induction, he's told they have one final question: "Have you ever been arrested?" Which requires Arlo to go ''back to the very beginning'' and start the whole story all over again.

* BuffySpeak: The "cop equipment" at the "police officer's station".

--> ''Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again, which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's station there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said "Obie, I don't think I can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on."''
* ConfessToALesserCrime:

* DraftDodging: Not actually what Guthrie does in the song, but the only reason he's telling this story is so that you'll know how to dodge the draft.
* EpicRocking: The title track takes up 18 minutes and 20 seconds. Updated versions are sometimes even longer than that.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: When Arlo describes being sent to the Group W bench (for those who possibly "may not be moral enough to join the Army") full of "mother-rapers, father-stabbers, and father-rapers", one of them ask him why he's there. When they hear his response "littering", they all move away from him on the bench. But he regained their respect by adding "And creating a nuisance".

* InsaneTrollLogic: Obie takes Arlo's wallet so he doesn't have any money to spend in jail, but also takes his belt because he doesn't want any hangings. Arlo even says, "Obie, did you think I was gonna hang myself for littering?" TruthInTelevision - it's routine for the police to remove belts and shoelaces when someone is detained, no matter what they were arrested for. Of course, it's then exaggerated for comedy when Arlo says Obie also took out the toilet seat so Arlo couldn't hit himself over the head with it and drown in the toilet.

* SpringtimeForHitler: Arlo rants about how he wants to "Kill. Kill! KILL!" in front of the draft board psychologist, hoping they'll find him too unstable to enlist. All that does is make the sergeant like Arlo even more, sending him down the hall saying "You're our boy!"

* BasedOnATrueStory: Guthrie claimed the events actually happened, though he is clearly making a few scenes more exaggarated to [[PlayedForLaughs play it for laughs.]]

The song is talking-blues-style with a sung refrain[[note]]The refrain, confusingly, is introduced with the words, "This song is called Alice's Restaurant"...[[/note]]. It's a recounting of a [[EpicRocking long-winded]] and exaggerated but [[BasedOnATrueStory basically true story]] of a young Arlo Guthrie's experience one Thanksgiving Day. Arlo tried to do [[ASimplePlan a simple favor]] for his friend Alice by taking her garbage to the dump, but since it was Thanksgiving Day, the dump was closed. He threw the garbage over a cliff instead, only to be arrested and fined for littering, and later being judged "morally unfit" to be shipped off to fight in the Vietnam War because of it. Arlo points out the absurdity that a person with a littering conviction is considered morally unfit to go to war and "burn women, kids, houses and villages", and ends it with an anti-war message (or is it an "anti-stupidity" message?).

** After Arlo is arrested for littering, "it was about four or five hours later that Alice -- Remember Alice? This is a song about Alice. -- Alice came by."

* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Arlo starts out trying to help a neighbor haul away her garbage and winds up arrested for littering, taken to court, and fined fifty dollars. (Well, $25 for him and $25 for the friend arrested with him.)
** Subverted in that it got him ultimately rewarded with an opportunity not to go to 'Nam to kill people.

** Any character in the story who speaks directly to Arlo addresses him as "Kid." Even the form that the occupants of the Group W bench have to fill out.

--> ''And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things''

* BreadEggsBreadedEggs: Mother Rapers, Father Stabbers... ''Father Rapers''.
* BrickJoke: Arlo starts out telling an amusing, but seemingly pointless, tale about getting arrested for littering before moving on to talk about his draft experience. And when he finally meets the "last man" at his draft induction, he's told they have one final question: "Have you ever been arrested?" Which requires him to go ''back to the very beginning ...''
** Remember Alice?
* BookEnds: The refrain.

* ComicallyMissingThePoint: "Alice's Restaurant"
--> ''Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again, which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's station there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said "Obie, I don't think I can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on." He said, "Shut up, kid. Get in the back of the patrol car."''

* InsaneTrollLogic: Obie takes Arlo's wallet so he doesn't have any money to spend in jail, but also takes his belt because he doesn't want any hangings. Arlo even says, "Obie, did you think I was gonna hang myself for littering?" TruthInTelevision - it's routine for the police to remove belts and shoelaces when someone is detained, no matter what they were arrested for. Of course, it's then exaggerated for comedy when Arlo insists Obie also took out the toilet seat so Arlo couldn't hit himself over the head and drown.

* MeddlesomePatrolman: Officer Obie.

* MyCountryTisOfTheeThatISting: The title track is a fierce critique of the Vietnam War, and of overly-nitpicky police and military bureaucracy. Not only does Arlo get himself arrested and temporarily thrown in jail for [[PokeThePoodle a relatively harmless crime]], but it also gets him lumped in with "mother-rapers, father-stabbers, and father-rapers" at a draft office for being a litterbug. Throughout the song, a young Arlo is repeatedly incredulous at all of the red tape he has to deal with over it.
* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Arlo starts out trying to help a neighbor haul away her garbage and winds up arrested for littering, taken to court, and fined $50. (Well, $25 for him and $25 for the friend arrested with him.)

* SkewedPriorities: Arlo points out how the army has "a lot of damn gall" to question if he's morally fit to go to the Vietnam War because of a minor littering charge. When he points this out to the sergeant, the sergeant rejects Arlo for draft service.

* SpringtimeForHitler: Arlo rants about how he wants to "Kill. Kill! KILL!" in front of the draft board, hoping they'll find him too unstable to enlist. All that does is make the sergeant like Arlo even more, sending him down the hall saying "You're our boy!"
* TakeAThirdOption: Lampshaded. Officer Obie does this when Arlo and his friend show up at the police station on their littering charge. Arlo expects that Obie will either give them a medal for being honest about the crime (not likely), or bail them out with a warning and tell them to never drive garbage nearby again (which is what Arlo expected to happen). Instead, "there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon:" they got arrested for littering.

** In-story as well, seeing how much effort the police put into twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, only to see the judge [[spoiler:and their seeing-eye dog]].