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Alice's Restaurant
Arlo Guthrie
Alice's Restaurant Lyrics
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
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back, just a half a mile from the
railroad track
An' you can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
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, but 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. And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a
lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be. An' 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.
So we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW
microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and
headed on toward the city dump
Well, we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across
the dump saying, "Closed on Thanksgiving." And we had never heard of a
dump closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove
off into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage
We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of
the side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of
the cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one
big pile is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that
one up we decided to throw ours down
That's what we did, and drove back to the church, had 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 ab' 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."
After speaking to Obie for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone
we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said, that we had to
go down and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to
him at the police officer's station. So we got in the red VW microbus
with the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on
toward 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 coulda 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 coulda 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."
And that's what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to
the quote Scene of the Crime unquote. 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. And they was using up
all kinds of
Cop equipment that they had hangin' around the police officer's
station. They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling
prints, and they took twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy
photographs 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.
Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the
southwest corner and that's not to mention the aerial photography
After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was going to
put us in the cell. Said, "Kid, I'm going to put you in the cell, I
want your wallet and your belt." And I said, "Obie, I can understand
you wanting my wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell,
but what do you want my belt for?" And he said, "Kid, we don't want any
hangings." I said, "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for
litterin'?"
Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause
he took out the toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and
drown, and he took out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars
roll out the - roll the toilet paper out the window, slide down the
roll and have an escape. Obie was making sure, and it was about four or
five hours later that Alice... Remember Alice? It's a song about
Alice... Alice came by and with a few nasty words to Obie on the side,
bailed us out of jail, and we went back to the church, had a another
thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, and didn't get up until the
next morning, when we all had to go to court
We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten
color 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 color 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 color 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 color 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, and the judge wasn't going to look at the twenty
seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with the circles and arrows
and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to
be used as evidence against us. And we was fined fifty dollars and had
to pick up the garbage in the snow, but that's not what I came to tell
you about
Came to talk about the draft
They got a building down in New York City, it's called Whitehall
Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected,
infected, neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical
examination one day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk
the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that
morning. 'Cause I wanted to look like the all-American kid from New
York City, man I wanted, I wanted to feel like the all-, I wanted to be
the all American kid from New York, and I walked in, sat down, I was
hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds o' mean nasty ugly
things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper,
said, "Kid, see the psychiatrist, room 604."
And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna,
I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore
and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill,
kill, kill, kill." And I started jumpin' up and down yelling, "Kill!
Kill!" and he started jumpin' up and down with me and we was both
jumping up and down yelling, "Kill! Kill!" And the Sargent came over,
pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."
Didn't feel too good about it
An' I proceeded on down the hall gettin' more injections, inspections,
detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they as doin' to me
at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four
hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean
nasty ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they
was inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving
no part untouched. Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the
see the last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big
thing there, and I walked up and said, "What do you want?" He said,
"Kid, we only got one question. Have you ever been arrested?"
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice's Restaurant
Massacre, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like
that and all the phenome... - and he stopped me right there and said,
"Kid, did you ever go to court?"
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten
color glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on
the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I
want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W, now kid!"
And I, I walked over to the, 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 committin' your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean
nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father
stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench
next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible
crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest,
ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming
over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind
of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I
said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage."
He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Litterin'."
And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy
eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating
a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great
time on the bench, talkin' about crime, mother stabbing, father raping,
all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And
everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things,
until the Sargent came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and
said
"Kids,
this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-know-
details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-
gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-of
ficer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for
forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we
had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench
there, and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and
wrote it down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I
put down the pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there,
there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from
everything else on the other side, in parentheses, capital letters,
quotated, read the following words:
("Kid, have you rehabilitated yourself?")
I went over to the Sargent, said, "Sargent, 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 sittin' here on the
Group W bench, 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the
army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug."
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're
gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington."
And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder,
is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason
I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a
similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in
a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk
into the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get
anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think
it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I
said fifty people a day walking in singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant
and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement
And that's what it is, the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacree Movement,
and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around
on the guitar With feeling. So we'll wait for it to come around on the
guitar, here
and sing it when it does. Here it comes
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back, just a half a mile from the
railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
That was horrible. If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing
loud. I've been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could
sing it for another twenty five minutes. I'm not proud... or tired
So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part
harmony and feeling
We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing
All right now
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant (Excepting Alice)
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
(I said) Walk right in it's around the back, just a half a mile from
the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Da-da da-da da-da da-dum
At Alice's Restaurant
