Arlo Guthrie

IN the late Sixties and early Seventies we took our tack, in a way, from the anti-war, pro-peace movement in the United States. There was also a strong correlation between the civil rights movement in the US and the anti-apartheid movement which would gain increasing momentum around the world in the face of a belligerent, racist regime in South Africa.

The SA Police, the SA Defence Force and the myriad short-haired, conservative, hypocritically Calvinistic white politicians in the National Party, were very much “the enemy” to those of us who subscribed to liberal, democratic principles, which ultimately encompassed an end to apartheid and one person, one vote in a non-racial democracy.

So we were very attuned to the messages emanating from the youth leadership in the US, where they faced their own demons in the Vietnam War. I can’t remember precisely when I first heard Alice’s Restaurant, Arlo Guthrie’s wonderfully satirical take on “the draft”, which we would face down the line in the form of national service, or military conscription. It was either in the late Sixties, during my last years of primary school, or in the early Seventies. I suspect Arlo’s Coming Into Los Angeles was our first encounter with his music. We almost certainly knew the song by the time he performed it at Woodstock in 1969. But it was the 18-minute Alice’s Restaurant which had us enthralled. I mean … I mean … sorry, I had to do that. But I do mean that the whole concept of a fresh-faced, long-haired young man, only around 20, sitting strumming a tune on his guitar while telling a long, entertaining story which ripped off the conservative establishment in the US with unabashed glee, and no shortage of very clever wit, was so original, and daring, we had to love it. And over the next few years we’d be bowled over by at least three other pieces in the same mould, each of them delightfully funny: The Motorcycle Song, The Pause Of Mr Claus and The Tale of Reuben Clamzo.

I mean – sorry, it’s that Arlo influence again – but I do mean, wasn’t it wonderful that someone so young could come along with a song concept, a sort of talking blues without feeling blue, in which like a stand-up comic, he regales his audience with material that must have been incredibly difficult to remember so well? Because everything depended on his delivery. In the wrong hands, the whole thing would have fallen flat. But Arlo had a personality, a youthful exuberance and uncanny sense of timing, which enabled him to turn even the odd slip-up in his favour. I’ll get onto these iconic pieces of Arlo’s output later, but have to note that these were, are, actually peripheral to the real Arlo genius. This may sound absurd, but I believe that as a musician, song-writer and singer, Arlo is up there alongside the greatest of the era. We had the early album, Arlo, which contains some of the most sublime folk music ever made. Sadly, I’ve not heard it for about 30 years, but I still hear it in my soul – just the mood of it, the feeling of peace those songs engendered in a young lad trying to make sense of the world. As the other albums flowed, we picked up on several of them, each a little gem, with Arlo, probably more than any other son of a great musician I can think of, more than fulfilling the potential which those musical genes promised.

Woody Guthrie was before my time. I only heard a few of his original recordings recently. I know he was a great influence on Bob Dylan, and no doubt on his son, Arlo. But we only really knew him through covers of some of his most famous songs, such as This Land Is Your Land. But I wonder if he ever had the sort of bubbly personality that Arlo has? Arlo could have become another serious folkie like Pete Seeger, surely one of the great legends of our time, and someone whose music I admire greatly and hope to get to in this project. But times had changed. Dylan had punched a hole in the folk music mythology by taking electric guitars to Newport. Arlo, happily, stuck with the acoustic folk sound, but made it fresh and accessible to a new generation – and his sense of humour and courage (remember this wasn’t long after McCarthy) made him a hero among those of us who enjoyed nothing more than seeing the conservative older generation brought down a peg or two.

So how did the son of a music legend, in my mind anyway, end up eclipsing his father, though this was hardly deliberate?

Wikipedia’s opening lines on the man are typically understated. We are told Arlo was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 10, 1947, and that he is “an American folk singer” and “the son of folk singer and composer Woody Guthrie”. He was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2007.

Indeed, the Wikipedia coverage of the man is shockingly terse, but hopefully it will be informative. Confirming my initial observations, Wikipedia says “his most famous work is Alice’s Restaurant, a talking blues song that lasts 18 minutes and 20 seconds (in its original recorded version; Guthrie has been known to spin the story out to 45 minutes in concert)”. They add that Guthrie “has pointed out that this was also the exact length of one of the most famous gaps in Richard Nixon’s Watergate tapes”. Ah, and we discover that the Alice in the song is Alice Brock, an art gallery owner in Provincetown.

Arlo, in the late 1960s, faced a demon similar to the one we faced: a powerful state bent on sending its young men to fight a war in a distant country. His response, Alice’s Restaurant, says Wikipedia, is a “bitingly satirical protest against the Vietnam War draft”, and is based on an actual incident affecting Arlo. “In the song, Guthrie was called up for a draft examination, and rejected as unfit for military service as a result of a criminal record consisting in its entirety of a single arrest, court appearance, fine and clean-up order for littering”. Would that I could have concocted such a way out of my nearly 20-year, on-off ordeal as a conscript. Wikipedia adds that “it has been asserted that in reality Guthrie, though a potential carrier of the genetically inherited Huntington’s disease, was classified as fit (1A), but his draft-lottery number did not come up.” However, it says Guthrie avers this is false, saying the “events as presented in the song are true to real-life occurrences”. He was not declared unfit due to any disease. 1A must be the origin for the term “A1 okay”, meaning you’re feeling good, fit, well. For us, in the SA military, being G1K1 meant the same thing: you were perfectly fit to do whatever it is they wanted you to do. In my self-published memoirs, mainly about being drafted, I observe it was even an offence to self-mutilate or in any way injure yourself while a conscript, as this meant doing damage to government property. The question I raise is: whose body is it anyway? A lot like slavery, as a conscript you are forced to place your body, your life, at the disposal of the state. Not a pleasant prospect. But back to Arlo.

Wikipedia says that “for a short period after its release in 1967, Alice’s Restaurant was in frequent rotation on nearly ever college and counter-culture-oriented radio station in the country – quite an accomplishment for an 18-minute long song (albeit in an era not averse to extended jams)”. It adds that the song “became a symbol of the late ’60s era and for many it defined an attitude and lifestyle which, in conjunction with or perhaps contradistinction to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and other icons of the ’60s, were lived out across the country in the ensuing years”.

I’d love to see the film, Alice’s Restaurant, directed and co-written by Arthur Penn, which is based on Arlo’s story and in which he acts. I did, however, see this precocious young talent “live” in the early seventies on the Woodstock movie. Having recently acquired the DVD, I was saddened to observe, however, that they made such a big thing of his arrival and discussion about how many people there were, along with copious footage of people smoking pot, that you only see a few seconds of him actually performing Coming Into Los Angeles. It is almost as bad a travesty as the footage which accompanies the Hendrix section of the movie. While you do see a fair amount of him actually playing, far too much time is devoted to the camera panning over the small section of crowd which hung in there to hear him, and the vast, littered wasteland that remained on Max Yasgur’s farm. I recall, in high school in the early 1970s, that Coming Into Los Angeles was one of those songs which one had to acquire the chords for in any self-respecting bid to play a few pieces on the guitar. I certainly got hold of them, but sadly lost a treasured book of songs in the turbulent mid-1980s. Wikipedia notes that this song was “a minor hit”, while Arlo “also made famous Steve Goodman’s song, City Of New Orleans”, in 1972. Fortuitously, I have a fragile audio tape, made from my brother Ian’s album in the same mid-1980s, which includes this wonderful “paean to long distance rail travel”, as Wikipedia puts it. They add that “curiously, Arlo’s first trip on that train was in December 2005”.

Also, says Wikipedia, he had “success with The Motorcycle Song”. This must be a serious understatement. While the song, another marathon talking-alongside-the-guitar number, would not have been released on a single, for obvious reasons, it became, for us, like Alice’s Restaurant, another iconic example of Arlo’s bizarre sense of humour. And, it seems, just as Arlo really started coming into his own, he was overtaken, in our experience, by other sounds. Because his 1976 album, Amigo, was given Rolling Stone magazine’s highest rating, “and for that reason alone may be his best-received work”. But I’m pretty sure I haven’t heard it. Wikipedia says that “unfortunately that milestone album is as rarely heard today as are Guthrie’s earlier Warner Brothers albums – although each boasts compelling folk music accompanied by top-notch musicians including Ry Cooder”.

I remember the sense of loss I felt when, in 1990, having just arrived in London for a two-year stint as a foreign correspondent for the SA Morning Group, I saw Arlo on television. He was in the UK for some concert, and there was this oldish oke with long, wavy and very grey hair. Ouch! Apparently he would be playing as a supporting act for a modern rave-of-the-day group which is probably long forgotten. What a sacrilege, I thought. Here was one of the legends of the era reduced to relying on the patronage of some or other group of youngsters. But it was his appearance which shocked me the most. He would have been in his forties, no longer the “kid” of those heady years in the late-Sixties when he represented, for us, the witty, youthful, peace-loving movement opposed to the senseless wars we saw our parents plunging us into.

I’ll get back to his music later, but let’s see what Wikipedia says about Arlo’s impact. It notes that “like his father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo often sings songs of protest against social injustice”. It notes that he regularly performed with “folk legend Pete Seeger – one of his father’s long-time partners whom he admires, follows and learns from in many ways, musically and intellectually”. In fact, that reminds me that at one stage we, I am sure, were into a live album featuring the two of them. It might crop up in the discography.

Interestingly, in 1991, says Wikipedia, Guthrie bought the very church that in the Sixties had served as Alice and Ray Brock’s home, at 4 Van Deusenville Road, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and was the venue for the Thanksgiving dinner immortalized in Alice’s Restaurant. This he converted into the Guthrie Centre, “an interfaith meeting place that serves people of all religions”.

And, given that Arlo stepped effortlessly into his father’s shoes, it is good to discover that his son, Abe, and daughters Sarah Lee and Cathy have also become musicians.

Alice’s Restaurant

There can, of course, be no better place to start looking at Arlo’s prolific output than his sensational debut album, Alice’s Restaurant, from 1967. I picked up the CD for just R50 a few years back, and fortunately it contains copious cover notes which make for some interesting reading. The author says that Alices’s Restaurant Massacree, first performed at the Newport Folk Festival, “is the most famous talking story-song in the annals of popular music. Funny, touching and true, the rambling saga of the wages of littering became a huge underground hit…” The notes tells how he grew up among musicians. “At age three he danced and played harmonica with bluesman Leadbelly, and three years later he was strumming an under-sized guitar”. By late 1965, he had become a “staple on the East Coast folk circuit, and two years later toured Japan with Judy Collins”. He became an “overnight sensation” after playing Alice’s Restaurant at Newport, and was given a recording contract soon afterwards.

A review of that Newport festival – apparently held in 1966 – from the New York Times, explains how he initially sang it to a handful of people at a workshop on topical songs on the Saturday afternoon. He then played it to an audience of 3 500, “whose ovation was so overwhelming that … (he was) immediately added for the evening concert”. That night, an audience of 9 500 heard him perform Alice’s Restaurant as “the climax to the concert and to the festival”. An all-star cast of more than 30 folk singers joined him onstage “shouting out the final choruses”. It had indeed become what he forecast in the song: a movement.

There is also a lovely essay by Harold Leventhal, who describes how his then “come-when-he-wants-to, in-residence, part-time (and sometimes part part-time) guitar-pickin’ office boy” had “bounced into my office and announced, “Kid – I’ve just decided to quit working for you and have you work for me. You’re going to be my manager”.

He recalled how, in 1956, “when Woody was confined to a hospital (where he still remains)”, he became a trustee of the Guthrie Children’s Trust Fund. He was a close friend of the family, and at Arlo’s “folk-style barmitzvah”, held when he was 13, “Arlo was ushered into manhood with songs, guitar-pickin’, square dancing, harmonica playing and ritual blessing”.

Leventhal writes, as I noted earlier, that the popularity of the song, Alice’s Restaurant, came at a price, “for it tended to obscure the many other facets of the creature that is called Arlo Guthrie”. And here he refers to the welter of other songs, many self-penned, which make up the bulk of Arlo’s output. Some of those songs are on the first album, but even more are on that classic second one, Arlo, which I’ve not heard these past three decades or so. Leventhal concludes by saying that on hearing these songs fans will “realise that Arlo’s days as an office-boy are well over. I know I’ll never hire him again”.

I’m no expert on hats, but they seemed to play a big part in Arlo’s persona. On the cover of this album he wears a black bowler, I assume, while sitting at a table, shirtless, with a white serviette attached to his chest. He is viewed between two tall candles, a knife and fork in each hand and a hint of a smile on his face. Inside is a black-and-white picture of him playing the guitar, that pixie-grin on his face, which is framed by a wide-brimmed hat and thick black hair.

The interesting thing about this album is that, while it was doing the rounds at the time – the cover is unforgettable – I don’t recall taking much note of the other songs on the album. We only had ears for the Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, which we heard so often we could repeat large tracts by heart. So it is great finally to listen dispassionately to an album which was overshadowed by the genius of that opening track, while of course also again lapping up that song itself, and trying to take oneself back to experience afresh the joy of hearing it when it was taking the world by storm.

Thanks to the miracle of the internet, I have been able to download all the words to the Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, the opening track on that debut album. But I’ve been unable, yet, to find out what “massacree” means. Even as I typed that, the spell corrector automatically whipped off that second e, which I had to retype. Anyway, having just again listened to the album, it must be said that while the Massacree is a piece of genius, as a singer and songwriter Arlo is still finding his feet on the rest of the album. But of course the genises of the Motorcycle Song is there, and there are also lovely ballads which demonstrate what a fine singing voice he has. I’ll get to those songs later, but let’s savour for a while that famous, immortal tale of Alice’s restaurant.

Arlo launches into it without any fanfare. It’s just him on the acoustic guitar playing a lovely, gentle melody, which he continually adapts and embellishes on. I’d be chuffed to be able to play just that simple piece of music, but to then speak over it, for nearly 20 minutes … that took genius. I’m keen to see if there were words I misheard, or missed altogether. So, after a few bars, Arlo starts speaking, matter-of-factly: “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.” It’s wonderfully zany logic, which prompts the first bit of laughter from an audience which, initially, you didn’t even know was there. Then he sings the chorus for the first time: “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.” Then the story begins …

“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 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.” Isn’t it a wonderful scenario?

“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.” Remember that all the time, Arlo’s guitar is pouring out this catchy tune.

“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.” It was all about Arlo’s delivery. As a cheeky youngster tilting at the authorities, we just loved him. He continues: “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 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.’ And so Arlo is set on a confrontational course with the authorities.

“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.” Arlo just drips irony as he tells his famous story.

“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.’ / And that’s what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the quote Scene of the Crime unquote.” He then sets the scene for this nefarious deed. “I want tell you about the town of Stockbridge, Massachusets, 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 hanging 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 colour 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.” This lengthy description of the photos is used relentlessly to stress just what an absurd prosecution this was. He continues: “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 littering?’ / 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 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.” By now, of course, Arlo has his listeners eating out of his hand. “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 the 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 realisation 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 colour 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 $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but that’s not what I came to tell you about.” Then Arlo cuts to the chase.

“Came to talk about the draft. / 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. / 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 phsychiatrist, 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 sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, ‘You’re our boy.’

All the time, Arlo is playing endless variations of his Alice’s Restaurant melody on that acoustic guitar. But after the drama of the psychiatrist’s room, the mood mellow.

“Didn't feel too good about it. / Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections, detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was 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?’” This marks the first time, just before that question is asked, that the music stops, momentarily, before being resumed.

“And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, / 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?’” Again, the music stops to hear that question, before resuming. “And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour 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!!’ The music having stopped for that last order, it now resumes at a slower, more subdued pace. “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 committing 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, ‘Littering.’ / 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 Sergeant 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-officer’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 massacree 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 sergeant, 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 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 you’re 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 if 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 organisation. / 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-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes 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.” So, finally, after all that time spent talking, Arlo is desperate to sing again, but will the audience be up to it as they join in? “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.” Arlo, back in talking mode: ““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 / 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.”

These lyrics have become part of our global folklore. But let’s see if the website Songfacts has anything more to add. Well they do say the incident happened on Thanksgiving Day, 1965, when Arlo was 18. It was he and a friend, Rick Robbins, who drove to Stockbridge, Massachusetts to have dinner with Alice and Ray Brock in their “church house”. The side road they eventually dumped the rubbish is on Prospect Hill, and the officer who found the name Brock on an envelope was police chief William J Obanhein (Obie). And he apparently did take pictures of the site, marking them on the back, Prospect Hill Rubbish Dumping File Under Guthrie And Robbins 11/26/65”. And the two lads were fined $25 and retrieved the rubbish. And Alice (remember Alice?) is reported as saying that they later all sat around and started to write Alice’s Restaurant. “We were sitting around after dinner and wrote half the song,” she’s reported as saying, “and the other half, the draft part, Arlo wrote.” Of course Arlo dramatised the whole thing for effect, but the local paper did carry a short report saying that Robbins, 19, and Guthrie, 18, paid their fines after pleading guilty to “illegally disposing of rubbish”. The judge ordered them to remove the rubbish, with Obanheim saying later they “found dragging the junk up the hillside much harder than throwing it down”. The rubbish included a divan, bottles, garbage, papers and boxes, and Obanheim told the court he spent “a very disagreeable two hours” wading through it in search of a clue. Mike, of Mountlake Terrace, WA, provided this information. The website adds that “as a result of his arrest for littering, Guthrie was ineligible for the draft and did not have to serve in Vietnam”. Now personally I would call that excellent planning, or very good luck. The site says Guthrie recorded a longer version in 1995 at The Guthrie Centre.

In truth, as to the rest of the album, it does pale somewhat in comparison to this massively influential and inspired piece. Commendably, all the songs are Guthrie compositions, with the first song, Chilling Of The Evening, employing acoustic guitar and light backing instruments, including bass, drums, piano and organ. And the lyrics are good. This speaks of a young man’s love. The first verse goes: “Warm me from the wind and take my hand / A song is sounding, softly singing / My song is cast upon the rainbow waves / Forever splashing in the sunlight / Prove to me there’s a love still left / In all of this emptiness around me / Take me from the chilling of the evening.” But, beautiful though it is, the song does not gel like those on his subsequent albums. All that was needed was a more astute production process, methinks.

Ring-Around-a-Rosy Rag is Arlo in playful mode. The song has a deliberate fairground quality, with banjo, castinets, possibly a harpsichord and a sax or kazoo sounding like a sax, not to mention one of those “wheezy” Christmas dinner playthings. There is some great playing with words on this track. “I had a friend, a friend I could trust / He went into the park and got busted / Doing the ring-a-round-a-rosy rag / Went in the park late at night / And he put a lot of people over eighty up tight / He was doing the ring-a-round-a-rosy rag.” Then the delightful chorus: “Ring around, ring around rose / Touch your nose and blow your toes and mind / Doing the ring-around-a-rosy rag / (It really was a drag) / Ring around, ring-around-a-rose / Touch your nose and blow your toes and mind / Doing the ring-around-a-rosy rag.” I suspect this was also inspired by a brush with the law, as another cop emerges in the second verse: “We ought to send Officer Joe Strange / To some Australian mountain range / So we all can do the ring-around-a-rosy rag / Would you like to put Philidelphia up tight / One mass ring-around-a-rosy / In the middle of the night? / We all should do the ring-around-a-rosy rag.” Is he now advocating a ring-around-a-rosy rage movement to supplant the Alice’s Restaurant Massacree movement?

Even though, in my view, the mood of the more serious songs isn’t quite right – certain instruments are too loud and harsh – they still exude the sort of laid-back atmosphere that Arlo seemed uniquely to be able to create. There is organ, possibly electric piano, bass and drums on Now And Then, which you would not associate readily with a folk musician. The lyrics are somewhat forced and clumsy. Take this opening verse: “Hello again the mornin’ dawn has burned away / the midnight mist

Now and then I feel so fine / And now and then I don’t feel lonely / Now and then and only in my mind.”

There is a gentle jazzy quality to I’m Going Home, including lovely jazz-chord guitarwork. The vocals come across crisp and fresh. Again, however, the lyrics falter as he attempts to build a song around the concept of going home. “Like the tree that grows so tall / Leaves turn gold and then they fall / They’ve gone down, now they’ve grown / They’re going home.” It doesn’t get much better.

And did Arlo realise when he penned the frivolous little ditty, The Motorcycle Song, for this album, that it too would take on a life of its own, much like Alice’s Restaurant did? I have to confess I battle to enjoy the dum-dum-dum-dum rhythm of this song, where the acoustic guitar is totally dominated by what sounds like notes from an electric guitar. But as the song becomes something of a blues number, complete with harmonica, it mellows. Arlo’s sense of fun permeates the song, and he must have relished the absurdity of rhyming “die” with “cy” and then adding the “cle” after a short pause. “I dont want a pickle / I just wanna ride on my morotcycle / And I dont want a tickle / I’d rather ride on my motorcycle / And I dont wanna die / I just wanna ride on my motorcy...cle.” On this first version, he does start to tell a story, but doesn’t get very far. “It was late last night, the other day / Thought I’d go up and see Ray / So I went up and I saw Ray / There was only one thing Ray could say was ...” and so back to the chorus. Then another bit of a story: “Late last week I was on my bike / I run into a friend named Mike / Run into a friend named Mike / Mike no longer has a bike he cries...” And so back to the chorus. It is really incredibly weak, as a song. He would later call it “this dumb song”, but once he realised this and started to embellish on the story behind the song, how he came to write it, the Arlo genius kicked in big time. But that would come on a later album. Anyone listening to this first take would have been singularly unimpressed, apart from chuckling at that forced rhyme.

The pick of the songs on this album is probably the last track, Highway In The Wind. Again, however, there are somewhat clumsy and dated arrangement devices. The song was crying out for the polish that would be a hallmark of later albums. Nevertheless, there are hints, almost Dylanesque, of great guitarwork here. And the lyrics seem more mature: “Sail with me into the unknown void / That has no end / Swept along the open road / That don’t seem to begin / Come with me and love me, Babe / I may be back again / Meantime I’ll keep sailing down / This highway in the wind.” Then again, maybe not. Dylan’s influence must have been profound, and one senses in the final verse an attempt to inject something of his narrative style: “The fortune teller tells me / I have somewhere to go / I look and try to understand / And wonder how she knows / So I must be going now / I’m losing time my friend / Looking for a rainbow / Down this highway in the wind.”

Commendably, Arlo’s songwriting would develop incredibly fast, yielding a body of work of the highest quality.

Arlo

Arlo, his second album, from 1968, I remember with the greatest affection. There were similarities, for me, between the personas of Arlo and Donovan. Both seemed to exude a complete repugnance for violence and conflict – the ultimate peaceniks, though Arlo had that other side to him too, an impish sense of humour which enabled him to toss the sharpest barbs at shibboleths of the establishment – and somehow get away with it. And on Arlo he takes on THE powerhouse of the US state – the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Clearly, he remained on a collision course with the law, and was young and naïve enough not to be unduly concerned. As I noted earlier, I haven’t heard this album in about 30 years, since the late seventies, when the Bentley brothers all basically started going their separate ways, thanks largely to the disruptive influence of military conscription.

Sadly, there is little information on this or most of the other albums on Wikipedia. Howevere, it is good to see that album cover again online, with Arlo shown under a wide-brimmed brown hat within an oval space, bordered in black. He wears a soft cream shirt, while his hand touches his face. I remember in high school being part of the folk music club, which was run by our biology teacher, a beautiful Scottish woman called Miss or Mrs McGee. I like to remember her as being unmarried, and am sure that was her surname. While she led discussions on folk music, the highlight was when she played for us. She finger-picked and strummed a nylon-string guitar, and had a sublime voice. Paddy McGinty’s Goat was one song I recall her doing. Anyway, I was flattered when she once lent me a Dylan single, and I in turn lent her my eldest brother Ian’s copy of Arlo. The Dylan single was One Too Many Mornings, which at that stage we did not have on an album.

So now to take a trip back in time, without the aid of the actual music. Ah, I had forgotten, looking at the tracklist, that it was on this very next album that he turned The Motorcycle Song into another iconic piece of Arlo wit. Here it runs to nearly eight minutes, and is the opening track. The song starts with the same zany chorus, as well as the first verse about going to see Ray. After the chorus is sung a second time, Arlo still plucking away the tune on the guitar, starts to tell the story: “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 and the air / Now, when you’re going down a mountain road at I50 miles an hour you gotta be very careful, / especially if you’re playin' a guitar. / And especially if that guitar is an acoustic guitar. / Because if it’s an acoustic guitar, the wind pressure is greater on the box side than on the neck side, / because there’s more guitar on the box side. / I wasn’t payin’ attention … / Luckily I didn't go into the mountain - I went over the cliff.” That was another classic bit of Arlo wit. “I was goin’ at 150 miles an hour sideways and 500 feet down at the same time. / I knew it was the end. I looked down, I said ‘'Wow! Some trip’. / I thought it...well I knew it was...I knew it was my last trip, / and in my last remaining seconds in the world, I decided to write one last farewell song to the world. / Put a new ink cartridge in my pen. / Took out a piece of paper. / I sat back and I thought awhile. / Then I started writin’: I don’t want a pickle / Just want to ride on my motorsickle / And I don't want a tickle / ’Cause I’d rather ride on my motorsickle / And I don’t want to die / Just want to ride on my motorcy...cle.’ / “I knew that it wasn’t the best song l ever wrote, / but I didn’t have time to change it. / I was comin’ down mighty fast. / But as you all know, and as fate would have it, I didn’t die. / I landed on the top of a police car. / And he died. / I drove away on the road that he was on. / I came into town at a screamin’ 175 miles an hour, / playin’ the motorcycle song. / I came into town, I jumped off my bike, the bike went around the corner by itself, went up on the stand by itself, turned itself off. / I walked over to my friend. / He was standin’ there eatin’ pickles. / I said ‘Hi, what’s happenin’?’ / He looked at me in the eye and said ‘Nothin’. / You gotta sing it with that kind of enthusiasm. / Like you just squashed a cop...” he concludes, before leading the audience in a final singing of the chorus.

How I’d love to hear the five songs on this album again. Just Wouldn’t You Believe It is the first, and I battle to recall the melody, though those opening lines are so familiar: “In the candle, lights burn away / Leaving nothing, except the day / Just to blow your mind away / Coming thus, this daily change / You sit and pose the very strange / He sits and hums ‘Home on the Range’ / And just wouldn’t you believe it.” Already the songwriting is much stronger, and I recall this as a hauntingly beautiful piece. “Now the hallway, now the doors / Locking out your deathlike chores / Locking in what’s left to score / Coming thus, this daily thought / Heroes have so long been taught / Buying what cannot be bought / And just wouldn’t you believe it.” There is that distinct poetic quality here that elevates a work far beyond the prosaic profferings of us mere mortals. “Like before, my time has gone / Here’s wishing I could carry on / But I’m being called up into the dawn / Coming thus, this daily freak / Try to come again next week / When I strive to climb the peak / And just wouldn’t you believe it.”

Of course the next track was not his own composition. Try Me One More Time was written by one Tubb, and was popular well before Arlo’s version, but he gave it a political slant which struck a chord among the Nixonphobes. The lyrics I have found don’t preface the song with any comments, but I do somehow recall him dedicating this to the fallen US president. Notice how apposite the song is. “Yes, I know I’ve been untrue / And I have hurt you through and through / But please have mercy on this heart of mine / Won’t you take me back and try me one more time.” Then the politician looks at what’s happened, much as Robert Mugabe would have had he allowed the 2008 election results in Zimbabwe to be released and had he obeyed the will of the electorate and stepped down. Anyway, Arlo had some nasty politicians to deal with too, and this song would have galled them. However, I see I’m wrong. This couldn’t have been about Nixon, who only resigned in 1974. It must have been about some other Republican troglodyte from the Sixties, or possibly one of those right-wing state governors. “In my dreams I see your face / It seems like there’s someone in my place / But does he know that you were once mine / Won’t you take me back and try me one more time.” Then Arlo rubs it in: “If you come back to me now / I’ll make it up to you somehow / I promise to never be unkind  / If you’ll take me back and try me one more time / Won’t you take me back and try me one more time.”

The next song I do recall well, because it had such a catchy chorus line: “Lying on the side of the road / Feeling like he heard a sound / Shivered with the feelin’ that he knowed / John looked down, John looked down / John looked down the long, long road.” Simplicity lies at the heart of good lyric writing, and this Arlo achieves here: “She gave John a present that was fine / So fine that he had to go / Went to see what it was that he knowed / John looked down, John looked down / John looked down the long, long road.” Then the short verse: “And I know it’s hard / But what did you expect of her? / John looked down.” Finally: “If you see the lady in your mind / Even in her nothingness / Standing through the darkest night / And the people want to fight / But first ask if it’s all right / John looked down, John looked down / John looked down the long, long road.”

I know this album had some beautiful passages, and suspect that Mediation (Wave Upon Wave) was one of them. At 6:38 minutes, this was a long song, and it was all about the music, not some witty repartee. While some of the lines are familiar, I can’t for the life of me summon up the melody: “Loving in golden temples, my love / Is flowing on heavenly seas / The silent commands are heard throughout the lands / And are weaving his patterns with ease.” I love this verse: “All of the beautiful mountains beyond / Can surely not tempt me to stay / Even my musical melody thoughts / Are memories of yesterday.” That has real echoes of Donovan at his best. Similarly the next verses, simple but effective: “Wave upon wave of life within me / Give me the strength to go on / Wave after wave of love all around me / Give me the time to catch on.” How I’d love to hear the song, which would bring these lines to vibrant life.

There is a template that Arlo uses very successfully on most of his best songs. The first line rises to a point, while the next responds on a lower register. “Standing at the threshold of a moment in my life / Looking far into the ceaseless wonders of this day / Calling from the mountain top / ‘Come give to me your hand / Touch me and we’ll go along our way’.” Even without the music, that is beautiful, though again I cannot muster the melody. Here’s the chorus: “And bring about your love / And sing about your love / Think about your love / Dancing, fly above the love of everyone.” The song is on the tip of my consciousness, but the seeming inevitableness of the melody, based on those lyrics, I am sure is not the case, and that the final product is packed with lovely nuances. The last few lines: “Waiting here while you have got to / Prepare for the days / Sleeping in the haze, come with me,” before the chorus is repeated.

And so to The Pause Of Mr Claus. I knew when I lent that teacher this album that I had a soul mate, even though we never discussed this song and I never saw her again once I’d left school. This was a wavelength issue. If you baulked at autocratic, authoritarian attitudes and institutions, you loved this rambling piece of Arlo satire. This time it runs to 7:50 minutes, and I’m battling to recall if there was guitar accompaniment, though surely there must have been, because I suspect Arlo was like most musicians, somewhat “naked” when not “hiding” behind his guitar.

This was the natural next step after Alice’s Restaurant and, having glanced at the lyrics, of course it had a song, a melody, which held it together. It was all about Santa Claus and his red shirt…

So it’s a live recording, and Arlo tells his audience: “This next song we’re going to dedicate to a great American organization. / Tonight I’d like to dedicate this to our boys in the FBI.” You can imagine the response. The jeers, the laughter. At this point, I recall Arlo was just talking, with no music playing. “Well, wait a minute. It’s hard to be an FBI man. I mean, first of all, being an FBI man, you have to be over 40 years old. / And the reason is that it takes at least 25 years with the organization to be that much of a bastard. / It’s true. You just can’t join, you know. / It needs an atmosphere where your natural bastardness can grow and develop and take a meaningful shape in today’s complex society.” (It is well I remember us learning these lines by heart, and repeating them to each other as a sort of game.) “But that’s not why I want to dedicate the song to the FBI. / I mean, the job that they have to do is a drag. / I mean, they have to follow people around, you know. That’s part of their job. / Follow me around. I’m out on the highway and I'm drivin’ down the road and I run out of gasoline. / I pull over to the side of the road. / They gotta pull over too - make believe that they ran out, you know. / I go to get some gasoline. They have to figure out whether they should stick with the car or follow me. / Suppose I don’t come back and they’re stayin’ with the car. / Or if I fly on the airplanes, I could fly half fare because I’m 12 to 22. / And they gotta pay the full fare. / But the thing is that when you pay the full fare, you have to get on the airplane first, so that they know how many seats are left over for the half fare kids. Right? / And sometimes there aren’t any seats left over, and sometimes there are, but that doesn’t mean that you have to go. / Suppose that he gets on and fills up the last seat, so you can’t get on. / Then he gets off then you can get on. / What’s he gonna do? / Well, it’s a drag for him. / But that’s not why I want to dedicate the song to the FBI. / During these hard days and hard weeks, everybody always has it bad once in a while. / You know, you have a bad time of it, and you always have a friend who says ‘Hey man, you ain’t got it that bad. Look at that guy’. / And you look at that guy, and he’s got it worse than you. / And it makes you feel better that there’s somebody that’s got it worse than you. / But think of the last guy. / For one minute, think of the last guy. / Nobody’s got it worse than that guy. / Nobody in the whole world. / That guy... he’s so alone in the world that he doesn’t even have a street to lay in for a truck to run him over. / He’s out there with nothin’. / Nothin’s happenin’ for that cat. / And all that he has to do to create a little excitement in his own life is to bum a dime from somewhere, call up the FBI. Say ‘FBl?’, they say ‘Yes’, say ‘I think Uncle Ho and Chairman Mao and their friends are comin’ over for dinner’ (click) / Hang up the phone. / And within two minutes, and not two minutes from when he hangs up the phone, but two minutes from when he first put the dime in, they got 30,000 feet of tape rollin’; files on tape; pictures, movies, dramas, actions on tape. / But then they send out a half a million people all over the entire world, the globe, they find out all they can about this guy. / ’Cause there’s a number of questions involved in the guy. / I mean, if he was the last guy in the world, how’d he get a dime to call the FBI? / There are plenty of people that aren’t the last guys that can’t get dimes. / He comes along and he gets a dime. / I mean, if he had to bum a dime to call the FBI, how was he gonna serve dinner for all of those people? / How could the last guy make dinner for all those people. / And if he could make dinner, and was gonna make dinner, then why did he call the FBI? / They find out all of those questions within two minutes. / And that’s a great thing about America. / I mean, this is the only country in the world...l mean, well, it’s not the only country in the world that could find stuff out in two minutes, / but it’s the only country in the world that would take two minutes for that guy. / Other countries would say ‘Hey, he’s the last guy...screw him’, you know? / But in America, there is no discrimination, and there is no hypocrisy, ’cause they’ll get anybody. / And that’s a wonderful thing about America. / And that’s why tonight I’d like to dedicate it to every FBI man in the audience. / I know you can’t say nothin’, you know, you can’t get up and say ‘Hi!’ cause then everybody knows that you’re an FBI man / and that’s a drag for you and your friends. / They’re not really your friends, / are they? I mean, so you can’t get up and say nothin’ ’cause otherwise, you gotta get sent back …/ to the factory …/ and that’s a drag for you and it’s an expense for the government, / and that’s a drag for you. / We’re gonna sing you this Christmas carol. / It’s for all you bastards out there in the audience tonight. / It’s called The Pause Of Mr Claus.” (I think it is only now that Arlo actually starts playing the guitar.) “Why do you sit there so strange? / Is it because you are beautiful? / You must think you are deranged / Why do police guys beat on peace guys? / You must think Santa Clause weird / He has long hair and a beard / Giving his presents for free / Why do police guys mess with peace guys?” The song slows for the first line of the chorus, before resuming: “Let’s get Santa Clause ’cause … / Santa Clause has a red suit / He’s a communist / And a beard, and long hair / Must be a pacifist / What’s in the pipe that he’s smoking? / Mister Clause sneaks in your home at night. / He must be a dope fiend, to put you up tight / Why do police guys beat on peace guys?”

How we hozed ourselves at this, obviously replacing the FBI in our minds with all the security apparatus of the apartheid state. And weren’t our guys equally paranoid about there being a “red under every bed”. Ja, Arlo was a classic album, a combination of those two bits of satire and some hauntingly beautiful folk melodies.

Running down the Road and Washington County

The last of those “talking-songs” I encountered was about Reuben Clamzo, and was on a greatest hits album my eldest brother Ian picked up several years later. The album also included a revisit of the Motorcycle Song. But obviously before that there were several more top-rate Arlo Guthrie albums.

Running down the Road was released in 1969, but I don’t recall hearing it, though I do see from the tracklist that it featured Coming Into Los Angeles, the song he performed at Woodstock. There also seems to be a reply to Dylan’s My Back Pages, called My Front Pages. Most of the songs are originals, but there is one by Woody and Jack Guthrie (Oklahoma Hills),  and another by Pete Seeger (Living In The Country). Clearly this is an album I’d love to hear, along with Washington County, which was released in 1970, when Arlo was obviously at the height of his fame.

Hobo’s Lullaby

Those have to be good, because Hobo’s Lullaby from 1972, his next album, was a classic, and it was one we grew up with. I made a tape of my brother’s album in the mid-1980s and it has somehow survived, scratchy surface and all. The title track was one which multi-instrumentalist Dave Tarr, our friend from this time, would play regularly while performing with the likes of Trevor Promnitz and, of course, The Silver Creek Mountain Band. Dave had a bit of a stammer, but when he started picking out the tune with that long-fingernailed right hand, you could close your eyes and imagine it was Arlo playing. His vocals more than did justice to the song.

Wikipedia tells us that Hobo’s Lullaby was written by Goebel Reeves, “and famously performed by various people including folk singer Woody Guthrie and his son Arlo Guthrie”. But this album is incredibly rich in its variety, with Arlo increasingly tapping into the rich legacy of songs explored and indeed written by his father and his contemporaries. So let’s give it a listen.

Wow! Having, as noted, not been able to listen to Arlo or the two subsequent albums, Running Down the Road (1969) and Washington County (1970), it is remarkable, on hearing Hobo’s Lullaby to discover just how polished the Arlo Guthrie sound had become by 1972.

Gone are the “gimmick” talking-songs. Instead there are 11 superb tracks which cover the gamut of largely traditional American music, taking in bits of folk, bluegrass and even blues. I did note earlier that he brought in the gifted Ry Cooder on some of his albums, and am fairly sure I detected this genius guitarist on at least a couple of tracks here. Indeed, one gets the sense that Arlo has surrounded himself with top-rate musicians, and that is why the end result is so pleasing. While there was little detail on Wikipedia, website Buy.com did provide additional information, and confirmed that Cooder does indeed play on the album. Other personnel listed include Linda Ronstadt (backing vocals are a feature of the album), Hoyt Axton and Jim Keltner. The site says Arlo became “one of the finest early practitioners of country-rock”. And while on Washington County he did mainly his own material, this time he focused “almost exclusively on other people’s material”. The album “yielded one of his few chart hits with Steve Goodman’s City Of New Orleans”. And the site adds that the album’s successor, The Brooklyn Cowboys, from 1973, was his “true high peak”.

As noted earlier, I have Hobo’s Lullaby on a cassette that is about 21 years old, a treasured bit of magnetic tape which I recorded while visiting my brother Ian at his then Dorchester Heights, East London, home in the mid-1980s.

The album opens with H Lawson’s Anytime, and immediately the quality of musicianship is apparent. This jaunty song, with a long, intricate introduction featuring lovely acoustic guitar and slide guitar, is a polished gem. Arlo’s vocals come fully into their own, beautifully complemented by the players around him. The opening verse goes: “Anytime you’re feelin’ lonely / Anytime you’re feelin’ blue / Anytime you feel downhearted / That will prove your love for me is true.”

There is a no-nonsense approach here, with no song being dragged out longer than required. And what could be more evocative than the classic, City Of New Orleans, written by Steve Goodman. A simple acoustic guitar medley is backed by understated bass and drums, and either an organ or harmonium. A feature is the use of female backing vocals, as Arlo takes one back in time to the great era of steam. As one who has not yet visited the United States, it is songs like this that inspire me to see it for myself. Sadly, of course, New Orleans is today apparently but a shadow of its former self, following the devastating hurricane damage of a few years back. Arlo does this song incredible justice, with all the nuances perfectly nuanced. “Ridin’ on the City of New Orleans  / Illinois Central, Monday mornin’ rail / 15 cars & 15 restless riders / Three conductors, 25 sacks of mail.” Isn’t that a perfect scene-setter? You’re on your way. “All along the southbound odyssey the train pulls out of Kankakee / Rolls along past houses, farms & fields / Passin’ graves that have no name, freight yards full of old black men / And the graveyards of rusted automobiles.” And then that iconic chorus: “Good mornin’ America, how are you? / Don’t you know me? I’m your native son! / I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans / I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.” You’re settled in for the long haul, so what’s there to do? “Dealin’ cards with the old men in the club car / Penny a point, ain’t no one keepin’ score / Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle / And feel the wheels rumblin’ neath the floor.” Isn’t this brilliant lyric-writing? “And the sons of Pullman porters & the sons of engineers / Ride their fathers’ magic carpets made of steel (I love that image!) / Mothers with their babes asleep, rockin’ to the gentle beat / And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.” And then back to that beautiful chorus. Then, traveling at night. “Night time on the City of New Orleans / Changin’ cars in Memphis, Tennessee / Halfway home, we’ll be there by mornin’ / Thru the Mississippi darkness rollin’ down to the sea.” A change of mood now creeps in. “But all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream / And the steel rail still ain’t heard the news / The conductor sings his songs again / ‘The passengers will please refrain: / This train got the disappearin’ railroad blues’.” Suddenly the chorus takes on a less jovial note: “Good night America, how are you? / Say don’t you know me? I’m your native son! / I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans. / I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.”

The mood lifts again for Lightning Bar Blues, which may seem paradoxical. But in the Irish tradition of drowning one’s sorrows, this song has a lovely fatalistic approach to life. After a complex guitar introduction, backed by the rhythm section and a pleasing saxophone and slide guitar, one gets slap into some more Arlo magic. This time it is male backing vocals which augment Arlo’s voice. “I don’t need no diamond ring / I don't need no Cadillac car / Just want to drink my Ripple wine / Down in the Lightnin’ Bar / Down in the Lightnin’ Bar.” The scene is set, and there is a strongly Irish drinking song quality to this last verse: “When I die don’t cry for me / Don’t bury me at all / Place my livin’, laughin’, lovin’ bones / In a jar of alcohol / Hundred proof alcohol.”

There is a strong bluegrass feel to the next song, Shackles And Chains. It is in the nature of blues that even songs about sad matters can be uplifting. And usually they’re about women. Mark my words. Here, for the first time, it is a fiddle which is the driving force, alongside that acoustic guitar and rhythm section. A mandolin is also introduced, with all the string instruments gelling superbly. “On a long lonesome journey I’m going / Oh darling, and please don’t you cry / Though in shackles and chains they will take me / In prison to stay till I die / And at night through the bars / I gaze at the stars / And I long for your kisses in vain / A piece of stone I will use for my pillow / While I’m sleeping in shackles and chains.” What landed him in jail we don’t learn, but don’t you love the image of gazing at those stars, so free, through prison bars? “Put your arms thru these bars once, my darlin’ / Let me kiss those sweet lips that I love best /In heartache you’re my consolation / In sorrow my haven of rest.”

Then, a tribute to his father, Woody, who wrote 1913 Massacre, a song which clearly was heard by Bob Dylan, because it is the sort of long, narrative-type folk song that Dylan adopted with such aplomb. Without the likes of Arlo, I wonder how many people of my generation would have “discovered” any of Woody’s music, apart from such famous songs as This Land Is Your Land? But this tells a sad tale of greed, betrayal and murderous action by the mine owners. It is your classic protest song, and Arlo gives it just the right sense of anger and disgust. A gentle finger-picked acoustic guitar, backed by a sombre harmonium (or so it sounds), provide the setting, as Arlo tells this tale of woe. “Take a trip with me in nineteen thirteen / To Calumet, Michigan in the copper country / I’ll take you to a place called Italian Hall / And the miners are having their big Christmas ball.” I like this writing style. You are invited in, to become part of this community, and to see how they live. “I’ll take you in a door and up a high stairs / Singing and dancing is heard ev’rywhere / I’ll let you shake hands with the people you see / And watch the kids dance ’round the big Christmas tree.” He lays on the fact that people are simply having fun: “There’s talking and laughing and songs in the air / And the spirit of Christmas is there ev’rywhere / Before you know it you’re friends with us all / And you’re dancing around and around in the hall.” And they open their hearts to you. “You ask about work and you ask about pay / They’ll tell you they make less than a dollar a day / Working their copper claims, risking their lives / So it’s fun to spend Christmas with children and wives.” The sense of impending doom starts to arrive. “A little girl sits down by the Christmas tree lights / To play the piano so you gotta keep quiet / To hear all this fun; you would not realize / That the copper boss thug men are milling outside.” And so the grisly episode unfolds: “The copper boss thugs stuck their heads in the door / One of them yelled and he screamed, ‘There’s a fire’ / A lady she hollered, ‘There's no such a thing; / Keep on with your party, there’s no such a thing’.” Then: “A few people rushed and there’s only a few / ‘It’s just the thugs and the scabs fooling you.’ / A man grabbed his daughter and he carried her down / But the thugs held the door and he could not get out.” The tragedy is imminent: “And then others followed, about a hundred or more / But most everybody remained on the floor / The gun thugs, they laughed at their murderous joke / And the children were smothered on the stairs by the door.” In suitably muted tones, Arlo concludes his father’s story: “Such a terrible sight I never did see / We carried our children back up to their tree / The scabs outside still laughed at their spree / And the children that died there was seventy-three.” A dirge ensues: “The piano played a slow funeral tune, / And the town was lit up by a cold Christmas moon / The parents, they cried and the men, they moaned, / ‘See what your greed for money has done?’”

All credit to Arlo for finding such gems as the next track, Somebody Turned On The Light, by Hoyt Axton, which so embeds one in the US heartland. “I’ve been to wild Montana / I went there in a storm / My boots were Texas leather / My Levis wet and torn / I loved it in Montana / Loved it in the storm / I think I’m gonna cross that river / I just might be reborn.” Then: “New York, New York - winter, ’61 / Takin’ me a city ride / Somebody tall musta put out the lights / ’Cause it got real dark outside.” The pace picks up for the chorus, with wonderful backing vocals: “And I never saw the sun till ’71 / But I never gave up the fight / I sure was glad when I saw the dawn / Somebody, somebody turned on the light / Somebody turned on the light.” This again is great poetry: “Women, wine and fast red cars / And I couldn’t see to read the signs / Somebody said ‘Whose life is this?’ / And I said that it can’t be mine.” After that great chorus, this great verse: “When the world is wrong / better right yourself / It’ll make the dark clouds fly / Nobody tall can put out the lights / Just don’t let the spirit die / If you never see the sun till ’91 / Don’t you ever give up the fight / Sure be glad when you see the dawn / Somebody, somebody turns on the light / Somebody turns on the light.”

Then a bit of fun. Try getting your tongue around Ukulele Lady. Indeed, it is a “uke” that is plucked away initially, with steel guitar joining later, along with the standard backing vocals that lend such power to so many of these songs. Written by Richard Whiting and Gus Kahn, this is another highlight of an album packed with quality tracks: “I saw the splendor of the moonlight / On Honolulu Bay / There’s something tender in the moonlight / On Honolulu Bay.” This is Hawaii, the south shore, far from the massive swells which pump through on the north shore during the winter. This is a holiday paradise, and the song gets the mood. “And all the beaches are filled with peaches / Who bring their ukes along / And in the glimmer of the moonlight / They love to sing this song.” Then the delightful chorus: “If you like Ukulele Lady / Ukulele Lady like a’you / If you like to linger where it’s shady / Ukulele Lady linger too / If you kiss Ukulele Lady / While you promise ever to be true / And she sees another Ukulele / Lady foolin’ ’round with you…” I always wondered what was sung here, so here it is: “Maybe she’ll sigh (an awful lot) / Maybe she’ll cry (and maybe not) / Maybe she’ll find somebody else / By and by / To sing to when it’s cool and shady / Where the tricky wicky wacky woo / If you like Ukulele Lady / Ukulele Lady like a’you.”  The harmonising on this track is superb: “She used to sing to me by moonlight / On Honolulu Bay / Fond memories cling to me by moonlight / Although I’m far away.” Then that wish to return: “Some day I’m going, where eyes are glowing / And lips are made to kiss / To see somebody in the moonlight / And hear the song I miss.”

Then, fittingly, Arlo gives one of the finest cover versions of a Dylan song, ever, with When The Ship Comes In. This time it is a piano and organ which set the mood in a beautifully arranged production. The song, typically, is rich in Dylanesque imagery. It’s only when you download them that you see that this is a long song, comprising eight verses, the opening one of which has become imprinted on most of our brains: “Oh the time will come up / When the winds will stop / And the breeze will cease to be a’breathin' / Like the stillness in the wind / Before the hurricane begins / The hour when the ship comes in.” And how is this for word economy: “And the sea will split / And the ship will hit / And the shoreline sands will be a’shakin’ / And the tide will sound / And the waves will pound / And the morning will be breakin’.” This is certainly one of Dylan’s finest songs. “Oh the fishes will laugh / As they swim out of the path / And the seagulls will be a’smilin' / And the rocks on the sand / Will proudly stand / The hour that the ship comes in.”

The country/bluegrass connection comes through forcefully on the delightfully upbeat instrumental, Mapleview (20%) Rag. Quickfire acoustic guitar and fiddle get the old foot tapping, with both instruments leading the fray at different times, along, later, with some astute piano and banjo breaks.

Then it is back to a slower country-blues type song titled Days Are Short on which the unmistakable sound of Ry Cooder on electric slide guitar can be heard. This is an Arlo composition, and is one of the picks of the album, underlining the fact that he had become a consummate songwriter in his own right. “Days are short, and I ain’t down / The sun is on the hill / Looking in my suitcase for a friend / The door was opened wide / You know I lost a little pride / And inside it was just another man.” With Cooder buzzing alongside him, and a wonderful array of female backing voices, Arlo then launches into that chorus: “Every day another man reaches out his hand / Every moment there’s a shifting in the sand / Every whisper in the wind / Brings a good man back again / Settle me down in my dreams tonight / Tomorrow’s another day to blow my blues away.” Isn’t that brilliant lyric-writing? “Lots of folks will tell you that / A man can go thru’ life / Taking what he wants along the way / But until all men are freed / Each one gets but what he needs / The experience of living every day.” It seems Arlo had something of an epiphany at this point, judging by the next verse. “I woke up this morning / I awoke upon my knees / Crying oo-wee, I don’t know where I am / I feel just like a clown / Every time I move around / Because, after all, I’m just another man.” And still Ry’s strings keep on reverberating, before all is quiet, and the hauntingly beautiful (pardon the cliché) Hobo’s Lullaby is upon us.

This is no easy song to play on the acoustic guitar – at least not if you’re going to play with the complex picking regime that Arlo uses. Then, in an inspired touch, a cello moves in alongside, as Arlo sings the immortal lines by Goebel Reeves. “Go to sleep you weary hobo / Let the towns drift slowly by / Can’t you hear the steel rail humming / That’s a hobo's lullaby.” Ever tried to go to sleep on a moving train? It’s the easiest thing on earth. Those things were designed to send you to sleep. The steam trains were even more adept than their modern counterparts, the chugging of their engines complementing the clickity-clack, clickity-clack of the wheels on steel. For a hobo, sleep was release from the struggle to survive. “Do not think about tomorrow / Let tomorrow come and go / Tonight you’re in a nice warm boxcar / Safe from all the wind and snow.” Though not Arlo’s song, he would have enjoyed the next verse, given his antipathy at that stage for men in uniform. “I know the police cause you trouble / They cause trouble everywhere / But when you die and go to heaven / You won’t find no policemen there.” The great moving train brings comfort. “I know your clothes are torn and ragged / And your hair is turning grey / Lift your head and smile at trouble / You’ll find happiness some day.” And so back to the opening verse. Sublime.

The Best of Arlo Guthrie and One Night

These were the Arlo albums we grew up with. I don’t recall Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys (1973), which is said to be such a fine work. Clearly Arlo was producing wonderful work at this point, and I doubt the standard dropped for Arlo Guthrie (1974), Together in Concert (1975) or Amigo (1976). These first albums caught up with us when brother Ian bought The Best of Arlo Guthrie (1977), some tracks of which I managed to fit onto a tape at the end of another album he had: One Night (1978). A live album, One Night contains two Arlo tracks which really stand out in terms of the sheer brilliant musicianship – an acoustic version of the Beatles’ I’ve Just Seen A Face, and another song featuring virtuoso acoustic guitarwork, Arlo’s arrangement of the traditional Irish/English folk song, Little Beggar Man.

When I taped this album, in the mid-1980s, I must have decided that I’d rather fit a few tracks off that “best of” album on the end of the tape rather than include the longest song on One Night, another of Arlo’s talking-songs, The Story of Reuben Clamzo & His Strange Daughter In the Key Of A. This is another delightful tale which introduced us, inter alia, to the word “humungous”. But clearly I was intent on getting as many songs as I could on that tape, so I’ve not heard that incredible tale for decades.

The opening track, One Night, is a slow, bluesy piece which again features strong backing vocals. But what a pleasure once it dies down to experience the frisson of excitement as an acoustic guitar and, I believe, mandolin, get the Beatles song under way, with Arlo’s spot-on vocals again beautifully complemented by the backing singers.

He brings a modern feel to the classic old tale about the Tennessee Stud, starting with a crisp lead guitar solo. Again, it is that combination of Arlo’s voice and the backing vocals which make this song.

On Anytime we even hear the introduction of brass instruments, including a pugnacious trombone. The backing vocalists give the song an almost gospel touch. Then all is again hushed as Arlo, it must be, launches into this complex bit of acoustic guitar picking, a note-perfect rendition of Little Beggar man. His delivery of the lyrics is equally fast, and subtly understated. “I am a little beggar and a beggar I have been / For three score’r more in this little Isle of green / And I’m known from the Liffy down to Segue / And I’m known by the name of bold Donahue.” The bass comes in after the first verse. “Of all the trades a-goin’ now sure beggin is the best / When a man gets tired he can lay him down to rest / He can beg for his dinner when there’s nothing left to do / Then just cut around the corner with his old Rigadoo.” Clearly this is Irish. It was a song we got into first through the Clancy Brothers and the Dubliners. To hear it done by a young, hip soul like Arlo – and done so well! – was an added bonus. It is a song wonderfully evocative of Ireland. “I slept in a barn way down in Curabawn / A-waitin’ in for the mornin’ I slept till the dawn / With the holes in the roof and the rain a-comin’ through / And the cats and the rats they were playin’ peeka-boo.” That quirky Irish wit is everywhere evident: “Who should awaken but the woman of the house / With her white spotted apron and her calico blouse / She began to frighten when I said boo! / Sayin’ don’t be afraid ma’am it’s old Johnny Dhu.” All the time, the guitarwork is rocketing along, with female backing vocals again adding an extra dimension. “I met a little flaxy haired girl one day, / Good morning little flaxy haired girl I say / Good morning little Beggar Man and how do you do / With your rags and your tags and your old Rigadoo.” The pace seems to escalate and the vocal gymnastics become increasingly complex. “Over the fields with the pack on my back / Over the field with my great heavy sack / With the holes in my shoes and the toes a’peekin’ through / Singin’ skittilee rink-a-doodle it’s the old Johnny Dhu.” By the final verse things are pretty frenetic: “Must be going to bed boys, it’s getting’ late at night / All the fire’s all raked and up goes the light / And now you’ve heard the story of my old Rigadoo / It’s ‘Good-bye God be with you’ sings the old Johnny Dhu.”

Arlo is at his best on songs like the traditional Buffalo Skinners. Again, the guitarwork is complex, beautifully so, but at the same time unobtrusive. With great bass and banjo, this becomes a wonderfully textured song. Indeed, listening to it, it is hard to believe it was recorded live. “Come all you old time cowboys / And listen to my song / Please do not grow weary / I’ll not detain you long / Concerning some wild cowboys / Who did agree to go / And spend the summer pleasant / On the range of the buffalo.” Isn’t that taking one back, instantly, a hundred years? “Well I found myself in Griffin / In eighteen eighty-three / When a man by the name of Creagho / Come a’walkin’ up to me / Sayin ‘How do you do young fella / And how’d you like to go / And spend the summer pleasant / On the range of the buffalo’.” It is one of those great narrative songs, which in the old English tradition rely on a fluent use of idiomatic language. “Well me being out of work right then / To that drover I did say / ‘My goin’ out on the buffalo range / Depends upon the pay / But if you pay good wages, / Transportation to and fro / I think I might go with you / On the range of the Buffalo’.” The scene is set for an adventure. “Well yes I pay good wages / And transportation too / If you’ll agree to work for me / Until the season’s through / But if you do get homesick / And you try and run away / You’ll starve to death out on the trail / And you’ll also lose your pay.” Could he pass muster? “Well with all the flatterin’ talkin’ / He signed up quite a train / Some ten or twelve in number / Of able bodied men / And our trip it was a pleasant one / Through all New Mexico / Until we crossed Pease River / On the range of the buffalo.” Though verse follows verse, Arlo ensures you remain riveted, those backing vocalists again shoring up his own perfect pitch. “It was there our pleasures ended / And our troubles all begun / A lightnin’ storm come up on us / And made the cattle run / We got full of the stickers / On the cactus that did grow / And the outlaws waited to pick us off / In the hills of Mexico.” Despite having listened to this song numerous times, this is the first time I’ve divined precisely what happened to the protagonist. “Well the working season ended / But the drover would not pay / He said ‘You spent your money boys / You’re all in debt to me’. / But the cowboys never put much stock / In a thing like a bankrupt law / So we left the bastard’s bones to bleach / On the range of the buffalo.” Ouch! Now I really do know how it ended. Bleakly, or rather bleachly. But bleak this song certainly is not. It is Arlo at his finest.

It is followed by a fun instrumental, St Louis Tickle, which Arlo plays on the piano, accompanied by rhythm section and brass instruments. And then comes that anthem for peace that was so popular at the time, (Last Night I Had The) Strangest Dream. With the same wonderful backing vocals and intricate harmonies, this takes on the form of a gospel song. It is your classic folk club performance, with the last couple of verses sung unaccompanied. Ed McCurdy’s song captured the spirit more of the Sixties more than the Seventies, but Arlo no doubt realised the sentiment was universally applicable, and not time bound. And so it is. “Last night I had the strangest dream / I’d ever dreamed before / I dreamed the world had all agreed / To put an end to war.” It was the kind of message John Lennon promoted in another way. “I dreamed I saw a mighty room / Filled with women and men / And the paper they were signing said / They’d never fight again.” The dream continues: “And when the paper was all signed / And a million copies made / They all joined hands and bowed their heads / And grateful pray’rs were prayed.” It is an image of the ultimate in wishful thinking, sadly. “And the people in the streets below / Were dancing ’round and ’round / While swords and guns and uniforms / Were scattered on the ground.” With the “One Night” audience absolutely silent, Arlo and his choir sing that first verse again: “Last night I had the strangest dream / I’d ever dreamed before / I dreamed the world had all agreed / To put an end to war.” Amen.

I think I now know why I excluded  The Story of Reuben Clamzo & His Strange Daughter In the Key Of A when I taped this album. It doesn’t really fit it. But it is fiendishly funny all the same. So Arlo is again in talking mode, just addressing the audience like he was sitting next to you, one on one, telling you a yarn: “Wanna hear something? / You know that Indians never ate clams. / They didn’t have linguini! / And so what happened was that clams was allowed to grow unmolested in the coastal waters of America for millions of years. / And they got big, and I ain’t talking about clams in general, I'm talking about each clam! / I mean each one was a couple of million years old or older. / So imagine they could have got bigger than this whole room. / And when they get that big, God gives them little feet so that they could walk around easier. / And when they get feet, they get dangerous. / I’m talking about real dangerous. / I ain’t talking about sitting under the water waiting for you. / I’m talking about coming after you. / Imagine being on one of them boats coming over to discover America, like Columbus or something, standing there at night on watch, everyone else is either drunk or asleep. / And you’re watching for America and the boat’s going up and down. / And you don’t like it anyhow. / But you gotta stand there and watch, for what. / Only he  knows, and he ain’t watching. / You hear the waves lapping against the side of the ship. / The moon is going behind the clouds. / You hear the pitter patter of little footprints on deck. / IS THAT YOU KIDS? IT AIN'T. MY GOD. IT'S THIS HUMUNGUS GIANT CLAM! / Imagine those little feet coming on deck. / A clam twice the size of the ship. Feet first. / You’re standing there shivering with fear, you grab one of these. / This is a belaying pin. They used to have these stuck in the holes all around the ship …/ You probably didn't know what this is for; you probably had an idea, but you were wrong. / They used to have these stuck in the holes all along the sides of the ship. Everywhere. / You wouldn’t know what this is for unless you was that guy that night. / I mean, you’d grab this out of the hole, run on over there, BAM BAM on them little feet! back into the ocean would go a hurt, but not defeated, humungus giant clam. / Ready to strike again when opportunity was better. / You know not even the coastal villages was safe from them big clams. / You know them big clams had an inland range of about 15 miles. / Think of that. I mean our early pioneers and the settlers built little houses all up and down the coast you know. / A little inland and stuff like that. / And they didn’t have houses like we got now, with bathrooms and stuff. / They built little privies out back. / And late at night, maybe a kid would have to go, and he’d go stomping out there in the moonlight. / And all they’d hear for miles around... (loud clap/belch)....one less kid for America. / One more smiling, smirking, humungus giant clam. / So Americans built forts. / Them forts. You know them pictures of them forts with the wooden points all around. / You probably thought them points was for Indians. But that's stupid! / ’Cause Indians know about doors. But clams didn’t. / Even if a clam knew about a door, so what? A clam couldn’t fit in a door. / I mean, he’d come stomping up to a fort at night, put them feet on them points, jump back crying, tears coming out of them everywhere. / But Americans couldn’t live in forts forever. / You couldn’t just build one big fort around America. / How would you go to the beach? / So what they did was they formed groups of people. / I mean they had groups of people all up and down the coast form these little alliances. / Like up North it was call the Clamshell Alliance. / And farther down South is was called the Catfish Alliance. / They had these Alliances all up and down the coast defending themselves against these threatening monsters. These humungus giant clams. / And they’d go out there, if there was maybe fifteen of them, they’d be singing songs in fifteen part harmony. / And when one part disappeared, that’s how they knew where the clam would be. / Which is why Americans only sing in four part harmony to this very day. / That proved to be too dangerous. / See, what they did was they’d be singing these songs called Clam Chanties, and they’d have these big spears called clampoons. / And they’d be walking up and down the beach and the method they eventually devised where they’d have this guy, the most strongest heavy duty true blue American, courageous

type dude they could find and they’d have him out there walking up and down the beach by himself with all the other chicken dudes hiding behind the sand dunes somewhere. / He’d be singing the verses. / They’d be singing the chorus. / And clams would hear ’em. / And clams hate music. / So clams would come out of the water and they’d come after this one guy. / And all you’d see pretty soon was flying all over, the sand flying UPANDOWNTHEBEACHMANMANCLAMCLAMMANMANCLAM MANCLAMCLAMMANUPANDDOWNTHEBEACHGOINGTHISWAYANDTHATWAYUP THEHILLSINTHEWATEROUTOFTHEWATERBEHINDTHETREESEVERYWHERE / FINALLYTHEMANWOULD jump over a big sand dune, roll over the side, the clam would come over the dune, fall in the hole and fourteen guys would come out there and stab the shit out of him with their clampoons. / That’s the way it was. / That was one way to deal with them. / The other way was to weld two clams together… (At this point Arlo starts chuckling uncontrollably) “l don't believe it. / I’m losing it. /  Hey. What can you do. / Another night shot to hell. / Hey, this was serious back then. / This was very serious. / I mean these songs now are just piddley folk songs. / But back then these songs were controversial. / These was radical, almost revolutionary songs. / Because times was different and clams was a threat to America. / That’s right. / So we want to sing this song tonight about the one last... / You see what they did was there was one man, he was one of these men, his name will always be remembered, / His name was Reuben Clamzo, and he was one of the last great clam men there ever was. / He stuck the last clam stab, the last clampoon into the last clam that was ever seen on this continent. / Knowing he would be out of work in an hour. / He did it anyway so that you and me could go to the beach in relative safety. / That’s right. Made America safe for the likes of you and me. / And so we sing this song in his memory. / He went into whaling like most of them guys did. / And he got out of that when he died. / You know, clams was much more dangerous than whales. / Clams can run in the water, on the water or on the ground, and they are so big sometimes that they can jump and they can spread their kinda shells and kinda almost fly like one of them flying squirrels. / You could be standing there thinking that your perfectly safe and all of a sudden WHOP... / That’s ' true... / And so this is the song of this guy by the name of Reuben Clamzo, and the song takes place right after he stabbed this clam and the clam was, going through this kinda death dance over on the side somewhere. / The song starts there and he goes into whaling and takes you through the next... / I sing the part of the guy on the beach by himself. / I go like this: ‘Poor old Reuben Clamzo’ and you go ‘Clamzo Boys, Clamzo’. / That’s the part of the fourteen chicken dudes over on the other side. / That’s what they used to sing. / They’d be calling these clams out of the water. / Like taunting them, making fun of them. / Clams would get real mad and come out. / Here we go. I want you to sing it in case you ever have an occasion to join such an Alliance. / You know some of these Alliances are still around. / Still defending America against things like them clams. / If you ever wants to join one, now you have some historic background. / So you know where these guys are coming from. / It’s not just some ’60s movement or something, these things go back a long time. / Notice the distinction you’re going to have to make now between the first and easy ‘Clamzo Boys Clamzo’ and the more complicated ‘Clamzo Me Boys Clamzo’. / Stay serious. / Folk songs are serious. / That’s what Pete Seeger told me. / ‘Arlo I only want to tell you one thing ... folk songs are serious’. / I said ‘right’. / Let’s do it in C for Clam ... / Let’s do it in B ... for boy that’s a big clam ... / Let’ s do it in G for Gee, I hope that big clam don’t see me. / Let’s do it in F... for he sees me. / Let’s do it back in A ... for A clam is coming. / Better get this song done quick. / The Story of Reuben Clamzo and His Strange Daughter in the Key of A.” Then, unaccompanied, Arlo sings “Oh poor old Reuben Clamzo / Clamzo boys Clamzo / Oh poor old Reuben Clamzo / Clamzo me boys Clamzo. Oh, Reuben was no sailor / (Clamzo boys Clamzo) / So they shipped him on a whaler / (Clamzo me boys Clamzo). Because he was no beauty / He would not do his duty.” With those refrains between each line, the story unfolds: “Because he was so dirty / We gave him five and thirty. / Oh Reuben Clamzo’s daughter / She begged her dad for mercy. / She brang him wine and water / And a bit more than she oughta. / Well he got his seaman’s papers / He’s a terror to the whalers. / And he sails where ’er the whalefish blow / As the hardest bastard on the go. / Oh poor old Reuben Clamzo / Oh poor old Reuben Clamzo.” Bizarre. Brilliantly so.

One of the songs I did tape off that 1977 “best of” album, was a fresh take on The Motorcyle Song, explaining the significance of the pickle. I’ve ascertained, no thanks to my Concise Oxford Dictionary which doesn’t have this definition, that in the US a pickle is what we call a gherkin, a small variety of cucumber generally used for pickling. Anyway, all those years back in the late Sixties, Arlo told the initial story behind his quirky little song, as noted earlier. On this album, the song was recorded live not long before the 1977 release date. So Arlo has some more fun with it. Just like before, he tinkles away on the guitar, before singing: “I don’t want a pickle / I just want to ride on my motorcycle / And I don’t want a tickle / I’d rather ride on my motorcycle / And I don’t want to die / I just want to ride on my motorcy…cle.” Then he starts talking: “You know it’s been about 12 years now, that I’ve been singin’ this dumb song. / You know it’s amazin’, it’s amazin’ that somebody can get away with singin’ a song this dumb for that long. / But you know, hey you know what’s more amazin’ than that is that , uh somebody can make a livin’ singin’ a song this dumb. / But that’s America. / You know I told everything there was to tell about it. / When I wrote it, how come, why, what for. / But you know the one thing, that I always used to neglect to explain, was the significance, of the pickle. / There was a time I was ridin’ my bike, I was going down a mountain road. / I was doin’ 150 miles an hour. / On one side of the mountain road there was a mountain. / And on the other side, there was nothin’. / There was just a cliff in the air. / But I wasn’t payin’ attention you know. / I was just driving down the road. / All of a sudden by accident, a string broke off my guitar. / It broke you know right there, Went flying across the road that way. / Wrapped itself around a yield sign / Well the sign didn’t break, It didn’t come out the ground /And the string stayed wrapped around it / Stayed in the other end of my guitar / Held onto my guitar with one hand / I held onto the bike with the other / I made a sharp turn off the road / Luckily I didn’t go into the mountain / I went over the cliff / I was doin’ 150 miles an hour sideways / And 500 feet down at the same time / Hey, I was lookin’ for the cops / Cuz’ you know / Hey I knew that it, it was illegal / Well, I knew that that was it / I knew I didn’t have long to live in this world / And in my last remaining seconds in the world / I knew it was my obligation to write one last farewell song to the world /  Took out a piece of paper / I pulled out a pen / And it didn’t write  / I, I had to put another ink cartridge in it / I sat back and I thought a while / And it come to me / It come like a flash / Like a vision burnt across the clouds / I just wrote it down / I learnt it right away / I don’t want a pickle / Just want to ride on my motor-cicle / And I don’t want a tickle / I’d rather ride on my motor-cicle / And I don’t want to die / I just want to ride on my motor-cy-cle / Hey, I, you know / I knew it wasn’t the best song I ever wrote / But I didn’t have time to change it / But you know the most amazin’ thing was that I didn’t die / I landed on the top of a police car….and it died / I come into town, I come into town at a screamin’ 175 miles an hour / Singing my new motorcycle song / I stopped out front of the deli / And out in front of the deli was a man eating the most humungous pickle / A pickle the size of four pregnant watermelons / Just a huge monster pickle / He walked up to me, pushed the pickle in my face and started asking me questions / It was about the same time I noticed the pickle in my face / I noticed a cord hangin’ from the long end of the pickle / Goin’ up his sleeve down his shirt, into his pants and shoes / Out into a briefcase he had near his feet / I knew it wasn’t an ordinary pickle / But it was about the same time I noticed the cord hangin’ out of the pickle / That a four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun / A cop that one time musta been around six foot three / But was met at the bottom of a mountain / By a flyin’, singin’ writin’ weirdo freak / He walked up and with one tremendous hand / He grabbed the pickle away from the other guy / He threw it, a hundred feet, straight up in the air / And while the pickle was half way between going up and coming down / He took out his gun and put a three inch bullet hole / Right through the long end of the pickle / It started comin’ back down / He stuck out his foot / He caught the pickle on his big toe / And balancing the pickle on his big toe / He reached his huge hand into his little pocket / Pulled out a 10 foot ticket / He borrowed my pen / He wrote it up / Then he rolled it up / And stuffed it in the bullet hole in the middle of the pickle / Took the pickle with the ticket / And shoved it down my throat / It was at that very moment that the pickle with the ticket was goin’ down my throat / That I knew for sure that, that I didn’t want a pickle / I don’t want a pickle / Just want to ride on my motor-cicle / And I don’t want a tickle / I’d rather ride on my motor-cicle / And I don’t want to die / Just want to ride on my motor-cy-cle.” Pure Arlo magic, man!

Anyway I also taped the last five songs off this greatest hits album, which were from the aforementioned albums I had not heard. Coming Into Los Angeles was, as noted earlier, on the Running Down The Road album (1969), and was probably our first encounter with Arlo’s genius. Accompanied as it was on the Woodstock film with images of dope smoking, it clearly is all about getting some or other drug into the US – I think the “couple of keys” he was bringing in were quantities of some sort of drug, but will have to consult Songfacts.

Well it doesn’t seem to be covered there, but let’s get a look at the lyrics. The song itself is, I feel, too heavily overlaid with an insistent lead guitar which dominates the vocals. It is never-the-less an Arlo classic, full of disapprobation of the police and authority in general. “Coming in from London / From over the pole / Flying in a big airliner / Chickens flying everywhere around the plane / Could we ever feel much finer?” And you know what? That’s the first time I’ve ever really got the words to that first verse. Chickens on the plane! Then that chorus: “Coming into Los Angeles / Bringing in a couple of keys / Don’t touch my bags if you please / Mister Customs Man.” Hey, like I’m not paranoid, I just don’t won’t you busting me, so lay off, man. “There’s a guy with a ticket to Mexico / No, he couldn’t look much stranger / Walking in the hall with his things and all / Smiling, said he was the Lone Ranger.” Then the chorus, before verse three: “Hip woman walking on a moving floor / Tripping on the escalator / There’s a man in the line / And she’s blowing his mind / Thinking that he’s already made her.” That one used to get us. In my mind I transferred the hip adjective, meant no doubt to describe the hip way in which she was attired, to a description of how she walked, those hips swaying about so much she battled to keep her footing on the old escalator. And then the fact that she’s having such an effect on a guy whose mind she’s blowing as he imagines “making her”. It’s all a bit of light-hearted fun, I suppose, but it seemed to take on a far more significant role at that time, when the “war” on people using drugs was generally interpreted by the youth as a war by the authorities on their freedom of expression.

Among the all-time greats from that Best Of album has to be Last Train, from the Last Of The Brooklyn Cowboys album (1973), which is clearly one of his all-time greats. Here is Arlo the songwriter in his prime, all those positive genetic and learned influences – nurture and nature – coalescing in songs of great beauty and power. I’m fairly sure that the magnificent acoustic guitar lead on the track is by Ry Cooder, while again the backing vocals are superb, the perfect foil to Arlo’s voice. “I want to hop on the last train in the station / Won’t need to get yourself prepared / When you’re on that last train to glory / You’ll know you’re reasonably there.” Like the other train-based songs Arlo did, it is the sense of moving on, of travelling through open vistas, which captivates one. “Maybe you ain’t walked on any highway / You’ve just been flyin’ in the air / But if you’re on that last train to glory / You’ll know you’ve paid your fare.” There is empathy here for the down and outs, shades of Hobo’s Lullaby. “Maybe you’ve been lying down in the jailhouse / Maybe you’ve been hungry and poor / Maybe your ticket on the last train to glory / Is the stranger whose been sleeping on your floor.” Then there is a little dig at Dylan’s Man Of Constant Sorrow. “I ain’t a man of constant sorrow / I ain’t seen trouble all day long / We are only passengers on the last train to glory / That will soon be long, long gone.” And only now does it dawn on me – that this song has religious connotations. Are we talking that final journey to heaven, perhaps? “I want to hop on the last train in the station / Won’t need to get yourself prepared / When you’re on the last train to glory / You’ll know you’re reasonably there.”

Darkest Hour, also from that Best Of album, though I’ve been unable to trace it to its original album source, is another wonderful work, with Ry Cooder this time adding chirpy electric guitar support. Apart from the Dylanesque lyrics – “black Spanish hat” – Arlo’s harmonica-playing also has a familiar ring. That said, however, the song is uniquely his, and fine testimony again, to his maturation as a singer and composer. “It’s the tenth of January / And I still ain’t had no sleep / She comes waltzing in the nighttime / Made of wings / She is dressed up like a bandit / With a hundred sparkling rings / Looking for my company to keep / Coming closer to me / She doesn’t say a word / In the shadow of the carved rock tower / Where the sounds of the night / Were the only things we heard / In my darkest hour.” Now that sounds like a paradox. He’s got this woman coming to him in his slumbers, dressed like a bandit, and it’s his “darkest hour”. Why? Well, he continues: “She don’t want to hear no secrets / She would guarantee me that / She knows there ain’t no words / That can describe her / With her white silk scarves / And her black Spanish hat / She knows there ain’t no way I can deny her / Yes her blue velvet perfume / Filling up the night / The guards are all asleep / That watch the tower / The moonlight held her breast / As she easily undressed / In my darkest hour.” Arlo, how you taunt us! “Her father’s in his chambers with his / Friends all gathered ’round / They are plotting their enemy’s demise / With their last detail done / They await the coming sun / While I am staring in my lover’s eyes / Her brothers and her sisters / Are all through for tonight / Pretending that they’ve just / Come into power / But she far most of all, knows that they / Can only fall / In my darkest hour.” It is a tale of romance and intrigue, but where does it end? “Hungry wings; their melodies / While my love awakens me / In the midst of the sunburst first light / Her hands are holding up the skies / As I hid my opened eyes / Every move just for herself / And that’s so right / Soon I went along my way / With no words that could explain / As she began descending to the tower / Her safety now concerns me / Her circumstance to blame / In my darkest hour.” And there he leaves it, on a knife-edge. Beautiful!

Then, also on the Best Of album, another classic, The Last To Leave, from the album, Arlo Guthrie (1974). By this stage I was in my last year of school, and Arlo had largely been overtaken for us by other sounds, other influences, other demands. But thank heavens I caught up with this song, which is again simply beautiful, with Arlo unusually, using strings along with those rich backing vocals on this requiem-like song. But what was it about? “Lonely sunshine, days come easy, / Spend my time alone at rest, / And if I were the last to leave here, / Now would these roads be any less?” Again, it is the travel image which gives this song its ineluctable impetus, and it is reiterated in the chorus. “Oh, I’m the last to leave. / Now would these ribbon highway roads / Be less wonderful to me? / Why must I always be so slow?” Like all of us, especially when you’re young and unsettled, there is a need, a prerequisite, to move on, to explore. “Many friends come and go, / You know there’s a lot of feelings that I’ve left behind, / And it’s a lonely world, I know, / When your friends are hard to find.” Now the song becomes almost biblical. “But take the time, my memory fails, / And soak my eyes in the morning rain, / Like a sailor, sailing over Jordan, / On the road back home again.”

I’ll have to leave Arlo here, in his prime. There are no doubt many, many equally important and moving songs that I’ve missed out on. But that’s life. What is certain though is that we were privileged, again, to be at our most receptive to new forms of musical expression at just the moment when Arlo burst upon the scene. Those spoken story songs, along with his many beautifully crafted ballads, made Arlo Guthrie one of the brightest stars in a firmament that seemed to be filling to bursting point.