WNEW | Where Rock Lives

Video Classics: 'Alice's Restaurant'

To honor WNEW's legendary Firecracker 500, every day we are highlighting the music that populated the 1991 and 1996 lists, with classic videos, live performances and little-known facts about the songs and how they came to be...

The song for which Arlo Guthrie shall forever be remembered, Alice's Restaurant is a rock masterpiece that come in on the Firecracker 500 at spot ... um ...

... all right, so Alice's Restaurant comes nowhere near the WNEW Firecracker 500 on either the 1991 or 1996 lists. But it still holds a special place in WNEW history.

18-and-a-half minutes in the performing, Alice's Restaurant is a rambling musical narrative of an outrageous story (true, though embellished somewhat for the song) that began on Thanksgiving Day, 1965. As for the details of the story, you'll have to listen to the song (if you don't know them by heart already), but suffice to say that it became a counterculture anthem (and the entire A-side of Guthrie's 1967 debut album). It also became a Thanksgiving tradition at WNEW.

Because the song is so long, it rarely receives airplay. Because of the subject matter, DJs and program directors found that the one time of the year they could justify playing it was Thanksgiving Day. After this was done for the second year in a row, it qualified as a 'tradition' in the minds of fans, and woe betide any who broke it.  Stories are still told of the one year in which a WNEW program director, looking to 'overhaul' the station, ordered that Alice's Restaurant not be played on Thanksgiving. He left no holiday forwarding number, and when the station switchboard was flooded with outraged traditionalists wondering where the song was, the on-air DJ had to make an emergency call to the station manager on his holiday to authorize the tradition being restored.

In the end, the station manager's Thanksgiving got interrupted, Alice's Restaurant got played, the fans got satisfaction, and the program director got an earful on Monday. WNEW.com won't make the same mistake he did, and therefor we offer up a link to a 2005 live performance of Alice's Restaurant in all its uncut glory. Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving from WNEW!

Have memories of this song or the Firecracker 500? Add your thoughts to the comments below or take a look at Video Classics past...

A.M. Nuggets: WNEW at Farm Aid Tomorrow; Listen Live From 2:00-11:00

Farm Aid 2008 kicks off tomorrow at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA and WNEW.com will be there to capture all the homegrown goodness. Our partners in crime WZLX-FM in Boston will be on the scene broadcasting live all day long starting at 2:00pm ET. Click here for the link to listen live.
A few words about Farm Aid from the organizers:

Farm Aid’s mission is to build a vibrant family farm-centered system of agriculture in America. Farm Aid artists and board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews host an annual concert to raise funds to support Farm Aid’s work with family farmers and to inspire people to choose family-farmed food. Since 1985, Farm Aid has raised more than $30 million to support programs that help farmers thrive, expand the reach of the Good Food Movement, take action to change the dominant system of industrial agriculture and promote food from family farms.

This year's performers include the "four horsemen" listed above, plus Kenny Chesney, The Pretenders, moe., Arlo Guthrie, Jerry Lee Lewis, Steve Earle, Nation Beat, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Jakob Dylan and The Gold Mountain Rebels, Danielle Evin, Jamey Johnson, Jesse Lenat, Will Dailey, One Flew South and The Elms.