GUTHRIE, Arlo Davy

(b. 10 July 1947 in New York City), singer-songwriter and actor who recorded Alice's Restaurant, one of the most popular antiwar songs of the 1960s, and was a featured performer at the original Woodstock Festival.

Guthrie was the second-oldest child of Woodrow Wilson ("Woody") Guthrie and Marjorie Greenblatt Mazia's four children. Woody Guthrie was an Oklahoma-born singer and celebrated composer of neotraditional folk songs such as "This Land Is Your Land" and "Pastures of Plenty." Marjorie Guthrie, of Russian-Jewish descent, was a Martha Graham dancer who operated her own studio. The couple's eldest child, Cathy, died in a fire before Guthrie's birth. They had another son, Joady, born in 1948, and another daughter, Nora Lee, born in 1950.

Marjorie became the family's primary breadwinner as Woody's behavior grew increasingly irrational. In 1954 he was diagnosed with Huntington's Disease, a hereditary degenerative neurological disorder that caused him to be institutionalized until his death in 1967. Thanks to the generosity of Woody's friends, the folksingers Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, and his manager, Harold Leventhal, the Guthrie Children's Fund was founded to provide for Guthrie's education.

Guthrie graduated from high school in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1965. Deciding that his retiring personality was best suited for the outdoor life, he enrolled at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana, that fall to study forestry. He dropped out after six weeks, however, and returned to Massachusetts. There he renewed his friendship with Ray and Alice Brock, former faculty members at the Stockbridge School, who were living at the deconsecrated Trinity Church in Great Barrington. Alice ran a restaurant nearby.

By this time Guthrie had decided to follow in Woody's footsteps. He hired Leventhal as his manager and began to play folk dates, accompanying himself on guitar and harmonica. Guthrie's commercial breakthrough came with Alice's Restaurant Massacree, an eighteen-minute talking blues piece that originated as an advertising jingle for the Brocks's eatery. The song told the story of Guthrie's arrest for littering following a Thanksgiving Day dinner at Alice and Ray's church in 1965 and how his "prison record" eventually saved him from being drafted into the army and going to Vietnam. The song, a droll, ironic commentary on war and the mindless officialdom that supported it ("I was inspected… injected…and selected"), struck a chord with America's disaffected middle-class youth.

The song also appealed to an older generation of folkies and social activists, as attested by Guthrie's warm reception at the Newport Folk Festival on 16 July 1967. The album Alice's Restaurant, released in late September (two weeks before Woody's death on 3 October), sold 700,000 copies. In January 1968 Guthrie performed at a tribute to Woody Guthrie at Carnegie Hall along with Bob Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez. The proceeds went to the Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease.

Established as a countercultural figure, Guthrie was a featured performer at the Woodstock Festival on 15 August 1969. The movie Woodstock (1970) shows him singing one of his best-known songs, "Coming into Los Angeles," with his patented nasal twang. His drug-inflected millennial rap to the audience ("There'll be 500,000 people here by tonight … can you dig it?) remains the most memorable portion of his performance.

Two weeks after Woodstock, the movie version of Alice'sRestaurant was released, with Guthrie in the lead role. Directed by Arthur Penn, the film, like another 1969 countercultural hit, Easy Rider, is basically an elegy to the doomed hippie dream. The sense of loss is underscored by a secondary story line involving Woody's impending death (Seeger and Hays appear in cameo roles). Guthrie was no actor, but with his curly brown locks, beatific smile, and earnest passivity, he managed to convey both the rebelliousness and idealism characteristic of the times. The film was a surprise hit and received generally favorable reviews. Meanwhile, Guthrie's appearance on the cover of Newsweek on 29 September 1969 affirmed his status as America's best-known hippie.

Guthrie's post-1960s career never scaled the commercial heights of Alice's Restaurant. In 1972 he had a hit single, "City of New Orleans," but his albums, although well received by critics, have sold poorly. Fame and adulation, however, have never been particularly important for the publicity-shy Guthrie. He maintains a dedicated cult following and tours extensively, both as a solo act and, until recently, with Seeger. The now white-maned Guthrie remains an engaging performer, frequently stopping mid-song to regale the audience with a story or joke. The highlight of his concert tour is the annual Thanksgiving Day appearance at Carnegie Hall.

In 1992 Guthrie bought the Trinity Church featured in Alice's Restaurant. It houses the Guthrie Center, a nonprofit community-service organization. He is also active in the Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease. (Guthrie and his siblings, all of whom have a fifty-fifty chance of contracting the disease, have yet to show symptoms.) His own spiritual search has led him from his Protestant-Judaic roots to Catholicism to the interfaith teachings of Jaya Sati Bhagavati Ma. Guthrie and Alice Hyde Guthrie, whom he married in 1969, live on a farm in Washington, Massachusetts. They have four children.

The record and film Alice's Restaurant and his performance at Woodstock established Guthrie as one of the era's most recognizable countercultural figures. Neither as musically prolific as Dylan nor as politically polarizing as Baez, he was nevertheless for many the embodiment of 1960s idealism. Shadowed by both his father's fame and disease, he has managed both burdens with admirable equanimity, and forged a long career as a singer, humorist, social critic, and community activist.

There are no biographies of Guthrie. For information about Guthrie's life and career, see articles in Newsweek (29 Sept. 1969) and Rolling Stone (3 Mar. 1977 and 6 Sept. 1979), as well as Guthrie's commentary on the DVD version of Alice's Restaurant (2001), and in his "Official Autobiography" at <www.arlo.net>.

Rubil Morales VÁzquez