Guthrie's best-known work is his debut piece, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree", a satirical talking blues song about 18 minutes in length that has since become a Thanksgiving anthem.

Arlo's father was from a Baptist family of English and Scottish descent; and his mother was Jewish, the daughter of immigrants from Ukraine.

[5] Guthrie received religious training for his bar mitzvah from Rabbi Meir Kahane, who formed the Jewish Defense League.

[12] On November 26, 1965, while in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, during Thanksgiving break from his brief stint in college, 18-year-old Guthrie and his friend, Richard Robbins, were arrested for illegally dumping on private property what Guthrie described as "a half-ton of garbage" from the home of his friends, teachers Ray and Alice Brock, after he discovered that the local landfill was closed for the holiday.

Guthrie and Robbins appeared in court, pled guilty to the charges, were levied a nominal fine and picked up the garbage that weekend.

[13] This littering charge served as the basis for Guthrie's most famous work, "Alice's Restaurant", a talking blues song that runs 18 minutes and 34 seconds in its original recorded version.

[15] In the song, Guthrie is called up for a draft examination and rejected as unfit for military service as a result of a criminal record consisting solely of one conviction for the aforementioned littering.

Though her presence is implied at certain points in the story, Alice herself is described explicitly in the tale only briefly when she bails Guthrie and a friend out of jail.

[1][19] Soon afterward, Guthrie recorded the song in front of a studio audience in New York City and released it as side one of the album, Alice's Restaurant.

[20] For a short period after its release in October 1967, "Alice's Restaurant" was heavily played on U.S. college and counterculture radio stations.

[21] A 1969 film, directed and co-written by Arthur Penn, was based on the true story told in the song,[1] but with the addition of a large number of fictional scenes.

The part of his father Woody Guthrie, who had died in 1967, was played by actor Joseph Boley; Alice, who made a cameo appearance as an extra, was also recast, with actress Pat Quinn in the title role.

So, after a brief period in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he replaced the monologue with a fictional one involving "multicolored rainbow roaches", he decided to do it only on special occasions from that point forward.

But in 1972 Guthrie had a highly successful single as well: Steve Goodman's song "City of New Orleans",[1] a wistful paean to long-distance passenger rail travel.

[29] Guthrie performed a concert almost every Thanksgiving weekend at Carnegie Hall from the late 1960s until 2019; he had planned to end the tradition even before his career-ending stroke.

[30] Guthrie's 1976 album Amigo received a five-star (highest rating) from Rolling Stone, and may be his best-received work.

Aside from the song Massachusetts, it also includes Victor Jara, a poignant tribute to the slain Chilean folk singer with lyrics by poet Adrian Mitchell.

[31] A number of musicians from a variety of genres have joined Guthrie onstage, including Pete Seeger, David Bromberg, Cyril Neville, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Judy Collins, John Prine, Wesley Gray, Josh Ritter, and others.

A video from a concert with Seeger at Wolf Trap in 1993 has been a staple of YouTube,[32] with Guthrie's story-telling showcased in a performance of "Can't Help Falling in Love".

[33] On October 23, 2020, Guthrie announced via Facebook that he had "reached the difficult decision that touring and stage shows are no longer possible," due to a series of strokes that had impaired his ability to walk and perform.

Special guests were Pete Seeger, Bonnie Raitt, David Bromberg and Jerry Jeff Walker.

In his often lengthy comments during concerts, his expressed positions were consistently anti-war, anti-Nixon, pro-drugs and in favor of making nuclear power illegal.

I strongly urge my fellow Americans to stop the current trend of guilt by association, and look beyond the party names and affiliations, and work for candidates whose policies are more closely aligned with their own, whatever they may be.

"[47] Guthrie expressed support for the George Floyd protests in June 2020, stating that it would be good if politicians "embraced it rather than resist the evolving nature of what it means to be an American".

He expressed irritation at having his past political views be brought up in later interviews and commented that the collapse of the groups and institutions that his parents' generation had embraced in favor of an overly individualist culture was "disheartening", but a natural progression of society.

He collaborated with poet Adrian Mitchell to tell the story of Chilean folk singer and activist Víctor Jara in song.

[56] He and second wife Marti Ladd now split time between Washington, Massachusetts in the summer and Micco, Florida in the winter.

[63] On October 23, 2020, Guthrie announced he was retiring from touring and stage shows, citing health issues, including a stroke on Thanksgiving Day 2019 which required brief hospitalization and physical therapy.

[64] On his official website and in social media, he posted, "A folksinger's shelf life may be a lot longer than a dancer or an athlete, but at some point, unless you're incredibly fortunate or just plain whacko (either one or both) it's time to hang up the 'Gone Fishing' sign.