Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

 Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Japanese: 戦場のメリークリスマス, Hepburn: Senjō no Merī Kurisumasu; lit. 'Battlefield's Merry Christmas'), also known as Furyo (俘虜, Prisoner of War), is a 1983 war film co-written and directed by Nagisa Ōshima, co-written by Paul Mayersberg, and produced by Jeremy Thomas. The film is based on the experiences of Sir Laurens van der Post (portrayed by Tom Conti as Lt. Col. John Lawrence) as a prisoner of war in Java (Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies) during World War II, as depicted in his books The Seed and the Sower (1963) and The Night of the New Moon (1970). It stars David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takeshi Kitano and Jack Thompson; Sakamoto also composed and played the musical score including the vocal version of the main theme "Forbidden Colours", with lyrics written and sung by David Sylvian.

The film was entered into the 1983 Cannes Film Festival in competition for the Palme d'Or. Sakamoto's score won the film a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music.

In 1942, Captain Yonoi is the commander of the POW camp in Lebak Sembada in Japanese-occupied Java. A strict adherent to the bushido code, his only connection to the prisoners are the empathetic Lieutenant-Colonel John Lawrence, the only inmate fluent in Japanese, and the abrasive spokesman Group Captain Hicksley, who repeatedly resists Yonoi's attempts to find weapons experts among the prisoners. Lawrence has befriended Sergeant Gengo Hara but remains at odds with the rest of the staff. Summoned to the military trial of the recently captured Major Jack Celliers, Yonoi is fascinated by his resilience and has him interned at the camp. Yonoi confides in Lawrence that he is haunted with shame due to his absence during the February 26 Incident, believing he should have died alongside the rebels, implying his focus on honour stems from this. Sensing a kindred spirit in Celliers, Yonoi's fascination grows into a romantic obsession.

When the inmates are made to fast as punishment for insubordination during the forced seppuku of a guard, Celliers is caught sneaking them food. They discover a smuggled radio during the subsequent investigation, forcing Celliers and Lawrence to accept blame. Yonoi's batman, realizing the hold Celliers has on him, attempts to kill Celliers in his sleep that night, but fails after he wakes up and escapes, freeing Lawrence too. Yonoi catches Celliers and challenges him to a duel in exchange for his freedom, but Celliers refuses; the batman returns and kills himself for his failure, urging Yonoi to kill Celliers before his feelings overpower him.

At the funeral, Lawrence learns that he and Celliers will be executed for the radio to preserve order in the camp. Enraged, he trashes the funeral altar and is forced back into his cell. That night, Celliers reveals to Lawrence that as a teenager, he betrayed his younger brother, long bullied for his hunchback, by refusing to spare him a humiliating and traumatizing initiation ritual at their boarding school. He describes the lifelong shame it caused, paralleling Yonoi's predicament. The pair are released by a drunken Hara after another prisoner confesses to delivering the radio. As they leave, Hara calls out in English, "Merry Christmas, Lawrence!" Although angry at Hara for exceeding his authority, Yonoi only mildly reprimands him.

Realizing that Yonoi wants to replace him with Celliers as spokesman, Hicksley confronts him and they argue about withholding information from each other. Enraged, Yonoi orders the whole camp to form up outside the barracks, including the sick bay's ailing patients, resulting in one's death. Hicksley, who refused to bring out the patients, is to be executed on the spot for his insubordination but before he can be killed, Celliers breaks rank and kisses Yonoi on each cheek. Caught between a desire for vindication and his feelings for Celliers, a distraught Yonoi collapses and is relieved of duty. The guards beat Celliers and drag him away. His sterner replacement has Celliers buried in the sand up to his neck. Yonoi sneaks into his pen and cuts a lock from his hair, moments before his death.

Four years later, Lawrence visits Hara, now a prisoner of the Allies. Hara has learned English and reveals he'll be executed the following day for war crimes. Expressing confusion over the harshness of his sentence given how commonplace his actions were among both sides of the war, he and Lawrence conclude that while the Allies officially won, morally "we are all wrong." They reminisce about Celliers and Yonoi, the latter of whom was reported to have been killed after the war, before bidding each other goodbye. As he is leaving, Hara calls out, "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence!".

David Bowie was cast as Jack Celliers after director Nagisa Ōshima saw him in a production of The Elephant Man on Broadway. He felt that Bowie had "an inner spirit that is indestructible". While shooting the film, Bowie was amazed that Ōshima had a two- to three-acre camp built on the remote Polynesian island of Rarotonga, but most of the camp was never shot on film. He said Ōshima "only shot little bits at the corners. I kind of thought it was a waste, but when I saw the movie, it was just so potent – you could feel the camp there, quite definitely." Bowie noted how Ōshima would give an incredible amount of direction to his Japanese actors ("down to the minutest detail"), but when directing him or fellow Westerner Tom Conti, he would say "Please do whatever it is you people do." Bowie thought his performance in the film was "the most credible performance" he had done in a film up to that point in his career.

It was an early international role for Jack Thompson.

The boarding school sequence was shot on location at King's College, a private high school in Auckland, New Zealand. In a shot of two students playing billiards, another boy in the room can be seen wearing a King's blazer. Other scenes were filmed in various locations around Auckland including Auckland Railway Station.

Ōshima chose Ryuichi Sakamoto after seeing his photographs in a photo book Fifty Representative Figures of Today, and without even meeting him. The film was Sakamoto's debut soundtrack just as it was his inaugural acting role. It was also Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano's debut movie acting role, having only been known up to that point as a comedian on TV variety shows in Japan.

Contrary to usual cinematic practice, Ōshima shot the film without rushes and shipped the film off the island with no safety prints. "It was all going out of the camera and down to the post office and being wrapped up in brown paper and sent off to Japan", said Bowie. Ōshima's editor in Japan cut the movie into a rough print within four days of Ōshima returning to Japan.

On set, David Bowie made a bond with his on-screen brother, James Malcolm, whom he later called his “New Zealand brother”. For one pivotal scene, Malcolm had to sing for Bowie. The next year, Bowie invited Malcolm to join him on stage at Western Springs in Auckland for the Serious Moonlight Tour, where they released a dove together as a sign of peace.

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence is the soundtrack from the film of the same name, released on 1 May 1983 in Japan and towards the end of August 1983 in the UK. It was composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also starred in the film. It was Sakamoto's first film score, though it was released several weeks after the film Daijōbu, My Friend, for which he also composed the music.

Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film has since become a cult classic, largely due to its soundtrack. For the film's soundtrack, Sakamoto won the 1984 BAFTA Award for Best Film Music as well as the 1984 Mainichi Film Award for Best Film Score. David Sylvian contributed lyrics and vocals on "Forbidden Colours", a vocal version of the main theme, "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence", both of which were released as singles. A special 30th anniversary edition, which included a second CD of tracks, was released in November 2013 in Japan. 

To download the easy alphanotes sheet music, look here. Enjoy!

Puff, the Magic Dragon

  "Puff, the Magic Dragon" (or just "Puff") is an American folk song written by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary from a poem by Leonard Lipton. It was made popular by Peter, Paul and Mary in a 1962 recording released in January 1963.

Lipton wrote a poem about a dragon in 1959, and, when Yarrow found it, he wrote the lyrics to "Puff" based on the poem. After the song was released, Yarrow searched for Lipton to give him credit for the song.

The lyrics for "Puff, the Magic Dragon" are based on a 1959 poem by Leonard Lipton, then a 19-year-old Cornell University student. Lipton drew inspiration from Ogden Nash's poem "The Tale of Custard the Dragon". The song tells the story of an immortal dragon named Puff and his playmate, Jackie Paper, as they embark on adventures in the fictional county of Honalee. As time passes, Jackie matures and abandons his childhood games, leaving Puff sad and alone.

Lipton, who was acquainted with Peter Yarrow through a mutual friend at Cornell, used Yarrow's typewriter to commit his poem to paper. He forgot about it until years later, when a friend informed him that Yarrow was seeking him out to properly credit him for the lyrics. Upon reconnecting, Yarrow shared half of the songwriting credit with Lipton, who received royalties for the song until his death in 2022. Yarrow later died in 2025.

In later performances, Yarrow changed the line "A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys" to the more inclusive "A dragon lives forever, but not so girls and boys". The original poem included a stanza about Puff finding a new playmate, but this was not incorporated into the song.

Cash Box described it as "a charming folk tune, about a magic dragon, right-up-the-vocal-alley of the remarkably successful folksters."

After the song's initial success, speculation arose—as early as a 1964 article in Newsweek—that the song contained veiled references to smoking marijuana. The word "paper" in the name of Puff's human friend Jackie Paper was said to be a reference to rolling papers, the words "by the sea" were interpreted as "by the C" (as in cannabis), the word "mist" stood for "smoke", the land of "Honahlee" stood for hashish, and "dragon" was interpreted as "draggin'" (i.e., inhaling smoke). Similarly, the name "Puff" was alleged to be a reference to taking a "puff" on a joint. The supposition was claimed to be common knowledge in a letter by a member of the public to The New York Times in 1984.

The authors of the song repeatedly rejected this interpretation and have strongly and consistently denied that they intended any references to drug use. Both Lipton and Yarrow had stated, "'Puff, the Magic Dragon' is not about drugs." Yarrow frequently explained that the song is about the hardships of growing older and has no relationship to drug-taking. He also said that the song has "never had any meaning other than the obvious one" and is about the "loss of innocence in children." He dismissed the suggestion of it being associated with drugs as "sloppy research".

In 1973, Peter Yarrow's bandmate, Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary, also defended the song's innocence in a novel way. He recorded a version of the song at the Sydney Opera House in March 1973 where he set up a fictitious trial scene. The prosecutor of the trial claimed the song was about marijuana, but Puff and Jackie protested. The judge finally left the case to the "jury" (the Opera House audience) and said if they would sing along, the song would be acquitted. The audience joined in with Stookey and at the end of their sing-along, the judge declared the "case dismissed."

Up to his death in January 2025, Yarrow maintained that the song did not reference marijuana.

In 1961, Peter Yarrow joined Paul Stookey and Mary Travers to form Peter, Paul and Mary. The group incorporated the song into their live performances before recording it in 1962. The trio's 1962 recording of "Puff the Magic Dragon" entered the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 charts on March 30, 1963, and peaked at number two, kept out of the top spot by "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March. It topped Billboard's Adult Contemporary charts. It also reached number ten on Billboard's R&B chart.^[23] In Canada, the song reached number five in April 1963.

To download the easy alphanotes sheet music, look here. Enjoy!

Turn! Turn! Turn!

 "Turn! Turn! Turn!", also known as or subtitled "To Everything There Is a Season", is a song written by Pete Seeger in 1959. The lyrics – except for the title, which is repeated throughout the song, and the final two lines – consist of the first eight verses of the third chapter of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes. The song was originally released in 1962 as "To Everything There Is a Season" on the folk group the Limeliters' album Folk Matinee, and then some months later on Seeger's own The Bitter and the Sweet.

The song became an international hit in late 1965 when it was adapted by the American folk rock group the Byrds. The single entered the U.S. chart at number 80 on October 23, 1965, before reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on December 4, 1965. In Canada, it reached number 3 on November 29, 1965, and also peaked at number 26 on the UK Singles Chart.

The lyrics are taken almost verbatim from the book of Ecclesiastes, as found in the King James Version of the Bible, (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8) though the sequence of the words was rearranged for the song. Ecclesiastes is traditionally ascribed to King Solomon, who would have written it in the 10th century BC, though modern scholarship dates its composition much later, up to the third century BC:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

The Biblical text posits there being a time and place for all things: birth and death, killing and healing, sorrow and laughter, war and peace, and so on. The lines are open to myriad interpretations, but Seeger's song presents them as a plea for world peace with the closing line: "a time for peace, I swear it's not too late." This line and the title phrase "Turn! Turn! Turn!" are the only parts of the lyric written by Seeger himself.

In 1999, Seeger arranged for 45% of the songwriting royalties for "Turn! Turn! Turn!" to be donated to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He kept 50% of the royalties for his own music and took a further 5% for the lyrics because, in Seeger's own words, "[in addition to the music] I did write six words and one more word repeated three times." Seeger's handwritten lyrics to the song were among documents donated to New York University by the Communist Party USA in March 2007.

The song is notable for being one of a few instances in popular music in which a large portion of the Bible is set to music, other examples being the Melodians' (and Boney M's) "Rivers of Babylon", Sister Janet Mead's "The Lord's Prayer", U2's "40", Sinéad O'Connor's "Psalm 33" and Cliff Richard's "The Millennium Prayer". Since Ecclesiastes is traditionally ascribed to King Solomon in the 10th century BC, the Byrds' 1965 recording of the song holds the distinction in the U.S. of being the number 1 hit with the oldest lyrics.

The song was published in illustrated book form by Simon & Schuster in September 2003, with an accompanying CD which contained both Seeger's and the Byrds' recordings of the song. Wendy Anderson Halperin created a set of detailed illustrations for each set of opposites which are reminiscent of mandalas. The book also includes the Ecclesiastes text from the King James version of the Bible.

The song was first released by the folk group the Limeliters on their 1962 album Folk Matinee, under the title "To Everything There Is a Season". The Limeliters' version predated the release of Seeger's own version by several months. One of the Limeliters' backing musicians at this time was Jim McGuinn (a.k.a. Roger McGuinn), who would later record the song with his band the Byrds and, prior to that, arrange the song for folk singer Judy Collins on her 1963 album, Judy Collins 3. Collins' recording of the song was retitled as "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)", a title that would be retained by the Byrds, though it was shortened to "Turn! Turn! Turn!" on the front cover of the album of the same name and the song became generally known by the shorter version, appearing as such on most later Byrds compilations.

In 1963 Marlene Dietrich recorded "Für alles kommt die Zeit (Glaub', Glaub)", Max Colpet's German translation of the song. Dietrich was backed by a Burt Bacharach–conducted studio orchestra, and the song was released as a single. Australian folk singer Gary Shearston also recorded a version of the song for his 1964 album Songs of Our Time, with the title "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)".

"Turn! Turn! Turn!" was adapted by the Byrds in a folk rock arrangement and released as a single by Columbia Records on October 1, 1965. The song was also included on the band's second album, Turn! Turn! Turn!, which was released on December 6, 1965. The Byrds' single is the most successful recorded version of the song, having reached number 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 charts and number 26 on the UK Singles Chart. The B-side of the single was band member Gene Clark's original composition "She Don't Care About Time".

In 2001, the 1965 recording of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

"Turn! Turn! Turn!" had first been arranged by the Byrds' lead guitarist Jim McGuinn in a chamber-folk style during sessions for Judy Collins' 1963 album, Judy Collins 3. The idea of reviving the song came to McGuinn during the Byrds' July 1965 tour of the American Midwest, when his future wife, Dolores, requested the tune on the Byrds' tour bus. The rendering that McGuinn dutifully played came out sounding not like a folk song but more like a rock/folk hybrid, perfectly in keeping with the Byrds' status as pioneers of the folk rock genre. McGuinn explained, "It was a standard folk song by that time, but I played it and it came out rock 'n' roll because that's what I was programmed to do like a computer. I couldn't do it as it was traditionally. It came out with that samba beat, and we thought it would make a good single." The master recording of the song reportedly took the Byrds 78 takes, spread over five days of recording, to complete.

Music journalist William Ruhlmann has pointed out that the song's plea for peace and tolerance struck a nerve with the American record buying public as the Vietnam War escalated. The single also solidified folk rock as a chart trend and, like the band's previous hits, continued the Byrds' successful mix of vocal harmony and jangly twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar playing. Billboard described the song as a "fascinating entry with words from the Book of Ecclesiastes and music adapted by Pete Seeger" that is "performed with respect and taste and a solid dance beat backing." Cash Box described it as a "tip-top version" of Seeger's original and said that the Byrds read "the lyrical folk item in an appropriate emotion-packed style." Pete Seeger expressed his approval of the Byrds' rendering of the song.

During 1965 and 1966, the band performed the song on the television programs Hollywood A Go-Go, Shindig!, The Ed Sullivan Show, and Where the Action Is, as well as in the concert film The Big T.N.T. Show. Additionally, the song would go on to become a staple of the Byrds' live concert repertoire, until their final disbandment in 1973. The song was also performed live by a re-formed line-up of the Byrds featuring Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Chris Hillman in January 1989. In addition to its appearance on the Turn! Turn! Turn! album, the song also appears on several Byrds compilations, including The Byrds' Greatest Hits, History of The Byrds, The Original Singles: 1965–1967, Volume 1, The Byrds, 20 Essential Tracks From The Boxed Set: 1965-1990, The Very Best of The Byrds, The Essential Byrds and There Is a Season.

The recording has been featured in numerous movies and TV shows, including 1983's Heart Like a Wheel, 1994's Forrest Gump, and 2002's In America. Following Joe Cocker's cover of "With a Little Help from My Friends", the song was the first to be played in the initial episode of the television series The Wonder Years. It was also used in a Wonder Years parody, during The Simpsons episode "Three Men and a Comic Book". In 2003, it was used in the closing sequence of the Cold Case episode "A Time to Hate" (season one, episode 7) and for the closing credits of episode 3 of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's 2017 documentary The Vietnam War.

To download the easy alphanotes sheet music, look here. Enjoy!

Alice's Restaurant

 "Alice's Restaurant Massacree", commonly known as "Alice's Restaurant", is a satirical talking blues song by singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie, released as the title track to his 1967 debut album Alice's Restaurant. The song is a deadpan protest against the Vietnam War draft, in the form of a comically exaggerated but largely true story from Guthrie's own life: while visiting acquaintances in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, he is arrested and convicted of dumping trash illegally, which later endangers his suitability for the military draft. The title refers to a restaurant owned by one of Guthrie's friends, artist Alice Brock. Although Brock is a minor character in the story, the restaurant plays no role in it aside from being the subject of the chorus and the impetus for Guthrie's visit.

The song inspired the 1969 film Alice's Restaurant, which starred Guthrie and took numerous liberties with the story. The work has become Guthrie's signature song and he has periodically re-released it with updated lyrics. In 2017, it was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The song consists of a protracted spoken monologue, with a constantly repeated fingerstyle Piedmont blues ragtime guitar backing and light brush-on-snare drum percussion (the drummer on the record is uncredited). This is bookended by a short chorus about the titular restaurant. Arlo Guthrie has used the brief "Alice's Restaurant" bookends and guitar backing for other monologues bearing the "Alice's Restaurant" name.

The track lasts 18 minutes and 34 seconds, occupying the entire A-side of the Alice's Restaurant album. Due to Guthrie's rambling and circuitous telling with unimportant details, it has been described as a shaggy dog story.

Guthrie refers to the incident as a "massacree", a colloquialism originating in the Ozark Mountains that describes "an event so wildly and improbably and baroquely messed up that the results are almost impossible to believe". It is a corruption of the word massacre, but carries a much lighter and more sarcastic connotation, rather than describing anything involving actual death.

Guthrie introduces the song as "Alice's Restaurant," noting that the restaurant itself does not call itself Alice's Restaurant. He then sings the chorus, which is in the form of a jingle for the restaurant, beginning with "You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant" twice, and continuing with directions to it before restating the slogan once more.

Guthrie recounts events that took place in 1965 (two years prior to the time of the original recording), when he and a friend spent Thanksgiving Day at a deconsecrated church on the outskirts of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which their friends Alice and Ray had been using as a home. As a favor to them, Guthrie and the friend volunteered to take their large accumulation of garbage to the local dump in their VW Microbus, not realizing until they arrived there that the dump would be closed for the holiday. They eventually noticed another pile of trash that had previously been dumped off a cliff near a side road, and added theirs to the accumulation before returning to the church for Thanksgiving dinner.

The next morning, the church received a phone call from the local police chief, "Officer Obie", saying that an envelope in the garbage pile had been traced back to them. Guthrie, stating "I cannot tell a lie" and with tongue in cheek, confessed that he "put that envelope underneath" the garbage. He and his friend drove to the police station, expecting a verbal reprimand and to be required to clean up the garbage, but they were instead arrested, handcuffed, and taken to the scene of the crime. There, Obie and a crew of police officers from the surrounding areas collected extensive forensic evidence of the litter, including "twenty-seven 8-by-10 color glossy pictures 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" amid a media circus of local media trying to get news stories on the littering. The young men were briefly jailed, with Obie taking drastic precautions to prevent Guthrie from escaping or committing suicide. After a few hours, Alice bailed them out and held another Thanksgiving dinner.

Guthrie and his friend stood trial the next day. When Obie saw that the judge relied upon a seeing-eye dog, he realized that the officers' meticulous work had been foiled by a literal "case of American blind justice", as the judge would not be able to see the evidence. Guthrie and his friend paid a fine of $50 (equivalent to $498.89 in 2024) to the court, and were ordered to pick up the garbage, in the snow.

Guthrie then states that the littering incident was "not what I came to tell you about" and shifts to another story, this one based at the Army Building on Whitehall Street in New York City as Guthrie appeared for a physical exam related to the Vietnam War draft. He tried various strategies to be found unfit for military service, including getting drunk the night before so he was hung over, and attempting to convince the psychiatrist that he was homicidal, which only earned him praise.

After several hours, Guthrie was asked whether he had ever been convicted of a crime. He nodded, began to tell his story, and was sent to the "Group W" bench to file for a moral waiver. The other convicts ("mother-rapers... father-stabbers... father-rapers") were initially put off that his conviction had been for littering, but accepted him when he added "and creating a nuisance". When Guthrie noticed one of the questions on the paperwork asked whether he had rehabilitated himself since the crime, he noted the irony of having to prove himself reformed from a crime of littering when the realities of war were often far more brutal. The officer in charge of the induction process commented, "We don't like your kind", rejected Guthrie and sent his fingerprints to the federal government to be put on file.

In the final part of the song, Guthrie explains to the live audience that anyone finding themselves in a similar situation should walk into the military psychiatrist's office, sing the opening line from the chorus and walk out. He predicts that a single person doing it would be rejected as "sick" and that two people in harmony would be rejected as "faggots", but that once three people started doing it they would begin to suspect "an organization" and 50 people a day would be recognized as "the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacree Movement". As he continues fingerpicking, he invites the audience to sing the chorus along with him "the next time it comes around on the guitar". When they do so, Guthrie claims that their singing "was horrible", and challenges them to sing it with him "with four-part harmony and feeling". Guthrie and the crowd then sing the chorus, and the song concludes.

Guthrie cited the long-form monologues of Lord Buckley and Bill Cosby, and the movies of Charlie Chaplin, as inspirations for the song's lyrics, and a number of different musicians (in particular Mississippi John Hurt) as inspirations for the Piedmont fingerstyle guitar accompaniment, noting that he took about "two seconds" to come up with the accompaniment because he wanted something easy to play mindlessly while narrating the story. The song was written as the events happened over the course of approximately one year; it grew out of a simple joke riff Guthrie had been working on in 1965 and 1966 before he appeared before the draft board (the opening was originally written as "you can hide from Obanhein at Alice's restaurant", which is how the restaurant got tied into the original story), and he later added his experience before the draft board to create the song as it is known today. Additional portions of the song were written during one of Guthrie's many stays with the English songwriter and music journalist Karl Dallas and his family in London. Guthrie sent a demo recording of the song to his father Woody Guthrie on his deathbed; it was, according to a "family joke", the last thing Woody heard before he died in October 1967. Because of the song's length, Guthrie never expected it to be released, because such extended monologues were extremely rare in an era when singles were typically less than three minutes.

"Alice's Restaurant" was first performed publicly with Guthrie singing live on Radio Unnameable, the overnight program hosted by Bob Fass that aired on New York radio station WBAI, one evening in February 1967, following a year of Guthrie honing the song at various small venues. (The exact date of the first recording has also been identified as 1966.) The initial performance was part of an impromptu supergroup at the WBAI studios that included David Bromberg, Jerry Jeff Walker and Ramblin' Jack Elliot. Guthrie performed the song several times live on WBAI in 1967 before its commercial release. By May 1967, the song had proved so popular that at one point Fass (who was known for playing songs he liked over and over again in his graveyard slot) started playing a recording of one of Guthrie's live performances of the song repeatedly; eventually the non-commercial station rebroadcast it only when listeners pledged to donate a large amount of money. (Fass subverted it and occasionally asked for donations to get him to stop playing the recording.)

"Alice's Restaurant" was performed on July 17, 1967, at the Newport Folk Festival in a workshop or breakout section on "topical songs", where it was such a hit that he was called upon to perform it for the entire festival audience. The song's success at Newport and on WBAI led Guthrie to record it in front of a studio audience in New York City and release it as side one of the album Alice's Restaurant in October 1967. Guthrie noted that the studio recording combined some of the worst elements of both studio and live recording, in that the audience chosen for the record had already heard him perform the song repeatedly, but because of the audience, he had to record the song and album in one take.

The original album spent 16 weeks on the Billboard 200 album chart, peaking at #29 during the week of March 2, 1968, then reentered the chart on December 27, 1969, after the film version was released, peaking that time at #63. In the wake of the film version, Guthrie recorded a more single-friendly edit of the chorus in 1969. Titled "Alice's Rock & Roll Restaurant", it included three verses, all of which advertise the restaurant, and a fiddle solo by country singer Doug Kershaw; to fit the song on a record, the monologue was removed, bringing the song's length to 4:43. This version, backed with "Ring Around the Rosy Rag" (a cut from the Alice's Restaurant album), peaked at #97 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #64 in Canada. Because the single did not reach the popularity of the full version, which did not qualify for the Hot 100 because of its length, Billboard officially classifies Guthrie as a one-hit wonder for his later hit "City of New Orleans".

After the release of the original album, Guthrie continued to perform the song in concert, regularly revising and updating the lyrics. In 1969, for instance, he performed a 20-minute rendition of the song that, instead of the original narrative, told a fictional story of how Russian and Chinese military operatives attempted to weaponize "multicolored rainbow roaches" they had found at Alice's restaurant, and the Lyndon Johnson administration orchestrated a plan for the nation to defend itself. A recording of this version titled "Alice: Before Time Began" was released in 2009 on the album Tales of '69 distributed by Guthrie's Rising Son Records label; another recording of this version, titled "The Alice's Restaurant Multicolored Rainbow Roach Affair", was also released on that label. In 1970, the song was used as an anthem for WBAI's sister station KPFT-FM in Houston, Texas, after that station had repeatedly been bombed by the Ku Klux Klan; Guthrie came and performed the song live after the station returned to the air following the second bombing.

It has become a tradition for many classic rock and adult album alternative radio stations to play the song each Thanksgiving. Despite its mention of the slur "faggots", radio stations generally present the song as originally recorded, and the Federal Communications Commission has never punished a station for playing it. When performing the song in later years, Guthrie began to change the line to something less offensive and often topical: during the 1990s and 2000s, the song alluded to the Seinfeld 1993 fourth season episode "The Outing" by saying "They'll think you're gay—not that there's anything wrong with that," and in 2015, Guthrie used the line "They'll think they're trying to get married in some parts of Kentucky", a nod to the controversy of the time surrounding county clerk Kim Davis.

By the late 1970s, Guthrie had removed the song from his regular concert repertoire. In 1984, Guthrie, who was supporting George McGovern's ultimately unsuccessful comeback bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, revived "Alice's Restaurant" to protest the Reagan Administration's reactivation of the Selective Service System registrations. That version has not been released on a commercial recording; at least one bootleg of it from one of Guthrie's performances exists. It was this tour, which occurred near the 20th anniversary of the song (and continued as a general tour after McGovern dropped out of the race), that prompted Guthrie to return the song to his playlist every ten years, usually coinciding with the anniversary of either the song or the incident. The 30th anniversary version of the song includes a follow-up recounting how he learned that Richard Nixon had owned a copy of the song, and he jokingly suggested that this explained the famous 18½-minute gap in the Watergate tapes.

Guthrie rerecorded his entire debut album for his 1997 CD Alice's Restaurant: The Massacree Revisited, on the Rising Son label, which includes this expanded version. The 40th anniversary edition, performed at and released as a recording by the Kerrville Folk Festival, made note of some parallels between the 1960s and the Iraq War and George W. Bush administration. Guthrie revived the song for the 50th anniversary edition in 2015, which he expected would be the last time he would do so. In 2018, at which point he decided he was too old to care about overplaying the song anymore, Guthrie began the Alice's Restaurant: Back by Popular Demand Tour, reuniting with members of his 1970s backing band Shenandoah. The tour, which features Guthrie's daughter Sarah Lee Guthrie as the opening act, was scheduled to wrap up in 2020. To justify bringing the song back out of its usual ten-year sequence, he stated that he was doing so to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the film version of the song. The tour ended in 2019 and was later confirmed to have been Guthrie's last; he suffered a career-ending stroke in November of that year and announced his retirement in October 2020.

In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, Guthrie said he believed there are such things as just wars, and that the message of this song was targeted at the Vietnam War in particular. Interviews with Ron Bennington in 2009 and NPR in 2005 describe the song not so much as anti-war but as "anti-stupidity". Guthrie considered the song as relevant in 2015 as it was in 1965, particularly in that Millennials and Generation Z were, much like the Baby Boomers of his era, beginning to coalesce as a bloc in opposition to the "very sophisticated manipulation" from major authority figures and institutions of the era, something that Guthrie believed Baby Boomers would find familiar.

Most of the events of the story are true; the littering incident was recorded in the local newspaper at the time it happened, and although Guthrie made some minor embellishments, the persons mentioned in the first half of the story all granted interviews on the subject, mostly verifying that part of the story. The second half of the story does not have as much specific corroborating evidence to support it; the public exposure of COINTELPRO in 1971 confirmed that the federal government was collecting personal information on anti-war protesters as Guthrie alleged, and Guthrie's father was known to have been on the FBI watchlists due to his Communist sympathies.

To download the easy alphanotes sheet music, look here. Enjoy!