Today in Music (1969): Arlo Guthrie “Alice’s Restaurant” charted

Alice’s Restaurant Arlo Guthrie

Writer(s): Arlo Guthrie (see lyrics here) Released: October 1967 (album cut) First Charted: December 13, 1969 Peak: 97 BB, 12 CL, 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, -- world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 14.9 video, 14.10 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Arlo Guthrie, the son of famous folk singer Woody Guthrie, grew up in New York but graduated from Stockbridge School in Massachussetts in June 1965. After spending just a few weeks at a liberal arts college in Billings, Montana, Guthrie returned to the east coast to try his hand at music. He attended a gathering of friends at Alice and Ray Brock’s Trinity Church on Thanksgiving Day in 1965. He and a friend volunteered to haul off some debris from the sanctuary and dumped the trash down a hillside embankment when they found the local dump closed. After getting arrested by Chief-of-Police William J. Obanhein (aka “Officer Obie,” the “semi-exaggerated authoritarian figure gently lampooned in the song” NRR) the two men paid a $50 fee and were sentenced to pick up the garbage. Arlo paired the incident with his experience with physical and mental examinations for potential military draft in the 18 ½ minute, mostly spoken-word, comic story of “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” also known as “Alice’s Restaurant.” The “song” was anchored by the “tossed off, catchy, musical ‘advertisement’” NRR “You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.” He penned the line after learning of Alice’s plan to open The Back Room, a luncheonette in Stockbridge, NRR although it was never used to advertise the restaurant, which closed in the summer of 1966. NRR It all resulted in “one of the single funniest songs of its era.” DT The New York Times called it an “amusing but pointed spoken monologue on the vagaries of law enforcement, the selective service draft and their relation to the war in Vietnam.” NR The song “pricks a lot of hypocritical bubbles, not least of all the discovery that a convicted litterbug might not be considered moral enough to napalm women and children.” DT Resources: NRR National Recording Registry essay by Hank Reineke DT Dave Thompson (2011). 1000 Songs That Rock Your World. Krause Publications: Iola, WI. Page 154. Related Links: First posted 11/23/2025.

Today in Music (1967): The Turtles “Happy Together” hit #1

Happy Together The Turtles

Writer(s): Gary Bonner, Alan Gordon (see lyrics here) Released: January 1967 First Charted: Rebruary 3, 1967 Peak: 13 BB, 12 CB, 13 GR, 12 HR, 1 CL, 12 UK, 2 CN, 25 AU, 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 3.0 US, 0.6 UK Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 5.0 radio, 94.10 video, 467.65 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: The Turtles were only together from 1965 to 1970 and changed membership along the way, but Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman were constants. They were friends from high school days who sang in choir together. FB Their first chart entry in 1965 was a top-ten cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe.” After a pair of top-30 hits, they had several songs that barely made the Billboard Hot 100 or missed it completely before moving “away from their earlier folk-rock material towards the richer sound of ‘Happy Together.’” TB It gave them their first and only chart-topper. Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon, the bassist and drummer of the Boston area band the Magicians, wrote “Happy Together.” Gordon said the song grew out of an open string pattern that the Magicians’ guitarist, Jake Jacobs, used for tuning. Gordon asked Jacobs for help in co-writing the song, but Jacobs refused, thinking it was too simplistic. RC Bonner and Gordon recorded a demo at Regent Sound Studio SF and shopped it around to different bands, including the Vogues and Gary Lewis & the Playboys. TB They played it so many times that the demo was worn out and practically unlistenable. FB They approached the Turtles with it when the latter were playing at the Phone Booth, a small club in New York City. SJ They added it to their set and decided to record it once they were off the road. The “whimsical pop classic” TB has been misunderstood; even music author Dave Thompson called it “the ultimate romance.” DT However, it is actually about unrequited love. As Bonner said, it “is the fantasy of a guy obsessed with a woman who doesn’t love him.”< sup>SJ Other versions of the song to reach the chart included Tony Orlando & Dawn (#79 BB as part of a medley, 1972), T.G. Sheppard (#8 CW, 1979), Captain & Tennille (#53 BB, 1980), the Nylons (#75 BB, 1987), and Jason Donovan (#10 UK, 1991). Others to record the song include Vikki Carr, Petula Clark, Percy Faith, Melba Moore, Donny Osmond, Mel Torme, the Ventures, the Vogues, Weezer, and Frank Zappa. SF Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for The Turtles FB Fred Bronson (2003). The Billboard Book of Number One Hits (5th edition). Billboard Books: New York, NY. Page 221. RC Rod Couch (2015). The Top 500 Songs of the Rock Era: 1955-2015. Page 100. SJ Bob Shannon and John Javna (1986). Behind the Hits: Inside Stories of Classic Pop and Rock and Roll. Warner Books, Inc.: New York, NY. Page 240. SF Songfacts.com DT Dave Thompson (2011). 1000 Songs That Rock Your World. Krause Publications: Iola, WI. Page 277. TB Thunder Bay Press (2006). Singles: Six Decades of Hot Hits & Classic Cuts. Outline Press Ltd.: San Diego, CA. Page 90. First posted 9/16/2023; last updated 4/25/2024.

 

Bob Dylan “Tangled Up in Blue” released

Tangled Up in Blue Bob Dylan

Writer(s): Bob Dylan (see lyrics here) Recorded: December 30, 1974 Released (as album cut): January 17, 1975 Released (as single): January 20, 1975 First Charted: March 8, 1975 Peak: 31 BB, 43 CB, 62 HR, 2 CL, 4 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 38.5 video, 98.96 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: The early ‘70s marked a downturn for Bob Dylan, a time when “some critics declared that his genius was fading.” SS In 1975, he “returned with a vengeance [with] Blood on the Tracks…and its hit single ‘Tangled Up in Blue,’…one of the most densely layered, endlessly compelling singles to ever crack the Top 40.” SS This is Dylan at his best, “the epic, stream-of-consciousness storyteller.” SS “Tangled Up in Blue” is “a triumphant, if occasionally opaque opening to the otherwise-less-than-exuberant Blood on the Tracks.” DT The album is frequently referred to as “the divorce album,” but Dylan has denied that it was a document of his disintegrating marriage with Sara Lowndes. There are certainly self-referential details in “Tangled Up in Blue” but Dylan has also “disguised the charagers enough to remove it fro the historical to the metaphysical.” TC Ultimately the song’s message is “that we live lives governed by the winds of fate.” TC He famously said on stage once that the song took him “ten years to live and two years to write.” SS It reportedly was initially inspired by a weekend Dylan spent absorbing Joni Mitchell’s Blue album. It is marked by “one of Dylan’s most perfectly realized lyrics, and the one that he seems the least happy with.” DT “Part of the mystery of the song is the shifts in perspective as though the narrator is sometimes a protagonist and sometimes an observer, and the action takes place in the present and the past simultaneously.” TC He said, “When you look at a painting, you can see any part of it or see all of it together. I wanted the song to be like a painting.” TC It is a painting which Dylan continually retouches, considering how often he’s changed it in concert. DT He recorded it twice in September 1974 and redied it again in December. On the latter recording, folk guitarist Kevin Odegard suggested “kicking the tune up from the key of G to an A, into the higher reaches of [Dylan’s] vocal range…[which] gave the song more urgency.” SS Dylan has said the version on 1984’s Real Live is the best. TC In the end, “the details in the song are flexible. It’s the emotional core that’s constant.” TC Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Bob Dylan TC Toby Creswell (2005). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Page 469. SS Steve Sullivan (2013). Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings (Volumes I & II). Scarecrow Press: Lanham, Maryland. Pages 236-7. DT Dave Thompson (2011). 1000 Songs That Rock Your World. Krause Publications: Iola, WI. Page 217. Related Links: First posted 5/23/2024.