120796 Arlo Guthrie, Ottawa, ON

On December 7th, 1996 I saw the legendary Arlo Guthrie for the first time.  I was first introduced to Arlo by my friend Tommy Yates’ dad who, aside from being the first person I ever saw strum a real live acoustic guitar (neither well nor often, but it was still a big “wow” for me), was also a big fan of the young folkie.  Okay, he only had the Alice’s Restaurant album but that made up a good 20% of their family’s record collection (the rest were Abba and a ’50’s juke box hits record that influenced me greatly).

I can’t tell you how many times Ed and Tommy and me sat in their living room listening to the longest novelty song of all time, but none of us ever got sick of it.  That’s a good thing for me to remember as I get into the meat of this tale.

The show was in the basement “theatre” of the National Library and Archives building, nestled among Ottawa’s more well-known structures like the Parliament Buildings and the Supreme Court.  It was a medium-sized room with dentist-office ceiling tiles and about eighty folding chairs facing an imaginary stage; a lower-tiered venue if ever there was one.  Why someone of Guthrie’s notability was playing such a place was beyond me at the time, but seems less so now.  I think I was sitting in the front row, or very close to it.

The show was fine, of course.  It’s not like he was touring a new album* and setting the musical world on fire with his nonexistent new material, whilst at the same time the guy was a lifelong touring machine that knew how to put together a fun set so like I say, it was fine.  The lineup was Arlo on guitar, vocals, and long, meandering between-song banter, and his son on keyboards.

And there is the rub.

Those long, meandering tales of his were the result of decades of plying audiences and clearly they had fallen into well-rehearsed stories-by-rote.  Though I sat there listening and laughing like all the rest I simultaneously knew that I wouldn’t be able to bear hearing him tell these tales again until enough time had gone by for the stories to develop and change or for me to forget them.  And while I sat there thinking that I looked over at Arlo’s poor son, sitting at his big Korg synth politely listening and laughing at all the right spots.  

And while here he was enjoying the life of a touring musician playing behind a household name, well, I felt supremely sorry for the guy.  How painful it must have been to sit quietly at his instrument and listen to these stories night after night, forcing himself to look engaged and entertained by it the whole time.

(Well, what about Arlo? you might be asking.  Wouldn’t he be tired of hearing himself tell the same stories too?  To which I reply: being in control matters.  The driver never gets carsick.)

But now I think of me and Tommy and Ed listening wordlessly to Alice’s Restaurant Massacree for the umpteenth time, utterly transfixed.  And what is Alice’s Restaurant Massacree but an eighteen-minute story, told by rote?  No matter how many times we listened we still loved it, and we still laughed at all the right spots, every time.

I never really thought of it before, but maybe Arlo’s son was actually a big fan.  Maybe he was loving the whole experience, and maybe he couldn’t wait to get out there every night so he could hear those stories again.

Yeah, right.  He hated it.  

*Actually, he was.  He had recently purchased his entire catalogue from his old record company except they were unwilling to sell him the Alice’s Restaurant masters, as it was probably the only one of Arlo’s records making them any money.  In response Guthrie recorded a live album that copied the Alice’s Restaurant album track-by-track and note-by-note (a rather clever and respectably rebellious move if you ask me) and he was touring this “new” live album at the time.