“Kid, we only gotone question. Have you ever been arrested?”
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice’s Restaurant Massacre, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all the phenome… – and he stopped me right there and said, “Kid, did you ever go to court?”
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, “Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W …. NOW kid!!”
And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W’s where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me!
–Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restaurant
I didn’t have have to pay fifty dollars and pick up the garbage in the snow. I didn’t have the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossies with the cirles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what it was and how it could be used as evidence against me.
But yes sir Officer Obie, I have been arrested.