Alice's Restaurant

Arlo Guthrie

CHORUS:

You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant

You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant

Walk right in, it's around the back

Just a half a mile from the railroad track

You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant

RECITATION:

This song is called "Alice's Restaurant." It's about Alice, and the

restaurant, but "Alice's Restaurant" is not the name of the restaurant,

that's just the name of the song. That's why I call the song "Alice's

Restaurant."



Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago... two years ago, on Thanksgiving,

when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant.



But Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the

restaurant, in the bell tower with her husband Ray and Facha, the dog.



And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of room downstairs

where the pews used to be, and havin' all that room (seein' as how they took

out all the pews), they decided that they didn't have to take out their

garbage for a long time.



We got up here and found all the garbage in there and we decided that it'd

be a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump.



So we took the half-a-ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW

microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, and headed

on toward the city dump. Well, we got there and there was a big sign and a

chain across the dump sayin', "This dump is closed on Thanksgiving," and

we'd never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in

our eyes, we drove off into the sunset lookin' for another place to put the

garbage.



We didn't find one till we came to a side road, and off the side of the side

road was another fifteen-foot cliff, and at the bottom of the cliff was

another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile was better than

two little piles, and