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Arlo Guthrie
Arlo Guthrie's career began with the 1967 release of Alice's
Restaurant, an album whose title song-the longest ever recorded until that
time-helped define a new generation of social consciousness and
activism.In 1969 the singer starred in the film version of Restaurant, directed by Arthur Penn. But the song and movie were by no means the only defining moments in a career spanning thirty years and more than twenty albums. Arlo Guthrie went on to score hits with "Coming in to Los Angeles," a favorite at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, and with his definitive rendition of Steve Goodman's "City of New Orleans." Mr. Guthrie also launched his own record company, Rising Son Records. His most recent release, Mystic Journeys, contains nine new songs, and marks his first studio album in ten years. In addition, he has re-released many of his old Warner Bros. records on Rising Son, distributed by Koch.
Arlo says, "I was born in Coney Island-Brooklyn, New York, in the summer of 1947, with a guitar in my hands." The son of Marjorie Guthrie and folksinger Woody Guthrie (who succumbed to Huntington's disease in 1967), Arlo has calmly and good-naturedly dodged the expectations that couldn't help but follow the son of such a legend. Through the years, Arlo learned from the masters-not just his father, but other regular Guthrie house guests such as Pete Seeger and Leadbelly-and found a style of his own, one that made him a distinctive figure in the crowded community of singer/songwriters during the 1960s. It was during that decade that Arlo graduated from high school in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and entered college in Billings, Montana. In the fall of 1965 he returned to the Berkshires for a Thanksgiving visit with his friends Alice and Ray, who lived in the old Trinity Church. The rest is history. In 1991 Arlo purchased the old church, which, after a series of owners, had fallen into disrepair. The church now houses the Guthrie Center, the Guthrie Foundation (both named for Arlo's father), and Rising Son Records. The Guthrie Center is a non-profit interfaith church foundation that assists people living with AIDS and HIV. The Guthrie Foundation supports the Woody Guthrie Archives and is developing projects geared toward the exchange of cultural values: music, health care alternatives and religions among them. In October 1997 the New York-based Huntington's Disease Society of America inaugurated its Woody Guthrie Award by presenting it to Arlo. Mr. Guthrie is making his Boston Pops debut in the 1998 season.