Arlo Guthrie says he’s retired from touring
In lengthy posts on his Facebook page and website, 73-year-old folksinger Arlo Guthrie announced Friday he is retiring from performance immediately. He’s canceled numerous shows he had planned around the country for the next year and said he won’t be booking any more. “It’s been a great 50-plus years of being a working entertainer, but I reached the difficult decision that touring and stage shows are no longer possible,” he said in the statement titled “Gone Fishing.” Guthrie did not respond to messages asking him to elaborate but indicated in his statement that health issues played a major role. He said he’d suffered two strokes in recent years, including a serious one last year.
The son of folk music legend Woody Guthrie rose to overnight fame in 1967 with the release of “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” a hilarious 18-minute talking blues ballad about how his Thanksgiving Day 1965 arrest for littering kept him out of the Army during the Vietnam War.
As he finger-picked a maddeningly memorable tune over and over on his acoustic guitar, Guthrie related how he’d mocked the local police chief who arrested him, appeared before a blind judge who couldn’t see the photos submitted as evidence against him and berated his draft board for concluding he “wasn’t moral enough to join the Army and burn women and kids’ houses and villages after being a litterbug.” Guthrie’s recorded more than 30 albums, written several children’s books and has occasionally appeared on TV and in films. The singer, who frequently declined to play “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” for audiences over the years, had planned to perform it at next year’s shows.
After recovering from his second stroke in 2019, Guthrie was back on his feet this year when the coronavirus pandemic struck. He estimated Friday he’d recovered about 80% of his health by then, but following months of idleness from the road, he decided it was time to stop.
In July he released a new song, “Hard Times Come Again No More,” and indicated Friday that his retiring doesn’t mean he’ll go away completely.
“In fact, I hope to be a thorn in the side of a new administration pretty soon,” he said in a veiled reference to President Donald Trump.