Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant came out in 1967 and being a student of Delta Blues, what appealed to me was the structure of the melody. I played it a lot at jam sessions, although I never got more than about 10 minutes into the song, although like many of the concept albums of the day, I knew most of the lyrics.
This was such a clever song and story, starting as you might remember “This song is called Alice’s Restaurant, and it’s about Alice, [pause] and the restaurant, but Alice’s Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that’s just the name of the song, and that’s why I called the song Alice’s Restaurant.” There was also a movie. The whole movie is here on YouTube. Here is the trailer.
I love a good story. Anyway, 1975 was the era when there were amazing concerts in Albert Park on a Sunday. I saw so many great bands and gigs there with my friends. The talent at the time was awesome, the sun was hot and the music was free.
Sometimes we would get there early and watch the ‘bible bangers’ and engage in some light banter with them. But that is the topic of another chapter, which includes a nasty beating (not me, but a close friend of mine) by a group of Head Hunters and how I became an unintended guru for a short period of time.
Here are a couple of my best friends from back in the day with one of the preachers, who could be seen on many a street corner in Auckland on Sundays from the Britomart bus station to the fountain in Albert Park, which was a speaker’s corner.
So back to Albert Park. Sundays involved catching the bus or often walking from home in Ponsonby. Being there early we would usually get pretty close to the front of the concrete area in front of the stage.
The bands included Blerta, who would arrive on their bus and play some awesome music, Dance All Around World would have to be a favorite.
Others of the day included Hello Sailor, The Dudes, Street Talk with Hammond Gamble, and Marc Hunter’s Dragon whose house our Richmond Rd house backed onto at one stage, and who sometimes used our school for practice sessions.
Anyway, one evening a few of us went to a house in Grey Lynn where an interesting assemblage of people was talking about making movies, drawing storyboards, and discussing storylines. There was a guy called Wally who played some nice blues, and we had a bit of a jam.
His style was a lot like Mississippi John Hurt, one of the artists whose style I had cut my teeth on when I was about 15, after a family friend Mike loaned me a TAB book of his songs. More on that later, when I went on a Blues Pilgrimage with Charmaine and visited his home in Avalon MS.
I made up a small series of videos about going to visit John Hurt’s home and in this video, which is also a little about my journey with prostate cancer. On it, I play one of the songs I learned back when I was 15 from the book of Delta Blues. I was amazed later when I bought his album Memories, I think from the World Record Club and he almost played it as well as me. OK sorry, that was a Dad joke. He was a legend.
Back to that house in Grey Lynn, a suburb on the outskirts of Auckland, which back then was an awesome community of mostly students and Pacific Islanders. The rents were pretty cheap back then. Today it is a very upmarket suburb.
There were a few musicians there, and the man who was leading the storyboard discussion was Bruno Lawrence, who should need no introduction to you, being the patriarch of Blerta, the family, and the band.
Another person who happened to be there was Tim Shadbolt. Tim was saying that he had a slot coming up at one of the Albert Park Sunday concerts, and he was wondering what he was going to talk about, not that he needed a topic, he was a master of adlib oratory. This will give you an idea.
We protested against the Vietnam War and other things that worried us as young people. I had friends who were facing the draft.
Many people thought of Tim and many of us, as the f***wit fringe, but he was, in fact, a skilled orator, witty, intelligent, and with a calling, which he followed through with, first railing against the system, then realizing that we are the system and going into politics, being elected as Mayor over the years of two New Zealand cities.
So back to Alice’s Restaurant. I just happened to be playing the theme on the guitar at this point in the discussion, and I suggested to him that he could weave a story around the tune. People there would recognize it and see the humor in his story woven around the theme tune. Tim agreed it would be a fun idea, and he asked if I would be keen to play the guitar while he did his oratory. Well, he didn’t have to ask me twice, I was in.
So I came to find myself playing this theme for probably about 20 minutes while Tim entertained the crowd with a story, which included many of my friends, lounging on the grass laughing and cheering as he preached his Bullshit and Jellybeans philosophy that we had grown up with.
I can’t remember who the band was that headlined that day, it might have been Blerta. I do remember it was a popular one as there was an above-average-sized audience of maybe a thousand people. At the end of our spot, Tim thanked me and I joined my friends in the audience to soak up the rest of the afternoon.
We weren’t friends, although I saw Tim often in those days, at Auckland University, at friends’ homes, and at protest marches, such as the battle to bring our soldiers home from Viet Nam.
Some years later when I was a Civil Defence Rescue Team Leader in Waitemata City Council, the first Auckland council to have one, Tim was Mayor of the city at the time. I was really impressed at how he had tried to change the system as a student and rebel, protestor, and subsequently became a leader in the system.
I don’t recall how it came about, but one day in the council building I happened to see his diary for the coming week and I was super impressed to see how busy he was. On an average day, he seemed to have 15-20 events to go to from meetings to opening buildings and speaking opportunities. I don’t think many people were aware of how hard he worked.
Today many people feel he is past his use-by date, but he has certainly served New Zealand in office for decades and has served New Zealand well IMHO.
