Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” is the greatest song ever written about life in Western Massachusetts, and it’s quite possibly the greatest song ever written about life anywhere in New England. Music nerds will tell you that the song was actually released in 1967 (and the movie in 1969), but this here music nerd will tell you that the true story that inspired Arlo to write the song went down on Thanksgiving of 1965—40 years ago this year. Hence Arlo’s “40th Anniversary Celebration of The Alice’s Restaurant Massacree Tour,” which comes to Concord’s Capitol Center for The Arts on Sunday, Nov. 20. What’s more, Durham’s own Mike and Chris Merenda and their fine band The Mammals have been Guthrie’s backing band since June. Some of our own will be playing with an American Legend.

In 1995, my friend James and I rented Arlo’s movie, called “Alice’s Restaurant.” Actually, it was a dual-rental—I wanted to see Arlo Guthrie jumping up and down in his tighty-whities shouting “Kill! Kill! Kiiiiillll!!” in “Alice’s Restaurant” and James wanted to see Prussian reenactors in Stanley Kubrick’s five-hour epic bore-fest “Barry Lyndon.”  He said, “OK, we’ll get the Arlo Guthrie movie, but the deal is once we finish watching these movies, we have to drive to Stockbridge to visit Arlo.”

“Fine,” I said.

Ten hours later, in the wee hours of the morning, we pulled into Stockbridge. We asked the folks at the local diner how to get to Alice’s Restaurant, and learned it had been rechristened “Naji’s Pizza.” Imagine the disappointment: after watching the greatest movie ever made about the greatest song ever written about life in a small New England town, and after sitting through perhaps the most boring five-hour reenactor montage ever made, we find out that Alice’s was now Naji’s? Oh, the inhumanity!

We rolled into Najis around 11 a.m., and Naji himself was behind the counter selling slices. James and I ordered a couple, making sure to glare angrily at Naji with eyes that said “name changer!” We were tired. James went to the restroom. I fell asleep with a slice of pizza in my mouth. The strange hostility I felt towards Naji vanished when he came over and woke me up before I suffocated under a thick layer of cheese.

The startled pizza hero asked if I was OK. I felt ashamed, and blurted out the whole horrible truth—the video rental, the Barry Lyndon experience, the long drive, and the horror of learning that Alice’s was no more. “Goddammit, we’ve got to get Arlo on the phone,” grumbled Naji. He dialed his phone furiously, and I heard him say: “Some kids are down here looking for you. One almost died in my shop. I’m sending them over.”

It turned out Naji had only talked to Arlo’s answering machine. But he helped us find the church where Arlo lived (fans of “Alice’s Restaurant” know that this was the scene of the Thanksgiving dinner at the center of the song “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”). The great Arlo Guthrie was not at home but we smoked a cigar on his front steps, and left a note in the door saying hello, and how much we’d enjoyed his movie the night before. It was just a short note, and it didn’t involve 27 eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows on the back of each one. We didn’t mention Barry Lyndon, or the near-death experience at Naji’s.