“The Motorcycle Song” by Arlo Guthrie

"The Motorcycle Song" rode in on Alice's Restaurant, Arlo Guthrie's 1967 album, and it's a folk talking blues played strictly for laughs. Guthrie wrote it, Fred Hellerman produced with Al Brown assisting, and the whole gag hangs on the rhymes: Guthrie bends his pronunciation until a pickle, a tickle and not wanting to die all come out rhyming with motorcycle.

He never quite let it go, either. A stretched-out version turned up on 1968's Arlo, with Guthrie explaining the significance of the pickle and the story behind the song, and decades later it was still growing, into "The Motorcycle Song-an Education" on 2005's Live in Sydney and "The Unbelievable Motorcycle Tale" on 2009's Tales of '69, each telling taller than the last.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.