admin
NEW YORK — Alice Brock passed away at the age of 83. Her Massachusetts restaurant served as the inspiration for Arlo Guthrie’s sardonic Thanksgiving classic, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.”
Guthrie revealed her passing on his own Rising Son Records’ Facebook page on Friday, only one week before Thanksgiving. She passed away in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she lived for about 40 years, according to Guthrie, who also mentioned that her health was deteriorating. Additional information was not immediately available.
Guthrie wrote, “This Thanksgiving will be the first without her.” “A few weeks ago, Alice and I had a phone conversation, and she sounded just like herself. Despite knowing that we would never have another opportunity to speak, we joked around and shared a few good giggles.
A lifelong dissident, Brock was born Alice May Pelkey in New York City and belonged to several groups, including Students for a Democratic Society. She married Ray Brock, a carpenter who urged her to leave New York and relocate to Massachusetts, after leaving Sarah Lawrence College in the early 1960s and relocating to Greenwich Village.
Guthrie, the son of renowned folk performer Woody Guthrie, first encountered Brock in 1962 while he was a student at Massachusetts’s Stockbridge School, where she served as the school librarian. After he left school, he stayed with her and her husband at the converted Stockbridge church that became the Brocks’ primary residence, and they remained friends.
Guthrie’s detention, subsequent escape of military service during the Vietnam War, and a song that has lived as a protest standard and holiday favorite all sprang from a simple assignment on Thanksgiving Day, 1965. Unable to locate an open dumpster, Guthrie and his friend Richard Robbins ended up throwing the rubbish down a hill while assisting the Brocks with their trash disposal. A seemingly little infraction with serious consequences, police accused them of illegal dumping, momentarily imprisoned them, and fined them $50.
Suggested
By 1966, Guthrie was a growing artist and Alice Brock was running The Back Room restaurant in Stockbridge. His breakthrough song, an 18-minute talking blues, described his imprisonment and how it disqualified him from the draft. Numerous admirers have since committed the chorus to memory as a tribute to Alice, whose establishment, as Guthrie noted, was not truly named Alice’s establishment:
Alice’s restaurant is located just half a mile from the railroad track and offers everything you could ever want. You can walk right in and find anything you want there.
Guthrie thought his song was too long to be financially successful, but it quickly became a radio staple and a cultural icon. His first record, “Alice’s Restaurant,” sold millions of copies and served as the inspiration for the same film and cookbook. In addition to working with Guthrie on a children’s book called “Mooses Come Walking,” Alice Brock would write a memoir titled “My Life as a Restaurant.” They had been talking about a tribute show at her old Stockton house, now the Guthrie Center, which hosts free Thanksgiving feasts, at the time of her passing.
Although Brock would later admit that she didn’t initially care much for cooking or business, she operated three distinct restaurants at different points in time. In addition, she would deny reports that she had cheated on her spouse and blame the dissolution of her marriage on her work life. Guthrie memorialized her honor by advising, late in “Alice’s Restaurant,” that “you can get anything you want” there, “except Alice.”
