Alice Brock, whose Massachusetts restaurant helped inspire Arlo Guthrie’s deadpan standard for Thanksgiving“Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”, has died at the age of 83.
Guthrie announced the death on the Facebook page of his own label Rising Son Records.
“This next Thanksgiving will be the first without her,” Guthrie wrote. “Alice and I spoke on the phone a few weeks ago, and she sounded like her old self. We joked and laughed even though we knew we would never have the chance to speak together again.”
Guthrie wrote that she died in Provincetown, Massachusetts, her residence for some forty years, and spoke of her failing health. He did not say what the cause of death was.
Born Alice May Pelkey in New York, Brock was a lifelong rebel who was a member of the Students for a Democratic Society, among other organizations. In the early 1960s, she dropped out of Sarah Lawrence College, moved to Greenwich Village, and married Ray Brock, a carpenter who encouraged her to leave New York and settle in Massachusetts.
Guthrie, son of famous folk musician Woody Guthrie, first met Brock around 1962, when he was attending the Stockbridge School in Massachusetts and she was a librarian. They became friends and remained in touch after he left school, when he stayed with her and her husband in the converted church in Stockbridge which became the Brocks’ main residence.
On Thanksgiving Day 1965, a simple chore led to Guthrie’s arrest, his eventual avoidance of military service in the Vietnam War, and a song that has remained a protest classic and holiday favorite. Guthrie and his friend Richard Robbins were helping the Brocks throw out the trash, but ended up throwing it down a hill because they couldn’t find an open dumpster. Police charged them with illegal dumping, briefly jailed them, and fined them $50, a seemingly minor offense with major repercussions.
In 1966, Alice Brock was running The Back Room restaurant in Stockbridge, Guthrie was a rising star, and his signature song was an 18-minute talking blues that recounted his arrest and how it made him ineligible for the draft. The chorus was a tribute to Alice – whose restaurant, Guthrie pointed out, was not actually called Alice’s Restaurant – which countless fans have since memorized:
“You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant / You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant / Just walk in the back / Just a half mile from the train tracks / You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant.”
Guthrie thought his song was too long for commercial release, but it quickly became a radio staple and part of popular culture. “Alice’s Restaurant” was the title of her million-selling debut album and the basis for a film and cookbook of the same name.
Alice Brock would write a memoir, “My Life as a Restaurant,” and collaborate with Guthrie on a children’s book, “Mooses Come Walking.” At the time of his death, they were discussing an exhibit dedicated to him at his former Stockton home, now the Guthrie Center, which serves free dinners every Thanksgiving.
Brock ran three different restaurants at different times, although she would later admit that at first she didn’t have much interest in cooking or business. She also reportedly cites her professional life as the cause of the breakdown of her marriage, while disputing rumors that she was unfaithful to her husband.
His honor was immortalized by Guthrie, who later in “Alice’s Restaurant” said, “You can get anything you want” at Alice’s Restaurant, “except Alice.”
