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Originally posted by the Voice of America.
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Alice Brock, who helped inspire Arlo Guthrie's classic 'Alice's Restaurant,' dies at 83
by Associated Press
NEW YORK --
Alice Brock, whose Massachusetts-based eatery helped inspire Arlo
Guthrie's deadpan Thanksgiving standard, Alice's Restaurant Massacree,
has died at age 83.
Her death, just a week before Thanksgiving, was announced Friday by
Guthrie on the Facebook page of his own Rising Son Records. Guthrie
wrote that she died in Provincetown, Massachusetts, her residence for
some 40 years, and referred to her being in failing health. Other
details were not immediately available.
"This coming Thanksgiving will be the first without her," Guthrie
wrote. "Alice and I spoke by phone a couple of weeks ago, and she
sounded like her old self. We joked around and had a couple of good
laughs even though we knew we'd never have another chance to talk
together."
Born Alice May Pelkey in New York City, Brock was a lifelong rebel who
was a member of 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 woodworker
who encouraged her to leave New York and resettle in Massachusetts.
Guthrie, son of the celebrated folk musician Woody Guthrie, first met
Brock around 1962 when he was attending the Stockbridge School in
Massachusetts and she was the librarian. They became friends and stayed
in touch after he left school, when he would stay with her and her
husband at the converted Stockbridge church that became the Brocks'
main residence.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1965, a simple chore led to Guthrie's arrest, his
eventual avoidance of military service during the Vietnam War and a
song that has endured as a protest classic and holiday favorite.
Guthrie and his friend Richard Robbins were helping the Brocks throw
out trash but ended up tossing 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.
By 1966, Alice Brock was running The Back Room restaurant in
Stockbridge, Guthrie was a rising star and his breakout 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 -- that 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 / Walk right in it's around the
back / Just a half a mile from the railroad track / You can get
anything you want at Alice's Restaurant.
Guthrie assumed his song was too long to catch on commercially, but it
soon became a radio perennial and part of the popular culture. Alice's
Restaurant was the title of his million-selling debut album, and the
basis of a movie 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 her death, they
had been discussing an exhibit dedicated to her at her former Stockton
home, now the Guthrie Center, which serves free dinners every
Thanksgiving.
Brock ran three different restaurants at various times, although she
would later acknowledge she initially didn't care much for cooking or
for business. She would also cite her professional life as a cause of
her marriage breaking up, while disputing rumors that she had been
unfaithful to her husband. Her honor was immortalized by Guthrie, who
late in Alice's Restaurant advised: "You can get anything you want" at
Alice's Restaurant, "excepting Alice."
#alice-brock #arlo-guthrie #alices-restaurant #massachusetts #restaurant #illegal-dumping #littering #thanksgiving #hit-record #song #talking-blues #guitar
Here's the song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MihX3WbHW3E
