Restaurant owner Alice Brock immortalized by popular Arlo Guthrie song ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ dies at 83
Massachusetts restaurant owner, Alice Brock, who was immortalized by a popular Arlo Guthrie song, has died at the age of 83.
Brock died in a hospice on Thursday in Wellfleet from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, her caretaker Viki Merrick told The New York Times.
She was best known for Guthrie’s 1967 antiwar song Alice’s Restaurant, a Thanksgiving staple classic-rock production.
In the 18-minute song, Guthrie sings ‘you can get anything you want’ at Brock’s restaurant and rambles a recounting of a visit to her restaurant the Back Room in Western Massachusetts for Thanksgiving dinner one year.
In the lyrics, Brock cooked a big meal for Guthrie and his friend Rick Robbins the day before they appeared in court for littering; Guthrie sings about how he and Robbins left trash in a ravine.
Brock, who bailed the men out, even helped the songwriter write the first half of the song.
Massachusetts restaurant owner, Alice Brock, who was immortalized by a popular Arlo Guthrie song, has died at the age of 83
‘We were sitting around after dinner and wrote half the song,’ she previously said.
After the song’s release, the restaurant owner became a bit famous herself and people began to recognize her from it.
‘I was very uncomfortable because public figures are not really treated with much respect,’ she told WAMC Northeast Public Radio in 2014. ‘Once your name is in the paper, people feel that they can go: “Oh, are you Alice? Turn around,” like they want to see my behind or something.’
Guthrie performed the song at the 1967 Newport Folk Festival and it was also the title track off his first album.
Despite her short dose of fame, Brock put her energy into the restaurant business and tried other established.
But she closed up her last one in 1979 before she moved to Provincetown in Cape Cod, where she took painting as a career.
However, the restaurateur couldn’t fully escape the fame Guthrie’s song brought and she eventually leaned into it.
‘I resented it for a long time, she told the radio station. ‘But I’ve come to realize now that people are just delighted when they hear my name, so how can I complain?’
Brock was originally from Brooklyn, New York, where she was born Alice May Pelkey in late February 1941 to a real estate mom and a printmaker father, according to The Times.
She had a short stint at Sarah Lawrence College
