Alice Brock, the inspiration for the Arlo Guthrie anti-war song "Alice's Restaurant" died Thursday at the age of 83, Guthrie announced on his Rising Son Records label Facebook page.
Brock's Massachusetts-based eatery is the setting for the folksy, rambling 18-minute tune based on his real-life arrest that began at Brock's restaurant and has become a staple of baby boomers making road trips to family gatherings during Thanksgiving.
"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."
Guthrie, the son of folk musician Woody Guthrie, first met Brock in 1962 when he was a student at Stockbridge School in Massachusetts and she was the librarian.
On Thanksgiving Day in 1965, Arlo Guthrie and his friend Richard Robbins were helping Brocks throw out trash but ended up tossing it down a hill because they couldn't find a dumpster. Police then charged the pair with illegal dumping, which resulted in a $50 fine and brief jail time.
The misdemeanor was enough to label Arlo Guthrie with a criminal record, making him ineligible for the draft, according to the song's lyrics.
Arlo Guthrie assumed his song was too long to be a commercial hit, yet soon became a staple of pop 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.
Born Alice May Pelkey in New York City, Brock was a fixture in the anti-establishment movement and a member of Students for a Democratic Society, among other organizations. In the 1960s she dropped out of Sarah Lawerence College and moved to New York City, where she married Ray Brock, a woodworker who encourage her to relocate to Massachusetts.
James Morley III ✉
James Morley III is a writer with more than two decades of experience in entertainment, travel, technology, and science and nature.
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