Alice Brock, Restaurant Owner Made Famous by a Song, Dies at 83

Arlo Guthrie’s 1967 antiwar song “Alice’s Restaurant” immortalized Alice Brock’s restaurant in western Massachusetts as the place where “you can get anything you want.” Brock passed away on Thursday in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, just one week before Thanksgiving, the holiday that serves as the setting for the song’s meandering narrative. She was eighty-three.

According to lifelong friend Viki Merrick, she passed away from chronic obstructive lung disease in a hospice.

Since its 1967 publication by Mr. Guthrie, the song—officially titled “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”—has become a standard on classic-rock stations in late November, not to mention during automobile trips to see relatives for Thanksgiving meal.

The song itself barely mentions Ms. Brock’s eatery, the Back Room. Mr. Guthrie, who spends a little over eighteen minutes talking more than singing, describes how he and a friend named Rick Robbins visited Ms. Brock and her husband, Ray Brock, for Thanksgiving dinner.

A shaggy-dog tale follows: Mr. Robbins and Mr. Guthrie take garbage to the city landfill, but when they discover it is closed, they abandon it in a ravine. They are arrested by the police for trash the following morning, and Ms. Brock is forced to free them.

She prepares a large lunch for them all that evening, and when they show up in court the next day, the judge gives them a $50 fine. Due to his criminal history, Mr. Guthrie is later sent to an Army induction center, where he is exempt from the draft.

Up to the trial, Ms. Brock contributed to the song’s initial composition.

She told writer C.A. Sanders, “We were sitting around after dinner and wrote half the song and Arlo wrote the other half, the draft part.”

The song, which had the wry phrase, “You want to know if I’m moral enough join the Army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug,” was the title track of Mr. Guthrie’s first album, which was published that fall. He originally sang the song at the 1967 Newport Folk Festival.

It turned as the antiwar movement’s unofficial anthem.

Even though Ms. Brock had closed her restaurant by the time the song came out, it nonetheless made her famous. She claimed that at initially, the celebrity was unwelcome.

In 2014, she told WAMC Northeast Public Radio, “I was really uncomfortable because public figures are not really treated with much respect.” “They’re not at all. People think they can ask, “Oh, are you Alice?” after seeing your name in the newspaper. Turn around, as if they’re interested in my back or something.

Throughout the 1970s, Ms. Brock experimented with various eateries. She went to Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the point of Cape Cod, after shutting the final one, in 1979, and worked odd jobs to fund her new painting career.

She eventually accepted the fate that fame had dealt her.

She told WAMC, “I was angry about it for a long time.” “How can I complain, though, when I’ve realized that people are simply thrilled to hear my name?”

Although she liked to claim that she was conceived in Provincetown, Alice May Pelkey was born in Brooklyn on February 28, 1941. Her father, Joe, was a printer, and her mother, Mary (Dubrovski) Pelkey, was a real estate agent.

Due to her support of “unpopular political causes,” she departed Sarah Lawrence College during her second year. She met architect and sculptor Ray Brock when she relocated to Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

After getting married in 1962, they relocated to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the following year. They became friends with Mr. Guthrie, a student and the son of folk singer Woody Guthrie, while they were employed at the private Stockbridge School, where she was a librarian and he was an art teacher.

At her mother’s insistence, Ms. Brock opened the Back Room. Her mother also assisted the couple in obtaining a deconsecrated Episcopal church, which they converted into their house and which is also included in the narrative of “Alice’s Restaurant.”

 

The song served as the inspiration for a 1968 movie directed by Arthur Penn, in which Pat Quinn portrayed Ms. Brock. (Ms. Brock had a cameo and was a consultant.) Coincidentally, the day the Brocks’ divorce was formally announced coincided with the filming of a scene in which the fictional Brocks were married.

Ms. Brock leaves behind two grandkids, one great-granddaughter, two great-great-grandchildren, and her stepchildren, Becca, Jono, and Fletcher Brock.

In 1967, she shut down the Back Room, and in 1971, she sold the church. In 1991, Mr. Guthrie purchased it to use as a community action center and to hold his archives. By that time, she had relocated to Provincetown, where she made an effort to put her celebrity behind her in favor of the close-knit Cape community, which she referred to as her “chosen family.”

She authored a number of works, including as the children’s book “How to Massage Your Cat” (1985), the autobiography “My Life as a Restaurant” (1976), and the Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook (1969). She also did the illustrations for Mr. Guthrie’s 1995 book “Mooses Come Walking.”

A friend created a GoFundMe page for Ms. Brock after she battled health and financial difficulties for the past ten years; this circumstance was brought to light in a 2020 segment on the NPR show “Morning Edition.” The song’s fans swiftly opened their wallets, raising almost $170,000 in a matter of days.