Alice Brock, who helped inspire Arlo Guthrie’s classic ‘Alice’s Restaurant,’ dies at 83

NEW YORK — Alice Brock passed away at the age of 83. Her Massachusetts restaurant served as the inspiration for Arlo Guthrie’s sardonic Thanksgiving classic, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.”

Guthrie revealed her passing on his own Rising Son Records’ Facebook page on Friday, only one week before Thanksgiving. She passed away in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she lived for about 40 years, according to Guthrie, who also mentioned that her health was deteriorating. Additional information was not immediately available.

Guthrie wrote, “This Thanksgiving will be the first without her.” “A few weeks ago, Alice and I had a phone conversation, and she sounded just like herself. Despite knowing that we would never have another opportunity to speak, we joked around and shared a few good giggles.

A lifelong dissident, Brock was born Alice May Pelkey in New York City and belonged to several groups, including Students for a Democratic Society. She married Ray Brock, a carpenter who urged her to leave New York and relocate to Massachusetts, after leaving Sarah Lawrence College in the early 1960s and relocating to Greenwich Village.

Guthrie, the son of renowned folk performer Woody Guthrie, first encountered Brock in 1962 while he was a student at Massachusetts’s Stockbridge School, where she served as the school librarian. After he left school, he stayed with her and her husband at the converted Stockbridge church that became the Brocks’ primary residence, and they remained friends.

Guthrie’s detention, subsequent escape of military service during the Vietnam War, and a song that has lived as a protest standard and holiday favorite all sprang from a simple assignment on Thanksgiving Day, 1965. Unable to locate an open dumpster, Guthrie and his friend Richard Robbins ended up throwing the rubbish down a hill while assisting the Brocks with their trash disposal. A seemingly little infraction with serious consequences, police accused them of illegal dumping, momentarily imprisoned them, and fined them $50.