The real Alice of Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ dies at 83

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The hippie-era icon who inspired folk singer Arlo Guthrie’s epic, anti-establishment song “Alice’s Restaurant” has died. Alice Brock suffered from health issues, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and passed away at a hospice home in Wellfleet on Thursday. She was 83.

Brock’s longtime close friend Viki Merrick was with her when she died. Merrick said up until the end Brock remained poetic, hilariously funny, and full of puns. “That’s the way Alice has always been.”

The timing of Brock’s passing is poignant. It’s long been a Thanksgiving tradition for radio stations across the country to broadcast Guthrie’s 18-minute spoken word ramble that made “Alice” famous.

On Facebook, Guthrie remembered his friend as “a no-nonsense gal, with a great sense of humor.” The musician wrote that they spoke on the phone a couple of weeks ago, and added, “This coming Thanksgiving will be the first without her.”

In a 2020 interview, Brock recounted how she became “the living-legend, Earth Mother, Alice of ‘Alice’s Restaurant.’” In the ’60s she was chef-owner of The Back Room in the Berkshires. But an unfortunate trash dumping incident that originated in Brock’s home inspired Guthrie to write his song.

She was busy preparing a Thanksgiving feast in her house — which was a deconsecrated church, just like in the song — and Guthrie wanted to help out by disposing a heap of garbage. When he and a friend discovered the city dump was closed for the holiday, they opted to chuck the refuse off a cliff.

Brock described how a real policeman called the day after Thanksgiving to sniff out the littering offender. When he asked Brock if she did the deed she said, “No, but I know who did.”

Guthrie landed in the local jail, but Brock said she bailed him out with $50 worth of quarters and foreign coins.

The musician went on to craft a satirical cavalcade of events that transpired that Thanksgiving. He called his 1967 rant, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre.” In it Guthrie intones the now famous line, “You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant.”

Brock said she got a kick out of her friend’s embellishments. The song would later be adapted into a movie, which catapulted her to unwitting fame.

She resented director Arthur’s Penn’s Hollywood depiction of a hippie’s life. “So not true,” she said in 2020. But Brock did write a spin-off cookbook that she filled with her favorite dishes, dry wit and illustrations. A tour promoting the book and movie gave her a higher profile, but also made Brock feel exploited. “Everybody had me locked into that character,” she said. “And that was not my character at all.”

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