Alice Brock photographed in the 1970s. She lived in Provincetown for the last several decades. (Photo by Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Boston Globe / Boston Globe via Getty Images
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.
Alice Brock in her small Provincetown cottage in 2020. (Andrea Shea/WBUR)
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.
Alice Brock and Mel Wax talk in the KQED Newsroom circa December, 1969 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Robert Altman/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Robert Altman / Getty Images
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.”
The Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
Jesse Costa
Brock owned three different restaurants in Western Massachusetts between 1965 and 1979, including Take-Out Alice and Alice’s at Avaloch. The old church where she lived in Great Barrington is now the Guthrie Center, an interfaith worship and live performance venue.
Brock grew up in Brooklyn, but said her family spent summers in Provincetown where her father ran a shop. She fell in love with the idea of living by the sea.
“There are all these pictures of me happy, happy, happy just wearing a pair of underpants,” Alice recalled in 2020. “I think I didn’t wear a bathing suit until I was about 12. But that’s the way it was here.”
After leaving the Berkshires about four decades ago, Brock made a new life for herself as an artist and children’s book author in Provincetown. There she met Dini Lamot, who together with his husband Windle Davis founded the 1970s and ‘80s new wave band Human Sexual Response.
“I was starstruck,” Lamot recalled in 2020. “I would hear about all the stuff she did for all the people she took in, and just the food she made for everybody, and her generosity.”
According to Lamot, Brock was always helping others and taking in wayward souls. She also supported the gay community in Provincetown during the AIDS epidemic.
In 2020, Alice fell on financial hard times due to her failing health. So Lamot and Davis organized a GoFundMe campaign that rapidly raised $180,000-dollars. Friends and strangers contributed, and Alice was humbled by the outpouring of kind words and donations. At the time she wrote:
“To all the very dear kind and generous folks who chipped in to my GoFunMe page. It went over the top and I am overwhelmed by the response. The comments that people wrote are heartwarming and I hope I don’t get a swelled head. Everyone has a story and I appreciate you sharing yours with me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Peace and Love to All, Alice”
Back in 2020, Alice said she didn’t expect to live longer than two more years. But she managed to last four — and was able to stay near the water — as she always wanted.
Merrick, who used to work at one of Brock’s Berkshires restaurants, said Alice is survived by her chosen family of friends who will plan a celebration of her life. And you can bet it’ll be a feast that would make “the Alice” proud.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
