NEW YORK — Alice Brock, whose Massachusetts-based eatery helped inspire Arlo Guthrie’s deadpan Thanksgiving standard, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” has died at age 83.
Guthrie wrote that she died in Provincetown, Massachusetts, her residence for some 40 years, and referred to her being in failing health.
The chorus was a tribute to Alice — whose restaurant, Guthrie pointed out, was not actually called Alice’s Restaurant — that countless fans have since memorized:You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant / You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant / Walk right in it’s around the back / Just a half a mile from the railroad track / You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.
“Alice’s Restaurant” was the title of his million-selling debut album, and the basis of a movie and cookbook of the same name.
Her honor was immortalized by Guthrie, who late in “Alice’s Restaurant” advised: “You can get anything you want” at Alice’s Restaurant, “excepting Alice.”
Persons:
Alice Brock, Arlo, ”, Guthrie, ” Guthrie, “ Alice, we’d, Alice May Pelkey, Brock, Sarah, Ray Brock, Arlo Guthrie, Angela Weiss, Woody Guthrie, Richard Robbins, Alice —
Organizations:
Records, Democratic Society, Sarah Lawrence College, Greenwich Village, Getty, Stockbridge School, Police, Guthrie Center
Locations:
Massachusetts, Provincetown , Massachusetts, New York City, Greenwich, New York, US, Bethel , N.Y, Stockbridge, Vietnam, it’s, Stockton