Arlo Guthrie mourns passing of Cape Cod friend, Alice Brock, of ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ fame

A Massachusetts octogenarian at the center of folk singer Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving classic “Alice’s Restaurant” has died.

Alice Brock, a longtime Provincetown resident and the “Alice” who inspired the 1967 Thanksgiving song, died on Thursday, Guthrie announced in a social media post through Rising Son Records, his music label based in Great Barrington. She was 83.

“Alice went into the restaurant business and I began my years as an entertainer. We were, both in our own ways, successful. As well as being a restauranteur, Alice also became an author, and an artist. We worked together on various projects. During the next few decades we remained friends while our lives kept us busy. She was a no-nonsense gal, with a great sense of humor. ... This coming Thanksgiving will be the first without her,” Guthrie wrote.

Brock lived in Provincetown for more than four decades. Guthrie wrote that the two met in 1962 when she was the school librarian at The Stockbridge School in Stockbridge, where he was a student. There, he also met another student, Rick Robbins, who would become a lifelong friend.

The song pays tribute to Alice, and is about a 1965 Thanksgiving visit to Alice, who lived in Stockbridge Trinity Church while running The Back Room Restaurant nearby.

“Alice’s mother, Mary Pelky, bought the church in June of 1963 and gave it to Ray & Alice who began transforming it into a home,” Guthrie wrote. “After the school year, my brother and I, along with Rick and a few others spent the summer with Alice and her husband, Ray on Martha’s Vineyard where they ran the Youth Hostel in West Tisbury. Alice always loved being on the Cape. It was home.”

For the next couple of years, “friends would gather at the church from time to time, play some music, and generally enjoy a loose network of like minded people,” he wrote. “Then it all changed.”

“Rick & I went to visit Ray & Alice for Thanksgiving in 1965. The rest is history,” Guthrie wrote.

He wrote that he and Alice spoke by phone a couple of weeks before her death, “and she sounded like her old self.”

“We joked around and had a couple of good laughs even though we knew we’d never have another chance to talk together,” he wrote.

“This year we get to add one more to those whose life we celebrate - An important one,” Guthrie wrote. “Alice was a lifelong friend.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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