Why “Alice’s Restaurant” is the perfect Thanksgiving carol

On By Littum

Thanksgiving has generally resisted the consumerism of most major holidays — as if corporate America has a tacit agreement to leave at least this one day alone. Stores don’t sell Thanksgiving decorations, Thanksgiving cards are rarities, and singers don’t record Thanksgiving songs.

Except for one.

If there were to be an exception, “Alice’s Restaurant” (okay, technically “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”), the whimsical 18 ½-minute ballad by Arlo Guthrie, whose namesake died last week, is the perfect candidate. It’s a countercultural anthem for a holiday that has practically become countercultural in its stubborn resistance to commercialization.

Like the original Thanksgiving story, the song is set in Massachusetts (at least in part). It was based on a actual event that took place in Stockbridge on Thanksgiving in 1965. And it really involved a restaurateur named Alice: Alice Brock, who died in a Wellfleet hospice on Thursday at the age of 83.

For those who haven’t heard the song, we won’t spoil the plot of the story it tells. It involves trash, 8×10 photos, the Vietnam War — and of course, a Thanksgiving meal that can’t be beat. Browse musty old records at a departed hippie’s estate sale and you’ll likely find a copy of the 1967 LP, which shows Guthrie naked except for a hat and bib.

After it became a cult classic, the song was an unwelcome burden for Brock—though she eventually warmed to its legacy. It’s now a staple of radio stations on Thanksgiving Day – because really, what else are they going to play?

Guthrie’s song also became an anti-war favorite, and the places it mentions have become unofficial historical landmarks in Stockbridge. (Guthrie eventually bought the church in the song.)

After closing his restaurant — which was actually called the Back Room — Brock ran two other restaurants in the Berkshires, then moved to Provincetown in the late ’70s.

“I rented a small apartment by the water with a shoebox full of quarters, and I started drawing and painting. I was in heaven,” she wrote of her arrival in Provincetown. She spent the rest of her life there as an artist and ran a gallery.

Since the news of her death, most of the tributes have focused on what the song is: funny, sometimes sharp, catchy.

But just as remarkable and worth appreciating is what “Alice’s Restaurant” is not. It’s not juicy. It is not smooth. It wasn’t exactly commercial either, far too long to be played on the radio any day but today.

In other words, it’s in keeping with the anti-consumerist spirit of Thanksgiving. Brock may never have intended to help inspire the soundtrack to millions of people’s holidays. But she did, and the holidays are the best for it.

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