"When Alice Comes Back to the Farm" is a rock-blues song recorded by The Move and written and sung by Roy Wood. Musically, it is a hard rock song and features Wood playing slide guitar, cello and baritone saxophone, reinforcing Rick Price's bassline.
Background and recording.
A potential B-side, an untitled "10538 Overture", recorded on 12 July 1970, ended up being used by the members as the first Electric Light Orchestra single rather than the B-side.
Two weeks prior, Wood had bought a "cheap Chinese cello" for 15 pounds and had messed around with the instrument, with the recordings later being used for both "10538 Overture" and "When Alice Comes Back to the Farm".
The genre itself is a mix of proto-glam rock and early heavy metal, with influences from blues as well. The song shows similar instrumentation to the band's previous single, "Brontosaurus".
Release.
Taken from the 1970 album "Looking On" and released as a single on the Fly label, "Alice" and "Looking On" failed to chart, with "Alice" not charting largely due to lack of airplay by BBC radio stations, despite an appearance on Top of the Pops. The song allegedly made mild references to cannabis—"Alice", "time for tearing out the weeds", and the last line "don't get around much anymore", which is a description of the singer's condition rather than a reference to the Duke Ellington song.
It was released around the same time as T. Rex's hit single Ride a White Swan, with both singles released in the Fly label. In English-speaking countries (Austria, Ireland, United Kingdom and New Zealand), the B-side was "What?", but in Austria and Germany, a "Move" track "Kilroy Was Here" was instead opted as a B-side.
Personnel.
The Move
Additional personnel
References.
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