When Alice Comes Back to the Farm

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"When Alice Comes Back to the Farm"
Single by The Move
from the album Looking On
B-side "What?"
Released9 October 1970
Recorded1970
Genre Rock
Length3:15
Label Fly (UK)
Songwriter(s) Roy Wood
Producer(s) Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne
The Move singles chronology
"Brontosaurus"
(1970)
"When Alice Comes Back to the Farm"
(1970)
"Tonight"
(1971)

"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.

Release

Taken from the 1970 album Looking On and released as a single on the Fly label, "Alice" failed to chart, largely due to lack of airplay by BBC radio stations. 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.[ according to whom? ]

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