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Rolling Stone
Where are the Chickens?
(Rolling Stone, 1970-10-15)
New York - "You suck!" shouted the drunk kid. "Yes, I do," replied Alice Cooper, laughing. Alice proceeded to crouch down on the stage and began chanting softly into the mike, "Suck, Suck, Suck." But the kid really hated Alice, and like a perfect straight man screamed, "You still suck!" Alice swaggered over in his black tights, tank top and white high-heeled slingback shoes. When he got closer to the kid, he pulled up on his metal belt as suggestively as he could and let it snap back. At that point two bouncers pulled the kid out. Alice cordially waved goodbye....
Love It To Death
(Rolling Stone, 1971-04-15)
(It came on the radio in the late afternoon and from the first note it was right: Alice Cooper bringing it all back home again. God it's beautiful - it is the most reassuring thing that has happened in this year of the Taylor Family...) Ever since they ceased to be the Nazz, a fairly normal Yardbirds/Who derivation in the manner of Count V, and became instead Frank Zappa's vision of American youth's sexual uncertainties gone beserk, Alice Cooper have endured more than their fair share of abuse from such redoubtables as Rolling Stone in general and L. bangs in particular, this in spite of the fact that their stageshow, clumsy and heavy-handed though it usually has been, represents at least a modest oasis in the desert of dreary blue-jeaned aloofness served up in concert by most American rock and rollers....
Alice Cooper's Nice Party
(Rolling Stone, 1971-08-19)
You and a guest are cordially invited to attend the summer season debut of Alice Cooper, to be held at the Venetian Room, Ambassador Hotel, 3400 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, the evening of Wednesday, July 14th, 8:30 PM to midnight. Formal dress or equivalent costume is requested, but hardly mandatory....
News Report
(Rolling Stone, 1971-09-30)
They give good copy: Alice Cooper has arranged for construction of a life-sized working gallows, including a trap door that traps. The gallows will be part of the boys' stage act and is being built at Warners' movie lot....
Killer
(Rolling Stone, 1972-01-06)
Like all true rock superstars to rise from the Sixties, Alice Cooper is a consummate master of image manipulation. He continually sees to it that new configurations are born in his studiedly outrageous stage persona and the spirit-force of his sound, with the end in mind of putting both himself and his audience through a steeplechase of changes and keeping everybody alert at gut level. Whether the myth has much at all to do with Alice Cooper the man behind the role is highly debatable, but even if it's mostly fiction if doesn't matter that much anyway. ...
News Report
(Rolling Stone, 1972-03-02)
Hollywood Notes: Alice Cooper wound up a triumphant national tour with a gold record presentation at Warner Bros. in Burbank. The whole group, including pet boa Cochina, gathered in the office of Executive VP Joe Smith for the official photo session, only to learn that the gold plaques for Killer hadn't arrived from the plant. So if you ever run across a picture of the presentation, look real hard and you'll see what they grabbed as the last minute, from a pile of gold plates in an adjoining room: Jimi Hendrix's Rainbow Bridge. . ....
Gold Diggers of 1984
(Rolling Stone, 1972-03-30)
"We're going to feed Chichita now," Neal announced. "You shouldn't miss it." No, you never want to miss the sight of a boa constrictor having dinner. Two or three live mice. In the well-lit cage, a grey mouse nosed around the coiled snake - a ponderous ballet - (the mouse didn't even know it was coming) - the snake held fast - the mouse looked her in the eye - even went up and smelled her real close - kissed her!...
School's Out
(Rolling Stone, 1972-09-28)
The question before us is whether Alice Cooper is a threat to civilization itself or merely to our beloved rock & roll. Both parents and kids commonly see Alice as eroding the former, which they respectively deplore and celebrate. Alice is variously an actor, rocker, comic, madman and exorcist, the culmination of rock's subversive tendencies. This is the reputation he carefully nurtures. What School's Out confirms is what I have long suspected; that Alice's profusion of roles are themselves self-canceling; that as a cultural assassin he is quite harmless....
Alice Cooper's Beer Bottle Polka
(Rolling Stone, 1973-01-04)
The director of operations on the Alice Cooper tour, a native of Los Angeles, walked the streets of Paris in a bright blue felt jacket with fancy white piping, trying to decide where to have lunch in the world's premier city of food. He settled on McDonald's - there is a McDonald's hamburger installation in Paris. He ordered a Big Mac....
70 Years After: George Burns Taps Cigar, Discovers R&R
(Rolling Stone, 1973-03-29)
New York - At a press conference two days before his Philharmonic Hall singing debut, George Burns was asked about rumors that Alice Cooper would also be taking part in the program that already boasted Jack Benny as MC....
Check Your Guillotine, Sir?
(Rolling Stone, 1973-04-12)
Philadelphia - Extravagantly colored in shades of the Rolling Stones, Three Dog Night and Neil Diamond, the 1973 Alice Cooper tour burst forth from Rochester, New York, early in March for a three-moth, 56-city assault on North America....
Inside Alice
(Rolling Stone, 1973-05-10)
"Alice is such an American name. I love the idea that when we first started, people used to think Alice Cooper was a blonde folk singer. "The name started simply as a spit in the face of society. We decided on it in about 1968: With a name like Alice Cooper we could make 'em suffer....
Billion Dollar Babies
(Rolling Stone, 1973-05-24)
Concerning Alice Cooper, it is by now axiomatic that any new album is intended only as the soundtrack of the latest extravaganza. But even considered as a soundtrack, Billion Dollar Babies seems an abortion. The extended numbers (one around which the stage skits revolve) are the most abrasive. Rather than following Cream's formula of presenting a tight skeleton on vinyl that can be expanded on stage, the Cooper troupers insist upon acting this soundtrack concept out to the bitter end....
News Report
(Rolling Stone, 1973-06-21)
20/20 News: Alice Cooper told a press conference at the Cocoanut Grove in L.A. that the group spent $32,000 on beer last year. And he said he's planning to market his own line of men's makeup, called Whiplash . . ....
Tolling the Take
(Rolling Stone, 1973-07-05)
New York - "All I have for you now is approximations. The office is overrun by bald little guys in blue suits who are going over the books. They say they'll have the exact figure in about a week." Speaking was Shep Gordon, manager of Alice Cooper, two days after the Madison Square Gardens concert which was supposed to be the last stop on the 56-city tour which, it was predicted, would gross $4.5 million....
Liza with a Z Meets Alice With a C
(Rolling Stone, 1973-11-08)
New York - The sounds of a thousand strings, one mother of a synthesizer and (in there somewhere) a four-piece hard rock band engulf the solitary figure of Liza Minnelli standing in the emptiness of Studio A at the Record Plant, half a block from the heart of the Broadway theater district....
News Report
(Rolling Stone, 1974-01-03)
Modeling prisoners: Glen Buxton, Neal Smith, Dennis Dunaway, Mike Bruce and Alice staged a jail break at an abandoned New York police station for a film to promote Muscle Of Love on BBC. Also included in the mini-drama: Alice Playten, who did an impression of Mick Jagger in the National Lampoon's Lemmings show, playing the part of Tatum O'Neal....
Alice Cooper: The Motor Cools Down
(Rolling Stone, 1974-01-17)
The Alice Cooper phenomenon, which began with the chart entry of "I'm Eighteen," rose to diabolical heights with Killer and School's Out and extravaganzaed in the show surrounding the Billion Dollar Babies, has now cooled itself down with Muscle Of Love. While the album contains several highlights and wild-card experiments, its mood reveals that both the group and Alice are uncertain of what new directions they might turn to their own uses. This isn't necessarily bad; it was only a matter of time before they fully eroded the twin themes of horror-movie outrage and teenage rebellion/identification. B...
Alice Bombed in Toledo
(Rolling Stone, 1974-01-31)
Toledo - Pelted by fireworks and debris, Alice Cooper recently walked off their "Holiday Show" at the Toledo Sports Arena. According to Ashley Pandel, Cooper's publicist, "Alice felt if they continued, there could be another Altamont."...
Alice Cooper: Death on TV
(Rolling Stone, 1974-07-04)
Calgary, Alberta - Hanging parties, along with vigilante mobs and saloon shoot outs, belong to the raunchy, rugged frontier past of this city. It took Alice and his traveling execution show to teach the local kids a few rope tricks. Details of what apparently were Cooper-inspired hanging parties surfaced last month at a coroner's inquest into the death of a 13-year-old boy who was found swinging from a sturdy length of hemp in his bedroom closet. ...
News Report
(Rolling Stone, 1975-01-02)
Revised Alice Cooper bulletin: We reported last issue that Alice's band was not splitting. In fact, the band has at least temporarily disintegrated for Alice's next album, Welcome To My Nightmare. Internecine rumblings sprouted from Chicago columnist Bob Greene's book, Billion Dollar Babies, covering the group's winter tour 1972-1973. Greene tells us Alice "was scared and upset about what he was doing . . . falling apart." Manager Shep Gordon says, "It's a beautifully written book, but so many things are taken out of context." As to the band's rumored crackup: "Everybody has decided well before the tour was over to do solo projects." Meanwhile, Alice attended the November 30th wedding of new guitarist Dick Wagner (former Lou Reed crony) to Elizabeth "Lizard" Marsh of Grosse Ile, Michigan. Alice served as best man. Also in attendance, Alice's other new sidemen: Steve Hunter, Prakash John and Penti Glan, along with Grand Funk Railroad and estranged manager, Terry Knight. The Grosse Ile ceremony was not civil but the guests were. ...
News Report
(Rolling Stone, 1975-02-27)
A huge worldwide tour will carry Alice Cooper and his new sidemen, Steve Hunter, Dick Wagner, Prakash John, Penti ("Whitey") Glan and Jozef Chirowsky to Australia, Japan, Brazil, Canada and across the United States beginning April 1st after three weeks of rehearsal in L.A. Alice LP, Welcome To My Nightmare, cut in Toronto, will serve as the soundtrack for a TV production of session clips and the tour, which is said to include all manner of glitzy rigmarole, from orbiting mirrors to chorus girls....
News Report
(Rolling Stone, 1975-03-27)
When are the dead babies and flayed chickens of yesteryear? Down on the unemploment line like everybody else. Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare tour/show will feature six-foot black widow spiders instead of the aforementioned meat. Two dancers in spider suits will caper about a 12' x 20' web suspended across the stage by a pair of conical aluminum towers while Alice wails from a giant bed at center stage. Cooper's manager Shep Gordon, says, "It's just like a cheap Japanese horror movie." ...
No More Mr. Horror Show Droog
(Rolling Stone, 1975-07-31)
It was April Fool's Day in Chicago and the interpreter for the Soviet Olympic Wrestling team had just managed to get a spontaneous round of applause from Alice Cooper's entourage for his very spirited impersonation of an America rock & rollnik in frenetic pelvic abandon. ...
Alice Cooper in Tahoeland: Welcome to a Tired Nightmare
(Rolling Stone, 1976-01-29)
Lake Tahoe, Nevada – As Alice Cooper pulled into the Sahara Tahoe, it was clear that he had finally hit the big leagues....
Billon Dollar Babies Concert Review
(Rolling Stone, 1977-09-08)
ALICE DOESN'T LIVE here anymore; the Billion Dollar Babies do!" read the sign in the white tile dressing room below Pontiac Stadium...
Alice Cooper's bad Joke
(Rolling Stone, 1979-05-03)
The main problem with Mad House Rock, Alice Cooper's latest heavy-metal/vaudeville extravaganza, is that there isn't anything slightly mad about it. The new show, which jokes about Cooper's much-publicized stay in a psychiatric ward for treatment of alcoholism (ha-ha), is full of bits Cooper fans have come to expect, including an "electrocution," a Cyclops, giant dancing liquor bottles and a frantic silent movie that Cooper runs in and out of. But everything is so calculated and so passionless, one finds himself actually wishing for the considerably juicier cartoon heroics of Kiss....
Random Notes
(Rolling Stone, 1989-00-00)
"I love the old Hollywood stunt," says shock rocker Alice Cooper of his decision to promote his album Trash by storming through various American cities aboard a garbage truck. A poetic idea, perhaps, but the plan hit a snag in one Texas town when officials vetoed the loan of a truck. "Can you imagine?" Cooper asks. "Is that the absolute insult of all time? They thought that me being inside their trash truck would be, like, bad for their image." The town finally relented and gave Cooper use of the truck - but only after he forked over a cool million in insurance. "I guess they were afraid we'd get it dirty," he says. Cooper is on tour in support of the album - which was recently certified platinum - and, although he says the current show is less theatrical than past outings, he hasn't abandoned all his old toys: The guillotine, he says, is back by popular demand. ...
Alice Cooper: Healthy, Wealthy and Dry
(Rolling Stone, 1989-07-13)
Alice Cooper can't figure out why his pals Steven Tyler, Joe Perry and Jon Bon Jovi - all of whom worked on the shock rocker's forthcoming album Trash - continue to live in the chilly Northeast. "I kept saying, 'Guys, you don't understand,' " says Cooper. " ' When you make a lot of money, you go to someplace warm.' " Cooper has lived in Arizona on and off since his family moved their in the Fifties. In fact, hot afternoons at Phoenix's Cortez High inspired his hit anthem of rebellion "School's Out." After leaving to pursue his rock & roll career in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, Cooper returned to Phoenix for good in 1984. "It was kind of a dramatic move back," he says, "because I had just finished my thirteen-year alcoholic career in Los Angeles. To me the Hollywood social scene was nothing but drinking and partying every night." ...
News Report
(Rolling Stone, 1991-00-00)
Being rock's reigning ghoul guru has its perks. For the title track of his new release, Hey Stoopid, ALICE COOPER enlisted the guitar-slinging support of SLASH and the vocal wail of OZZY OSBOURNE. "I wanted Slash on it for a real nasty feel," says Cooper. "And because the songs is basically an anti-teen-suicide song, I thought it was poetic justice to have Ozzy sing on it. I thought it was a great way to vindicate him."...
Last Temptation Album Review
(Rolling Stone, 1994-07-14)
If you went to high school in the '70s, Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen" and "School's Out" became part of your life. Cooper dirges like "Desperado" and "Muscle Of Love" used dense Black Sabbath rumbling to rock in ways no '80s or '90s art-metal band has matched. On the other hand, the psychedelic back-up vocals in Soundgarden's "Spoonman" prove just how much Whitesnake-era grunge owes the Watergate-era kind. So it's no surprise to find Soundgarden howler Chris Cornell, not to mention sometime Sonic Youth and White Zombie producers Don Fleming and Andy Wallace, working with Alice now....
Greatest Summer Songs Of All Time
(Rolling Stone, 1998-07-09)
"Between May and June, 'School's out' is the national anthem," Alice Cooper says proudly of his enduring hard-rock classic, which hit Number Seven on the Billboard charts in the summer of 1972 and still racks up serious seasonal airplay. Back when Marilyn Manson was toddling, the pioneering shock-rock god was making outrageously theatrical, gender-bending music - and looking for a hit. "When we wrote the song, I said, 'What is the one moment that's the happiest, most exhilarating moment of the year?' " Cooper recalls. " 'It's when the clock is one minute to three on the last day of school, and then it finally goes click. That's what I wanted to capture for three minutes on this record. I want this to be like an anthem.' There wasn't Anybody who didn't love that last minute of school - it was like the anticipation and then, at the end, like the orgasm that school is out." ...
News Report
(Rolling Stone, 2000-05-25)
Alice Cooper's first studio album in six years, Brutal Planet is out on June 6th. Cooper will hit the road for a tour from August through October, during which he'll be bringing his infamous guillotine out from a ten year retirement....
News Report
(Rolling Stone, 2001-09-27)
Alice Cooper's new album, Dragontown, is due out October 9th...
100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time
(Rolling Stone, 2003-09-18)
Buxton was a gifted mimic whose ability to unlock the guitar secrets of his Stones and Yardbirds 45s gave a Phoenix garage band the breathing room to develop into Alice Cooper, His dirty, elemental leads wrapped around Michael Bruce's meaty riffs to create a legacy of exemplary hard rock. Essential Recording: "Eighteen", Love It To Death (1971)...
The Singles
(Rolling Stone, 2003-11-27)
OutKast, "Hey Ya!" Rolling Stone says: Andre 3000 leaves hip-hop behind with a weird funk-rock shout-out. Cooper: My favorite record out of all of 'em. I think it's so unique that a black act can sound like Cheap Trick with a little bit of Frank Zappa. Every time OutKast make a record, I'm interested. The Strokes, "12:51" R: Shabbily fashionable New Yorkers strike a balance between garage-rock venom and New Wave style. Cooper: I always mention the Strokes when I talk about our new album, because we went total garage on the new one. I like that these guys point back to early Stooges, MC5 and Alice Cooper. ...
Alice Cooper: Photographed by Annie Leibovitz
(Rolling Stone, 2004-09-30)
"That was our snake, not Annie's," says Alice Cooper. "Her name was Kachina. I was actually afraid of snakes, but I figured that Alice should have one. We were about looking at your fears."...
500 Greatest Songs of All Time
(Rolling Stone, 2004-12-09)
Before "I'm Eighteen" Cooper was just another hairy rock oddball. But this proto-punk smash defined the age when, in Cooper's words, you're "old enough to be drafted but not old enough to vote." Years later, Johnny Rotten sang this at his audition for the Sex Pistols; by then, Cooper was a guest on The Muppet Show....
Alice's Wonderland
(Rolling Stone, 2006-05-18)
"What an ugly cover." Such was the overwhelming reaction among Rolling Stone staff to Annie Leibovitz's 1972 image of Alice Cooper lasciviously canoodling with pet boa constrictor Kachina. "Back then, everybody was peace and love, and we were not that at all." says Cooper. "We were the villains or rock." Cooper's shows were full of dead babies, staged hangings and fake blood, and he was always upfront about his primary goal: to make a buck....
[Alice on Syd Barrett]
(Rolling Stone, 2006-08-10)
In Los Angeles, during an engagement at the Cheetah, the Floyd were befriended by the club's house band: the future Alice Cooper, then called the Nazz. "Pink Floyd basically ran out of money - they didn't have any place to stay," says singer Alice Cooper....
Alice Cooper: Pete Townshend
(Rolling Stone, 2010-12-09)
"The Who were almost like a dominatrix who inflicted the show on the audience — that definitely influenced me," says Alice Cooper, describing his admiration for the London rockers. "Pete's the best stage guitarist I've ever seen — the best showman, conveying the pure spirit of rock & roll. And he's still up there with his fingers bleeding to this day."...
Welcome 2 My Nightmare Review
(Rolling Stone, 2011-09-29)
On 1975's Welcome to My Nightmare, Alice Cooper largely traded in high school parking-lot hard rock for fright-show theater; it had bruising moments, but also self-parodying schmaltz. Welcome 2 My Nightmare is its sequel, so we get recurring bad-dream rockers...
High Times with Alice Cooper
(Rolling Stone, 2015-07-16)
Dennis Dunaway — bassist for the Alice Cooper band from 1968 until Cooper became a solo act in 1975 — has collected his wildest tales for a new memoir, Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs! My Adventures in the Alice Cooper Group...