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Alice Cooper Wins... Or Whatever Happened To Terry Knight & The Pack

Dear Alice Cooper,

There are just so many things I don't understand. Like why does my chest quiver and my fingers go wild when I hear your group play. And my big brother says they you're an ugly chick... I told him you had an old lady though. And even though my mom has burned my KILLER poster/calendar, the album still plays on. I hate my mom. Also, the picture of the snake on the cover of the album is a gas... love it.

I just don't understand why you're always dressed so weird. Why can't you be like Rod Stewart or Mick Jagger and be just sexy.

Your songs are about death and violence, I told mom, so is the Six O'Clock News. She slapped me for that. I hate her. Help me, I'm sorta mixed up.

Please accept the box I'm sending you with this note — I think you'll dig it.

Love,
Pandora

Some people think Alice Cooper (plural) should be arrested. Some think Alice (singular) should be crowned. Personally, I think Alice Cooper (plural) have become one of the most substantial and imaginative groups; they are as "da da" as The Bonzo Dog Band and as crucially set in pure rock as The Stones, The Who or the old Beach Boys. Unlike Grand Funk, The Stooges, MC5 and other Ann Arbor brothers groups, Alice Cooper is so blatantly commercial and subversively imaginative that, though their medium never changes, they are in constant competition with their last da da work. For instance, they have always worked within a certain framework when recording an album; each album varies and outdoes the last... the "Killer" album was general violence, but SCHOOL'S OUt (their new LP) centers around a young set — pre-teens, puberty, street fights and masturbating.

The bizarre look and show of the band is such that you are never sure just where they are at. And although Alice has an old lady (singular), the initial hype made it unsure to many if he was a he or an it. You'll never be removed from the mystery and glamour of rock and roll with Alice though. Alice Cooper is as bizarre and freaky as your dirtiest thoughts, your innermost inhibitions; their music is tastefully done, never boring or repetitive.

Alice Cooper, whether or not you accept the legitimacy of their outrageousness, represents the television show that was too real to air. They represent the movie that was never made. They are bastards of all bastards and the transvestites that never get talked about. Are they for real? Are you? Where does the image leave off and reality begin?

It has been said that Alice Cooper is the most calculated and planned rock group in history. Very true. Very entertaining to be so; they make sure that it works before they do it. Their lever for experimenting is their guinea pig. The flashiness is no more real than a house in the suburbs and having a wife that never cheats on you. Yet, through it all don't you just wanna ravish the waitress is the restaurant and the man in the jockey shorts on TV. Girls, doesn't Alice Cooper warm your heart?

The new Alice Cooper album is, as their single smash is: SCHOOL'S OUT. Again, it is nothing (thematically) like they have ever done before. Da da reigns... "school's out been blown to pieces..." One song even utilizes, in the street saga "Gutter Cat VS The Jets," the Jets theme from "West Side Story." And whether or not they are just chasing in on the season or not, Alice Cooper has again proven just how clever one can be in three minutes.

Their Akron Rubber Bowl show should be as unusual as their album is meaty:

"I'm swimming in blood; like
a rat
on a sewer floor
Rollin' in slime and
I just want out of this crazy dream...

"Luney Tune"

(Originally published in The Scene, June 29th-July 5th, 1972)