Alice Cooper celebrated his birthday

In Ukraine in the early 70s of the last century, almost all significant rock albums of that time "leaked" across the border, so domestic music lovers were aware of the "new releases". We put the word "new releases" in quotation marks because they reached the "mass consumer" (that is, the one who paid a third or even half of an engineer's salary for a disc at a flea market) with a delay of a year or two.

So somewhere in 1973-1974, a fresh wind blew in Kyiv from record players and tape recorders, on which for a couple of years before that, if we talk about "hips", mainly complicated progressive and art rock compositions were played, when Alice Cooper's 1972 album School's Out appeared on them.

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Although this was not Cooper's first album, it was this one that made him famous. Before that, he experimented with almost all musical genres, including avant-garde and art rock, but found himself in the so-called "shock rock". He actually invented it (and also "glam shock"), adding to his music theatrical performances in the spirit of the French "guignol".

According to legend, it all started when a chicken accidentally got on stage at one of his concerts, Cooper threw it into the front rows (as a primordially city dweller, he assumed that since the chicken had wings, it would fly), where the audience killed it. The next day, rumors began to circulate that Cooper did it, right on stage, twisting the chicken's head off and drinking its blood.

Cooper denied it, but the experienced Frank Zappa, with whom Cooper and his band had recorded before, called him and advised him not to do it - like, old man, this incident created a unique image for you.

Cooper understood everything and began to make his concerts into performances that resembled trips to a "chamber of horrors" with many frightening attractions. And sometimes he got so carried away (he and his musicians were still actively drinking alcohol at that time, usually in the form of immoderate amounts of beer, like The Doors before him), that he somehow fell off the stage and broke five ribs. The ribs healed, and this incident became one of the legends of shock rock.

At the same time, Cooper's behavior in real life does not at all correspond to his stage image. Long before the current fires, he gave money as a sponsor for the repair of the famous Hollywood sign, then participated in the recording of a children's record.

He continues to participate in concerts. However, his project, which he once jokingly said was his dream, will no longer be realized due to the departure from the stage of one of its hypothetical participants. And he said that his dream is for him, Ozzy Osbourne and Marilyn Manson (they are all friends) to go on stage and scare the audience to... then comes a word that we will not use.

In general, as Cooper himself once said, he is five years younger than Mick Jagger, so he still has everything ahead of him. And since we have already remembered other rock musicians, we will name those of them who are delighted with Cooper's work, including his stage image, or, at least, respect him. With the already mentioned Ozzy Osbourne (Ozzy once said that "Alice was our father") and the frontman of the Sex Pistols John Lydon, who, according to him, knows all of Cooper's songs, everything is clear. But there are other names on this list - Paul McCartney, Elton John, Bob Dylan, whose music, it would seem, is as far from Alice as heaven from earth.

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