School's Out

The summer of 1972. I was 14.  Three months of holidays ahead. And Alice Cooper's "School's Out" was in the charts.  It didn't get any better than that!

Alice is 63 today. The inventor of "shock rock", he had a bizarre stage act which included snakes, baby dolls, guillotines, electric chairs and plenty of blood.  He was once rumored to have bitten the head of a live chicken and drank its blood on stage.  The real story is even more strange.

Cooper claims that the infamous "Chicken Incident"was an accident. A chicken somehow made its way on stage during Cooper's performance and not having any experience around farm animals, Cooper presumed that, because the chicken had wings, it would be able to fly. He picked it up and threw it out over the crowd, expecting it to fly away. The chicken instead plummeted into the first few rows occupied by disabled people in wheelchairs, who reportedly proceeded to tear the bird to pieces!

The next day, the incident made the front page of national newspapers, and Frank Zappa phoned Cooper to ask if the story, which reported that he had bitten the head off the chicken and drunk its blood on stage, was true. Cooper denied the rumor, whereupon Zappa told him, "Well, whatever you do, don't tell anyone you didn't do it",obviously recognising that such publicity would be priceless for the band.

I used to have all his albums and School's Out is still one of his best. The song itself is included in the Rolling Stone Magazine's Top 500 songs of all time and rightly so. Today,  Alice Cooper is a restaurateur and golfing celebrity. I wonder does he serve chicken?