ROCK’N’ROLL CONFIDENTIAL
ALICE COOPER
The Nightmare man talks Detroit, Lou Reed and the beast inside.
COOPER-BOTTOMED
Alice’s five immortal platters.
1 The Yardbirds Train Kept A-Rollin’
(EPIC, 1965)
2 The Paul Butterfield Blues Band Born In Chicago
(ELEKTRA, 1965)
3 Laura Nyro Timer
(COLUMBIA, 1968)
4 The Beach Boys I Get Around
(CAPITOL, 1964)
5 Love Stephanie Knows Who
(ELEKTRA, 1966)
Sweet little Yorick’n’roller: Alice Cooper digs up an old friend.
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FREED FROM Covid restrictions, self-confessed “road rat” Alice Cooper is back touring the US. Four shows in, he has a day off in Louisville, Kentucky, and is entertaining MOJO at (his) 8am, after his daily round of golf. Back in 1970, Detroit’s Alice Cooper band were a ragged, pioneeringly gender-neutral tour de force touting such lean, mean anthems as I’m Eighteen and School’s Out, plus on-stage mock executions and shameless python action. The momentum continued when Alice went solo in 1975 with Welcome To My Nightmare, and after a relatively fallow ’90s and ’00s, 2011’s Welcome 2 My Nightmare sequel triggered a renaissance; 2021’s back-to-basics Detroit Stories went UK Top 5 and was his first Billboard Album topper. And the stories he can divulge, even at 8am: Alice Cooper, super-trooper.