MOTORBOOKS/QUARTO
Fan-friendly compendium of all things Alice.
For some of us, Alice Cooper, no matter how many times he removes his metaphorical mask to reveal the relaxed and detached showman that he undoubtedly is, will retain an intrinsic mystique, an unmistakable aura of clear and present danger. On arrival into our lives, back in the 70s, Alice was in his mid-twenties, at the peak of his powers as both an artist and as a widely condemned example of what we as adolescents should never aspire to be. Irresistible, in other words. Catnip for an impressionable generation weaned on an ever-more permissive society who, five short years later, would cough up punk rock like a particularly noisome fur ball. And this – despite the fact that we really should have grown up in the intervening half-century – is how we’ll always prefer to remember him: noxious, drunk, wielding an axe, engaging in necrophilia and chasing a giant tooth.
Alice and his music, especially his evergreen magnum opus delivers us straight back to that lastAnd who wouldn’t want that?
