Half the reason rock bands are influential in the live arena is their ability to put on a show. Most musicians won’t get people out of their seats by simply sitting on stools and playing, so they aim to create something no one has ever seen before. Although Elton John rose to fame during an era when acts like Kiss dominated the stage, he considered the best rock concert he ever saw to be from Alice Cooper.
When it comes to theatricality in rock and roll, Cooper really is the modern godfather of what many people think of as shock rock. There had been other macabre artists before, like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, but they seemed to be ripped out of some strange Halloween show rather than deliver anything too scary.
For people growing up in the 1960s, though, Cooper was genuinely terrifying. Aside from the hideous makeup that he dawned whenever he took to the stage, nothing was off the table as far as taboo subjects, with Cooper doing everything from killing himself with a guillotine, draping snakes around him onstage, and even a portion of the show where he seemed to be torturing an infant.
Not exactly tasteful stuff, but that was the point. There was even a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour in the way that he conducted himself, including a hilarious moment where he plastered a naked picture of himself on a bus and decided to use it as publicity by having the bus break down right in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.
Whereas Cooper’s antics made John look tame by comparison, there was never any animosity. When John first saw Cooper in concert, he remembered that it was one of the greatest spectacles that he had ever seen onstage.
As John remembers, the whole show was on fire when Cooper decided to take things up a notch by dropping panties over the audience, saying in Super Duper Alice Cooper, “I remember a helicopter coming over, and I was fighting people because I desperately wanted a pair of these panties. For me, it was the perfect rock and roll show for that time. Alice had this incredible ability, and he wrapped that audience around his little finger for two hours.”
If Cooper was shocking in the tasteless sense, then John was the exact opposite side of that coin. Cooper never concerned himself with being one of the greatest fashion icons of his time or anything, but John was looking to put every glamorous piece of clothing on himself to stand out amongst the crowd.
Then again, it’s hard to really blame him, either. It’s difficult for anyone making their living behind a piano to stand out, so wearing something that made him look like a massive bird of a sequinned suit usually did the job of making him stand out amongst every other rock act at the time.
Despite all of the comparisons that John made between other glam rock icons, such as David Bowie and Marc Bolan, he never really seemed to fit into that mould during his career. His aim was to subvert people’s expectations, and Cooper was the purest example of that sentiment.
