STACK #197 Mar 2021

MUSIC FEATURE

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“T his is how crazy Detroit is: in the ‘80s, the mayor of the city gets busted for smoking crack and then gets re-elected,” Alice Cooper chuckles. “So that shows you what Detroit was like, you know? It was insanity! Outrageous, but at the same time everybody said, ‘Well, at least he’s not lying to us. At least he’s honest about it.’ And so they said, ‘We’ll re-elect him: he’s honest’.” Detroit Stories , Cooper’s latest album, celebrates the city that welcomed his band of misfits with open arms when they were coming up on the scene. According to Cooper, Detroit is “the birthplace of angry hard rock," but Detroit Stories also tips its (top)hat at blues, punk and Motown. “We couldn’t just do hard rock,” Cooper explains. Cooper describes the Detroit band scene around this time as “a total brotherhood." “When we met The Stooges and the MC5 and [Bob] Seger and [Ted] Nugent, all of us were young bands in Detroit and nobody had had a hit record yet," he says. "So we were just all young bands in one city, and we played gigs with each other all the time. And we partied together all the time. And I was a big fan of The Stooges and the MC5, and all those bands were fans of Alice Cooper… We all started

LA didn't really understand Alice. San Francisco didn't get us, New York didn't get us. Detroit, though... it was the healthiest rock scene I think I've ever been involved in

out together – making $200 a night, $300 a night and

opening for The Who, The Kinks,

The Yardbirds and all these great bands – not really realising that later on we were going to be the

headliners. “The very first time that we ever met these bands, we were

INTERVIEW

coming in from LA. We had just opened for The Doors, and LA didn’t get us at all. I mean, LA did not want any violence on stage, and we were fairly violent on stage,” he laughs. “And, you know, it had comedy to it, but we didn’t mind a little real violence up there. I mean, when we did the West Side Story thing, those were not toy switchblades – they were real – and every which way you’d get cut. And so LA – that freaked them out so much, that they didn’t really understand Alice. San Francisco didn’t get us, New York didn’t get us. Detroit, though…We immediately moved there and it was the healthiest rock scene I think I’ve ever been involved in. “And at the same time, Motown was existing. We would be on stage in a sweaty ballroom with eleven hundred kids, and

“He’s a villain, but he’s funny. And he’s very arrogant, but at the same time he can slip on a banana peel any time...” So says Alice Cooper of Alice Cooper; the musician has always brought theatricality and (intentional) laughs to rock’n’roll, but his latest set of twisted tales, Detroit Stories , is a humdinger.We bow down before the Godfather Of Shock Rock. Words Bryget Chrisfield ALICE COOPER

68 MARCH 2021

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