I found this book at a local record shop.
This book is the size of a magazine 8.25x11 inches.
It covers rock n roll from Elvis Presley to The Sex Pistols.
A lot on The Rolling Stones group and certain individuals like Mick Jagger.
Includes two pics of Alice Cooper one is a 2 page spread the other is a full page.
The total text on Alice Cooper is about one and a half columns long.
1982
Rock 'N' Roll Babylon by Gary Herman
Cover (softcover)
Mick Jagger on cover
Pg 68 - 69
Page 70 - 71
Throughout, the seventies the idea of rock’ n’ roll
representing images from the sexual sub-culture held
sway. Former Zappa associate, Alice Cooper, built an
entire career on a couple of good hard-rock songs and
an act that even as early as 1971 he admitted was ‘60
per cent contrived’‚ Among Cooper’s contrivances
were the name itself (the band was all-male and Alice’s
real name is Vincent Furnier), whips, leather gear,
dolls that were mutilated in the course of the act, a
chicken that was, ‘killed’ during the show amid a flurry
of prepared feathers, a mock guillotining, even - at
one point‚ the bizarre apparition of Alice dressed in
his torn leotard and high boots brandishing a giant
toothbrush and chasing a scantily-dressed woman
disguised as a tube of toothpaste.
Alice, who had clearly made a study of his mentor,
Frank Zappa, was hugely successful and inspired
many a later punk rocker with his stage image of
decadence refined to complete negativity. Zappa may
have been a nihilist, but his sense of morality and
humour cannot be doubted. The Alice persona was no
more than a hollow shell which enabled the real Vin-
cent Furnier to indulge his favourite activities of golf
and drinking. This son of an Arizona preacher hit the
green with the likes of Jack Nicklaus and Bing Crosby
and hit the bottle with a will. In late 1977, he
committed himself to a sanatorium to dry out and later
recorded an album, From The Inside, based on his
experiences. ‘I was drinking two quarts of whisky a
day,’ said Alice after his three month treatment, ‘just
to keep going! I was living at 100 miles an hour with
alcohol for fuel.’ In two-and-a-half-years, said Alice,
he had never been sober. Even early on, the group used
to boast of spending $250,000 a year on booze and
Alice himself would regularly put away 40 cans of beer
in one day. ‘In the end,’ said Alice, ‘I was throwing up
blood.’ Alice’s sado-masochistic stage twilight stood
in evident contrast to Vincent Furnier’s more straight-
forward reality. After splitting with his lover, Cindy
Lang, Vince married Sherryl Goddard in 1976. ‘In two
years of marriage,’ he later said, ‘she never saw me
sober.’ After committing himself to the sanatorium,
Vince expected the worst. But Sherryl came through
with flying colours. She declared that she always
knew that her husband would straighten himself out
one day, and she damn well intended to stay with him!
Page 137
Often the mimicking can be dangerous - especially when the act mimicked makes
use of potentially dangerous props. In June 1974, at the height of Alice Cooper’s
mock-hanging act, a thirteen-year-old boy from Calgary, Canada, hung himself by
the neck until he was dead at a copy-cat ‘hanging party. (Alice dropped the item from
his act after this tragedy.)
Page 145
Alice Cooper even organized his own Alice lookalike competition
(won by a Vietnam veteran on day release from a mental hospital).
Pg 103 with caption
Back Cover
