Alice Cooper ruffled a number of feathers in 1969 when his followers killed a reside rooster at Toronto’s Rock and Roll Revival Pageant.
“The viewers tears it to items,” Cooper recalled this week on A&E’s Biography: Alice Cooper. “It was the peace and love pageant. They tear it to items and throw it again up on the stage, so there’s blood all over the place – feathers and blood.”
Rumors started to unfold that he’d purposely pulled the stunt on the College of Toronto’s 20,000-capacity Varsity Stadium, and even that he’d drunk the fowl’s blood. It did not take lengthy for phrase to achieve Cooper’s label boss Frank Zappa, who known as the following day.
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“Did you kill a rooster onstage final night time?” Cooper remembers Zappa asking. “I stated, ‘There was a rooster. I did not kill it, although.’ He goes, ‘Do not inform anyone. They adore it.’ He says, ‘It is all over the place within the press!’ I instantly went, ‘Excellent.’ The rooster story then turned enormous: ‘Who is that this monster who would do that at a rock present?'”
Seems, this entire factor was only a huge misunderstanding. “It’s a must to bear in mind I am from Detroit,” Cooper says. “I had by no means been on a farm in my life. It had wings, it had feathers – it ought to fly. I picked up the rooster and I flung it into the viewers, figuring it could fly away and someone would take it and take it dwelling and name it ‘Alice Cooper.'”
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In fact, that is not what occurred. Chickens are flightless birds. “I threw it on the market,” Cooper acknowledges, “and it fell straight down into the viewers.”
The gang in Toronto that day included John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and Cooper stated the decidedly avant-garde couple permitted. “They thought it was artwork – as a result of it is chaos,” he added. Nonetheless, the rumors continued and in some instances had been expanded upon, whilst animal rights activists gathered earlier than Cooper’s concert events.
“My fame was simply insane. I did not need to do something,” Cooper admits. “They had been inventing their very own Alice Cooper fantasy. Folks had been simply discovering Alice Cooper, and I used to be simply discovering him – so we had been all doing it on the identical time.”
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’em by their stage names.
Gallery Credit score: Lauryn Schaffner
