Alice Cooper has reflected on the live performance oeuvre of his early days, admitting that the shock rock antics he leaned in to would not resonate with a modern-day music fan.

The Alice Cooper early shows were complete pandemonium, with Cooper often clad in blood-soaked lingerie over leather trousers, interpolating props of live snakes and guillotines.

“We gave the audience everything their parents hated,” Cooper told the Independent. “The way we saw it if you’re driving by and you see Disneyland on the left side and a plane wreck on the right, you’re going to look at the plane wreck. We were that plane wreck.”

Though Cooper mused that this kind of performance would have very little impact in 2021, “You could cut off your arm and eat it on stage and it wouldn’t matter. The audience is shockproof.”

Cooper is currently in the thick of promoting his forthcoming record, Detroit Stories, set for release on February 26th. The record is the stalwart rockers way of honouring the music of his hometown.  “Detroit was the birthplace of angry hard rock,” he shares.

The album has enlisted the help of various Detroit music heroes, including artists from MC5, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, and Grand Funk Railroad, and all the surviving members of the Alice Cooper Band.

“After not fitting in anywhere in the US (musically or image-wise) Detroit was the only place that recognised the Alice Cooper guitar-driven, hard rock sound and our crazy stage show,” Cooper says. “Detroit was a haven for the outcasts. And when they found out I was born in East Detroit… we were home.”

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Detroit Stories tracklist
1. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’
2. ‘Go Man Go’
3. ‘Our Love Will Change The World’
4. ‘Social Debris’
5. ‘$1000 High Heel Shoes’
6. ‘Hail Mary’
7. ‘Detroit City 2021’
8. ‘Drunk and In Love’
9. ‘Independence Dave’
10. ‘I Hate You’
11. ‘Wonderful World’
12. ‘Sister Anne’
13. ‘Hanging On By A Thread (Don’t Give Up)’
14. ‘Shut Up And Rock’
15. ‘East Side Story’

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