The rock world today mourns the death of Alice Cooper, who was accidentally killed last night when the safety screws failed on the guillotine he uses in his act,” observed Melody Maker in 1973, its writer Michael Watts having witnessed an onstage malfunction in Cooper’s grisly stage act. Fortunately, Watts was just kidding. At the time, Cooper was 25 years old, relatively healthy despite a couple of nasty substance habits, and already several years into a career where he routinely pretended to off himself every night. Fifty years later, he’s still at it.
Depending on your age and predilection for theatrical hard rock, you’ll know at least some of the many faces of Cooper, or Vincent Furnier as no one calls him. ‘Seasoned’ readers will remember his self-titled band as early-70s anti-hippies, snarling up stages in Detroit with School’s Out and other anthems celebrating America’s inner decay. Later in the decade he split the band and went solo, ruling a drinking club called the Hollywood Vampires and coming very, very close to succumbing to his booze and coke addictions.
In the 80s, Cooper sobered up and stepped into the commercial sunshine, welcomed in by MTV and the hair-metal generation, and since the 90s he’s been a reliable member of the classic rock old guard, living a comfortable life composed of one part golf and two parts onstage pantomime.
His influence remains huge: any rock band formed after 1980 that employs make-up, masks, fake blood and/or amusingly gruesome stage stunts owes him a major debt. When we speak to the veteran python
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Paperback Blighters - The books every record collector should read.
The books every record collector should read. Vinyl, you may have heard, has made a big comeback. In 2022, sales of vinyl albums surpassed compact discs (CDs) for the first time in more than three decades in terms of global revenue, racking up more than $1.2bn.
"Beware the Savage Lure/of 1984..." - David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods.
David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods. For many, 1984 remains the nadir of his Phil Collins” phase; an artistic/sartonial/tonsorial disaster area. But was it really that awful? Forty years on, Matt Phillips explores Bowie's so-called annus horribilis.
7" Heaven & Hell the Story of the 45 - The 45 turns 75 this year. Matthew Quinlan charts its history, recalling the RPM wars and two belligerent titans who went into battle over the speed of spinning sound
Someone needs to come and empty the bins behind the Lloyds Bank branch in Kingston-upon-Thames. It’s been raining and flattened cardboard slumps next to a flytipped air conditioning unit and a rusting clothes rack. There are two signs at head height on the red brick wall. One warns that you’ll be clamped if you park here; the other, a stainless-steel plaque, marks Nipper’s 100th birthday. Nipper, the dog at the heart of the HMV and RCA Victor logos, was a white terrier with chocolate brown ears, maybe a Jack Russell, Smooth Fox, or Bull Terrier, more likely a mix. This is his final resting place. He was buried under a mulberry tree but, you know, urban sprawl, progress, etc. The plaque was unveiled by the Chairman of HMV Stores on 15 August 1984, while Captain Sensible, Janice Long, and a Nipper doppelganger looked on. Round the corner, at HMV and Our Price, George Michael’s Careless Whisper was flying off the shelves, and every copy turned at 45 RPM.
STARS ON 45s
A BUNCH OF MUSICIANS - 45, COUNT 'EM! RHAPSODISE ABOUT THEIR FAVOURITE SINGLE
THE TORTURED SHOPPER'S DEPARTMENT
John Coleman celebrates the great art of vinyl collecting on the 45th Anniversary of Record Collector and finds out, in an exhausting series of anxietyinducing sprees, how much vinyl you can buy today, ina variety of outlets, with 45.
Young American
A serendipitous collaboration with David Bowie in 1974 kick-started Luther Vandross' recording career. But he still faced an uphill struggle to succeed as a solo artist. Charles Waring talks to some of the singer's most trusted collaborators about his early years and how he battled to be heard....
MOD ALMIGHTY
Steve Ellis began his career as a mod in flower-power clobber as frontman of chart-toppers Love Affair. Quitting in 1970, he worked with The Who's Roger Daltrey then gave up music to become a docker before a near-death experience. Interest in his work was rekindled after hooking up with long-time fan Paul Weller. Lois Wilson hears how his romance with music endures.
ANARCHISTS IN THE UK
EXACTLY 45 YEARS AGO, CRASS, THE ANARCHIST ACTIVIST COLLECTIVE, WERE FINISHING PIVOTAL SECOND ALBUM, STATIONS OF THE CRASS.
The boy with the thorn in his side
David Cassidy was arguably the biggest solo star of the immediate post-Beatles era, yet his fame as well as his boyish good looks and extracurricular excessesovershadow the excellence of his breathily intimate, musically accomplished records. Simon Goddard, RC contributor and author of an acclaimed series of books on David Bowie, hails the work of the tortured pop idol
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There's little sign of slowing down from the 19-year-old Pete Townshend. Currently on the go: multi-media project The Age Of Anxiety; a dance production of Quadrophenia; and Pete Townshend Live In Concert 1985-2001, a 14-disc boxset of his solo in-concert recordings. Not, he admits, that his every whim and fancy are worth deeper exploration. \"Some of them are good ideas, some of them are pretty dumb,\"
