Horror Cover & Five Page Feature: 1975

Original German and Translated English versions available:

Welcome to his nightmare – Alice takes over Pop with blood, boas, and total terror!

Alice Cooper’s Horror Cover & Five-Page Feature, published in Pop magazine on December 10, 1975. The five-page spread delves into his horror-inspired performances, detailing the development of his Welcome to My Nightmare tour and his influence on theatrical rock during the mid 70’s

ORIGINAL TEXT

No. 12/75 10th Year, published bi-weekly

DM 2.50 Fr. 2.50 55 20.-

pop with PRESS

Melody Maker

2 GIANT POSTERS

Alice Cooper

HORROR Special Edition

Shock: Alice Cooper's

Nightmare Circus

Shock: Rock Horror in London

Shock: Musicians on

Satan's Trail

Jürgen Marcus

& Special Poster Self-Destruction

TRANSLATED TEXT

THIS IS THE NEW COOPER SHOW

Welcome to my nightmares: Alice in his bizarre bed

Alice Cooper is monsterizing again. His big comeback tour across the USA lasts three months. And he has spared neither expense nor effort to bring the greatest nightmare of all time to the stage: Poisonous green fog billows through the hall. Alice, in a red sleeveless bodysuit, rolls out of a bizarrely shaped bed whose struts are decorated with shrunken heads. Four dancers, horribly made up, whirl around him. They reappear again and again in a variety of disguises:

as monsters that give Alice the nightmares.

Frankenstein wanders through the scene, a bat, a snake, a witch doctor, a skeleton ballet. Four giant spiders drag Alice into their web, one spider transforms into a beautiful woman. The highlight is a 3.5-meter-tall Cyclops with a glowing eye in his forehead, who is finally beheaded and wanders around headless. But Alice survives If everything goes according to plan, Alice will come to you this year. To teach you how to be scared, too.

Above:

Each scene is a shock in itself: Four spiders attack Alice.

Left and right:

The Cyclops is tough. Alice has torn off its head. But the monster lives on

THE FANTASTIC WORLD OF ALICE COOPER

“I think my mother was a television set,” grins TV-obsessed Alice Cooper.

But his father must know better, and he tells a completely different story.

Alice was born on February 2, 1948 in Motor City Detroit, and was given the legal name Vincent Furnier.

Father Furnier is an electronics engineer and part-time preacher, and how? Oh, right! Naturally, some of this strange combination of skills and talents were passed on to Alice's brilliant mind. In Phoenix, Arizona, he and his friends from the art academy were already building a school at the age of 16.

They called themselves "The Spiders" and had their first hit in 1965.

That was the starting signal for Alice Cooper's crazy career.

After a brief interlude under the band name "Nazz," the five musicians, with their wildly aggressive show in the style of "Alice Cooper," even drove the hardened beatniks of Los Angeles into a frenzy. The scorching streets of the murderous metropolis provided the perfect breeding ground for their frenetic rock theater.

Frank Zappa was aware of this. The ultimate freak and intellectual father of the Mothers of Invention produced the first two Cooper albums, "Pretties For, You" and "Easy Action". But then Alice Cooper really got going.

In their new communal home, a stately villa near Greenwich (Connecticut), the Coopers got themselves in the mood. There, several record players were usually running simultaneously, one in each room. different television program, and | of course all the room doors were open.

With his beloved Budweiser beer in hand, Alice could let himself be entertained by TV and stereo system day and night, and amidst this total chaos, he constantly hatched new stage mayhem.

Every show is a flirtation with death.

"Love It To Death" is the title of Alice Cooper's third LP, and under this motto the US band also embarked on their first large-scale tour.

Alice Cooper brought a meter-long boa constrictor into concert halls and played the role of a snake charmer. Wearing ripped black tights and a skintight leotard, with dark circles under his eyes and wild hair, he raged across the stage.

Like a man possessed. He brandished axes, long spears, and other murder weapons, slashed open the bodies of dolls, slurped blood, and was finally overpowered. With a face contorted in pain, he twitched out his (stage) life in an electric chair.

Almost a year later, Alice appeared as a mentally ill killer and was hanged at the end of his performance.

After the LP release <<Killer» Kill and the guillotine death hung in the spotlight, the horror king released the teenage slogan «School's Out» during the holiday season of 1972.

Alice's new supershow was the highlight of the American festival summer. At one of his big open-air concerts, he had himself carried onto the stage in a sedan chair.

A helicopter dropped thousands of women's panties over the heads of the crowd, and a neon sign lit up around the stadium-arena: Alice Cooper.

With his spectacular show featuring street battles, executions and torture scenes, Cooper presents his fellow Americans with a gruesome reality.

"A midnight crime drama on TV is hardly more exciting than the late news," is Alice's biting comment. "America is hell. On 42nd Street in New York, clockwork is ticking."

Alice Cooper stopped at nothing. First, he died in the electric chair...

...then he was hanged

People are normally disgusted by snakes. And Alice included a boa constrictor in his stage show

Orange reality. Anything can happen there... Alice himself is a product of this environment. And somehow that fascinates him.

<<You have to find your way in this world,' he says—and he knows where he's going!

Behind the sinister showman hides a likeable guy with a lot of wit and intelligence. When he comes off the stage and has removed his makeup, he comes out of the

Alice is an energetic joker with brilliant ideas. Even the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí revels in the Dada rocker's macabre distortions and dedicated his painting "Geopoliticus Child" to Cooper. Later, Dalí created a very special work of art: a replica of Alice Cooper's brain

With his flashes of inspiration, Alice has always generated free publicity, and after his election-campaign-driven victory with his hit "Elect-ted," he brought a super-cast of stars into the studio to record his LP "Billion Dollar Babies": Marc Bolan, Donovan, Harry Nilsson, Mark Volman & Howard Kaylan, as well as Who drummer Keith Moon and former Traffic member Rick Grech.

"You are my Billion Dollar Babies," Alice thanks his fans!

The fans finance Alice Cooper's crazy life. So, after recording his album "Muscle Of Love" with Liza Minnelli, the terror hero took a break.

with

Finally, he had enough time for his longtime girlfriend, Cindy

The pretty Cindy, sister of Cooper drummer Neil Smith, used to design the stage outfits for Alice and his friends. Now she's a highly paid model, and when she's with Alice, she pays her share out of her own pocket.

"I think that's very sensible of her," grins Alice, "because my hobbies already cost me way too much!"

When he's not lounging by the swimming pool (in front of the TV) at his new house in the Laurel Canyon near Los Angeles, Alice plays golf or baseball with his friends.

He founded his own team with David Cassidy and former Monkee Mickey Dolenz - "The Hollywood Vampires."

...when that wasn't creepy and offensive enough, he beheaded a doll, sending blood spurting everywhere...

Of course, the sportsman Cooper only really comes alive in the evening. In the nightclubs of Los Angeles, Alice is the superstar, and every other city is one big party for him

"Wild ones among themselves" is the motto of many a great night in illustrious company: Alice consumes vast quantities of Budweiser beer, jokingly tells ghost stories, and not infrequently takes a girl home.

But:

"I'm only really nice with Cindy in bed!"

Alice always has the right quip ready. He loves life and makes it his show. This is how Alice copes with the dream and reality of his "American way of

life." Sometimes a nightmare for him too, to which he cordially invites listeners on his new LP, "Welcome To My Nightmare."

Then he shocked again: As a pregnant woman with a penis symbol...

"School's Out" was Alice's next, this time tame, battle cry. And the schoolgirls thanked him for it...

For the LP "Billion Dollar Babies," Alice had himself photographed with his band, a "Cooper Baby," and a trillion dollars

...in Hamburg on the Reeperbahn with prostitutes...

...with spiders in bed...

...as well as with an ominously pregnant cyclops in his crazy nightmare show

MUSICIANS IN SATAN'S TRACES

Arthur Brown, the god of hell and fire, was one of the first to commercially exploit the Satanic trope. The highlight of some crazy Brown shows: The ultimate freak had himself crucified.

As an old man and as a slimy, bubbling figure covered in disgusting pustules, Genesis singer Peter Gabriel terrifies concertgoers. His masks, however, serve to enhance the understanding of the sophisticated show.

Monsters, magicians, murderers, and demons hold the world in suspense. Uri Geller and the makers of horror and disaster films are raking in the cash.

Many musicians have long been "possessed" by occult ideas, and even Dracula and Frankenstein have now made their way into the rock scene

Arthur Brown, "The God of Hellfire," rose from the underground to the international charts in 1968 with the hellish spectacle "Fire." Groups like Black Sabbath and Black Widow dedicated themselves to black magic, and Hawkwind invited listeners on apocalyptic space trips. Alice Cooper, the master of spinning visions of horror, ultimately celebrated his own execution on stage every night—each stage death a starting signal for another round on the horror carousel of a thousand imitators.

You can read all about shock rock on the following pages.

Like a bank robber with a ski mask over his head, Alex Harvey demonstrates the crime on the streets of big cities in his stage show.

Not only fire, but also blood spits Kiss monster Gene Simmons during the group's brutal show

Alice Cooper in a different light: As a simple vampire