11. He's The Inspiration To Generations Of Rock Stars
Kiss, Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie are some of the more obvious contemporary rock stars who owe a massive debt to Alice, his music and his theatrical, horror-tinged stage performances and concepts... but the Sex Pistols' John Lydon also claims that there wouldn't have been a Johnny Rotten without Alice Cooper, and that he knows the words to every Alice song ever written. You want alternative rock weirdos? The Flaming Lips are huge Alice devotees, while They Might Be Giants' song 'Why Must I Be Sad?' is a concept piece from the point of view of a teenager who finds his whole life summed up by Alice Cooper's songs, and namechecks thirteen of them. No less a songwriter than Bob Dylan has rated Alice's own songwriting very highly. In 1999, a tribute album - Humanary Stew: A Tribute To Alice Cooper - managed to garner so much support from stars in the music industry that each of the eleven tracks on the record featured a different combination of musicians, amounting to eleven one-off supergroups assembling just to honour their inspiration. That's stars from Def Leppard, The Who, Mötley Crüe, Iron Maiden, Guns n' Roses, Quiet Riot, Alice In Chains, Megadeth, Twisted Sister, Kiss, Ozzy Osborne, Dokken, Whitesnake, Mr. Big, the Sex Pistols, Toto, and the E Street Band, amongst others.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
