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New York Times
Pop Notes: Here Come the King of Shock Rock
(New York Times, 1975-03-16)
Bace yourself: After 20 months out of the public eye, Alice Cooper is bringing a new dose of madness and mayhem to the nation's giant-sized arenas. Commencing on April Fool's Day in Chicago, the 27-year-old, snaggle-toothed, stringy-haired "Kind Of Shock Rock" will give 59 performances in 57 cities during a 14-week tour. Including in the itinerary is a visit to New York City's Madison Square Gardens on May 5....
Theatrics Overwhelm Show by Alice Cooper
(New York Times, 1977-07-23)
The show Alice Cooper brought to Nassau Coliseum on Thursday night, his first touring show in more than two years, was a case of the tail wagging the dog. The theatrical elements that Mr. Cooper introduced into arena rock - and theatrical means the full panoply of Hollywood and Las Vegas show business, from the lights to choreography to elaborate costuming - have swallowed up his music. How effective that music can be was indicated at the beginning of Thursday's show, when Mr. Cooper, Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner on guitar, and Prakash John on bass jumped and gyrated on the lip of the stage, pounding out "Under My Wheels" and some of Mr. Cooper's other early numbers. This was raw, exciting rock-and-roll, and it provided a high point that the show did not reach again....
Blood, Sweat and Oldies In New Alice Cooper Show
(New York Times, 1989-00-00)
Alice Cooper was, unfortunately, a pop-culture prophet in the mid-1970's. Long before MTV, he realized that rock could be treated as a theatrical spectacle, and he anticipated slasher movies by putting his hard-rock songs behind blood-splattered, Grand Guignol vignettes. For audiences that wanted jokey titillation, Mr. Cooper became the tasteless entertainment of choice, and every so often he'd come up with a well-made hit single. At his best, songs like "School's Out" and "Eighteen," he could probe taboos and summon a spirit of nihilistic anarchy, though he was usually better on concept than on follow-through. But he couldn't keep topping himself, and by the end of the 1970's, while Mr. Cooper had become a regular on the game show "Hollywood Squares," punk-rock and heavy metal had stolen his thunder....
Cooper Resurgent
(New York Times, 1990-03-07)
"One thing I've noticed is that you can't really shock an audience anymore," Alice Cooper said the other day. "When I started in 1970, it was before movies like 'Friday The 13th' and 'Nightmare On Elm Street' and the new generation of horror characters weren't around yet." Until the success of his newest album , "Trash" (Epic), which has sold over a million copies, the career of the 42-year-old star, who practically invented theatrical shock-rock20 years ago, seemed in permanent eclipse. Mr. Cooper credits his resurgence to the new album's contemporary production by Desmond Child, who collaborated with him on most of the songs, as well as to his own competitive instincts and hard-won sobriety....
'ALICE COOPER: THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF'
(New York Times, 1999-12-12)
EACH year recording companies dig more deeply into their archives. They are eager to retrieve the obscure recordings that justify expanding greatest-hits collections into the boxed sets that have becomefixtures of the holiday market. Theme anthologies are devised; concert tapes and studio outtakes are gleaned; old recordings are remixed. And if there's nothing left in the vaults, then new material is created: electronically assisted posthumous collaborations (as with the latest set by the Doors) or recent live recordings (as with Phish)....
Brutally Frank Cooper Stupor
(New York Times, 2000-06-00)
After hearing master shock-rocker Alice Cooper's new "Brutal Planet," it's clear that Marilyn Manson and others of his ilk are pale by comparison. On this monument to Goth-metal headbanging fury, Cooper is the devil's cabana boy. He'll definitely be called irresponsible for this ode to destruction, but he makes people listen - and think....