When Alice Cooper stopped playing nice

Without a doubt, he’s one of the most fascinating artists on the rock timeline. In fact, Alice Cooper has done such an incredible job of making sure that rock has an enduring spectacle element to it, of being kind of the embodiment of the freaky side of rock, that it’s hard to imagine that there wasn’t ever an Alice Cooper on stage somewhere, snakes, guillotines, electric chairs and all. But of course there was, and it took a while for Alice Cooper’s brand of entertainment to catch hold. When the Billion Dollar Babies album was released in 1973, Alice Cooper topped the charts, the world finally catching up with the idea that glam rock could be the vehicle for a brutal caricature, a theatrical madman, an entertainer who has also come to be known as one of the nicest guys in rock. So it’s funny that one of the hits on that album is about not playing nice anymore in favor of letting one’s freak flag fly. Let’s dig into the story of “No More Mister Nice Guy” in this episode of the Behind The Song podcast.

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