Alice Cooper Gets Brutal

WAY BACK in the post-Woodstock doldrums of the early 1970s, Alice Cooper erupted out of Phoenix, Arizona, and immediately consigned the wilting bouquet of navel-gazing flower power to the cultural trashcan with a high-powered, sleaze-drenched blend of hard rock, schlock horror and ambisexual grand guignol. Serially vilified by the media and held up as the living, breathing embodiment of outrageous permissiveness and society-crumbling moral decay, Alice in his heyday made Marilyn Manson look like Ronan Keating.