Book Launch: Experiencing Alice Cooper by Dr Ian Chapman

New Zealand Music Month: City Library Finale Event, Wednesday 30th May, City Library

In Experiencing Alice Cooper: A Listener’s Companion, Dr Ian Chapman takes a long overdue look at the music and stage act of rock music’s self-styled arch-villain. A provocateur from the very start of his career in the mid-1960s, Alice Cooper, aka Vince Furnier, son of a lay preacher in the Church of Jesus Christ, has carved a unique path through five decades of rock’n’roll and is still very active today.

Despite a longevity that only a handful of other artists and acts can match, Alice Cooper remains a difficult artist to pin down and categorize. During the last years of the 1960s and the heyday of his commercial success in the 1970s, Cooper’s groundbreaking theatricality, calculated offensiveness, and evident disregard for the conventions of rock protocols sowed confusion among his critics and evoked outrage from the public. Society’s watchdogs demanded his head, and Cooper willingly obliged at the end of each performance courtesy of his on-stage guillotine. But as youth anthem after youth anthem - I’m Eighteen, School’s Out, Elected, Department of Youth—rang out in his arena concerts the world over and across airwaves, fans flocked to experience Cooper’s unique brand of rock. Critics searched for proper descriptions: “pantomime,” “vaudeville,” “retch-rock,” “Grand Guignol.” In 1973 Cooper headlined in Time magazine as “Schlock Rock’s Godzilla.”

Very few books have been written about Alice Cooper – in contrast, for example, to the dozens upon dozens written about David Bowie, an artist to whom Cooper has often been compared because of their shared theatricality. In what will be a visually rich and highly musical book launch, Dr Chapman will explain why Alice Cooper has languished for too long in the ‘too hard’ basket, he will perform some of the artist’s classic songs with his talented trio of performers, and he will explain the impact this extraordinary performer has had on the popular culture of the twentieth century.

NZ Music Month Finale: Book Launch - Experiencing Alice Cooper

Music writer Dr Ian Chapman rounds off NZ Music Month with the launch of his latest book, and a musical performance from the works of one of the world’s rock legends, Alice Cooper. With Pania Simmonds, and Liam Donnelly.

Copies of Experiencing Alice Cooper: A Listener’s Companion, as well as some of Dr Chapman's other works, will be available to purchase courtesy of Paper Plus Dunedin (EFTPOS available).

Wednesday 30th May, 6pm
Dunningham Suite, City Library