The first song I remember hearing
- Exclusive NME offer: Save £10 on Amazon Music Unlimited plans with code NME10
Chuck Berry – ‘Maybellene’
“I lived in Detroit and my parents were very much into music. My Dad was a big band guy. I remember my uncle coming over and putting a 45 on and it was Chuck Berry. I thought it was the greatest thing I’d ever heard. Chuck Berry was the basis of everything that we do and the greatest lyricist of all time –he could tell a story in three minutes. That’s how I learned to write.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opG44Eqea6g
The song I want played at my funeral
‘How Great Thou Art’
“Oh man, it would have to be a hymn. It wouldn’t be one of my songs. ‘How Great Thou Art’ is just one of those great hymns, one of those all time hymns that takes the focus off you and puts it where it should be. I really don’t think it would be a rock song – ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’ I don’t think would be appropriate!”
The song that makes me dance
The Rolling Stones – ‘Brown Sugar’
“It may be the best dance song of time. When we’re doing covers and just having fun, we’ll go and play a bar after a show and be a bar band and we’d start with that – it gets everyone dancing.”
The song that changed my life
The Beatles – ‘She Loves You’
“It was the first song by The Beatles I ever heard and it literally changed something in my brain. It inspired what Alice Cooper became.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoF-7VMMihA
The first gig I went to
The Rolling Stones
“I’m very proud of this: I went to see The Rolling Stones at this gigantic arena. It was the coolest thing. We didn’t know what production was – there was no [special] lighting then, just white lights.”
The song I wish I’d written
Nirvana – ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
“[Aerosmith’s] ‘Dude (Looks Like A Lady)’ I should have written. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ I should have written. Those were songs that were right up Alice Cooper’s alley. There are some songs that are just so good, you sit there and you go, ‘I could never write that,’ but those two were two that I really should have written.”
The song I can no longer listen to
Roy Orbison – ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’
“I love Roy Orbison and then Van Halen had the nerve to do it again. It was great when it came out, [but] it just got overplayed and ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ is getting like that too. You turn the radio on and that song is just on all the time.”
The first album I bought
The Beach Boys – ‘All Summer Long’
“I was a big Beach Boys fan because we listened to Top 40 radio all the time on our little transistor radios and the Top 40 was the king of everything. The Beach Boys were America’s Beatles – they could do no wrong. Everything they did was great.”