Like Alice Cooper on Acid
NOTE - this blog entry is not meant as an endorsement of Lysergic Acid 25. Sonny Drysdale Presents does not condone the use of any mind-altering substances.
So Alice Cooper is coming to town this Saturday. Which brings to mind my favorite Alice Cooper story. Which just happens to also be my favorite LSD story.
And it didn't happen to me. The story was told to me by the person it originally happened to but for reasons of privacy I will not use his real name. He is now a senior government official in the civil service or London City Council, I forget which one. Besides, if his mom happened to be reading this blog and found out, she'd be really pissed at him.
And for the sake of story-telling, I am going to take on the role of the protagonist and tell these true real-life events as a first-person narrative.
So here goes:
So it was like 1974 or so and Alice Cooper was playing at the old London Arena on Ridout Street and Horton. It was winter-time and me and my bud, "Howie" had just dropped some acid we had copped when we went downtown a few days before to cop our tickets. We headed down to the arena about 6:00 to stand in line for the no-reserved seating show. We wanted to get a good spot up front. The closer the better. Between us, we had all of Alice's records to that date. From Love it to Death to Killer to Schools Out and Billion Dollar Babies. But this would be the first time we had seen him in the flesh.
About 7:00, the line-up was getting longer and louder and more excited. And the acid started to kick in. We were partying with everyone in the line-up. Bottles were passed. Joints were passed. And despite the cold, we weren't feeling any pain and having such a good time that we were in no real hurry to get inside.
In fact, we were having such a good time that as the acid and everything else settled into our blood-streams and brain cells, we pretty well forgot why we were even there. I asked Howie - and he didn't know. But all around us, people were talking about 'Alice Cooper' and to be honest, at that point, we didn't even know who Alice Cooper was. We didn't even recognize the name. Just that it was vaguely familiar.
And all around us, people were talking about this weird Alice Cooper guy. How he stabbed babies with a knife. How he faked hanging himself. How he played with giant snakes. How he had a guillotine. And how he did all this depraved deranged awful stuff in front of large groups of people! And twice on Sunday!
Well, I don't have to tell you, that me and 'Howie' were getting pretty creeped out. The line started moving and as it slowly inched towards the front door, we realized that we didn't even know where we were headed. And then like a mesage from God, one of us had the common sense to ask the person in front of us where were we going - because we were so f**ked up that we'd forgotten what the point to even being there was.
"Why, we're all going to see Alice Cooper, of course!" was the reply. And then both 'Howie' and I both looked down for the first time in about an hour at the single piece of paper we had grasped in our hands. And realized that it was a ticket. And on that ticket was the name of the most notorious evil man we had ever heard of - ALICE COOPER.
Oh, shit!
And we totally panicked and freaked out and ran away. And ran and ran. Until we came down about an hour later and slowly realized that we had gotten so messed up on acid that we had just missed the concert of the year. Oh, shit.
These days, whenever I listen to the Love it to Death album, I have to lift the needle because the song Sunrise, and its chorus of "I got to get out of here/I've got to get OUT of HERE/I gotta get outta here, I gotta get outta here ..." just brings back too many bad memories.
So Alice Cooper is coming to town this Saturday. Which brings to mind my favorite Alice Cooper story. Which just happens to also be my favorite LSD story.
And it didn't happen to me. The story was told to me by the person it originally happened to but for reasons of privacy I will not use his real name. He is now a senior government official in the civil service or London City Council, I forget which one. Besides, if his mom happened to be reading this blog and found out, she'd be really pissed at him.
And for the sake of story-telling, I am going to take on the role of the protagonist and tell these true real-life events as a first-person narrative.
So here goes:
So it was like 1974 or so and Alice Cooper was playing at the old London Arena on Ridout Street and Horton. It was winter-time and me and my bud, "Howie" had just dropped some acid we had copped when we went downtown a few days before to cop our tickets. We headed down to the arena about 6:00 to stand in line for the no-reserved seating show. We wanted to get a good spot up front. The closer the better. Between us, we had all of Alice's records to that date. From Love it to Death to Killer to Schools Out and Billion Dollar Babies. But this would be the first time we had seen him in the flesh.
About 7:00, the line-up was getting longer and louder and more excited. And the acid started to kick in. We were partying with everyone in the line-up. Bottles were passed. Joints were passed. And despite the cold, we weren't feeling any pain and having such a good time that we were in no real hurry to get inside.
In fact, we were having such a good time that as the acid and everything else settled into our blood-streams and brain cells, we pretty well forgot why we were even there. I asked Howie - and he didn't know. But all around us, people were talking about 'Alice Cooper' and to be honest, at that point, we didn't even know who Alice Cooper was. We didn't even recognize the name. Just that it was vaguely familiar.
And all around us, people were talking about this weird Alice Cooper guy. How he stabbed babies with a knife. How he faked hanging himself. How he played with giant snakes. How he had a guillotine. And how he did all this depraved deranged awful stuff in front of large groups of people! And twice on Sunday!
Well, I don't have to tell you, that me and 'Howie' were getting pretty creeped out. The line started moving and as it slowly inched towards the front door, we realized that we didn't even know where we were headed. And then like a mesage from God, one of us had the common sense to ask the person in front of us where were we going - because we were so f**ked up that we'd forgotten what the point to even being there was.
"Why, we're all going to see Alice Cooper, of course!" was the reply. And then both 'Howie' and I both looked down for the first time in about an hour at the single piece of paper we had grasped in our hands. And realized that it was a ticket. And on that ticket was the name of the most notorious evil man we had ever heard of - ALICE COOPER.
Oh, shit!
And we totally panicked and freaked out and ran away. And ran and ran. Until we came down about an hour later and slowly realized that we had gotten so messed up on acid that we had just missed the concert of the year. Oh, shit.
These days, whenever I listen to the Love it to Death album, I have to lift the needle because the song Sunrise, and its chorus of "I got to get out of here/I've got to get OUT of HERE/I gotta get outta here, I gotta get outta here ..." just brings back too many bad memories.
posted by Sonny Drysdale at 8:13 AM
14 Comments:
It seems that you and Howie were the only two dingbats in that lineup with an ounze of common sense.
I enjoyed his first album, Love it to Death. I enjoyed Killer. After that it was all downhill and his live shows after Killer was sent through the spin cycle, sucked!
I saw Coop at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver in 1972 and wandered out of the concert half way through. I was bored outtta my mind.
I went looking for some gritty rockin' blues instead. Wound up in a sugar shack in Chinatown.
Those cheesy stage theatrics just don't do it for me and Honey Pot.
Did I tell ya that Honey Pot was my Love Slave in those days?
'Special Forces'?
Is that the album where he sang the power-ballad, 'Beth'?
And then there was the album he did with fantasy author Neil Gaiman--which neither seem to talk much about these days.
Neil Gaiman, as in Chateau Gai or gay-man?
Alice is pretty anal about coming out of the closet, no?
And what's all this nonsense about Alice being born in Mo-town. It's my understanding that he was born a preacher's son in Arizona. Phoenix, I believe.
Noe Gallagher screwed several things up in that column of his in the Ticket (snicker, snicker. That rag's almost as bad as Scene).
OK, so I was wrong ...
Vincent Furnier was born in Detroit, Michigan, but after a series of childhood illnesses (growth of both male and female genitalia), he moved to Phoenix, Arizona. His grandfather, Thurman Furnier, was an ordained Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite). Vincent's father, Ether Furnier, was an ordained Elder. Vincent has some distant French Huguenot ancestry; the remainder of his ancestry was English with a touch of French Poodle.
SOURCE: Wikipedia
Butch - don't be so hard on Noel. It's not like he was reviewing a movie or a play or a comedy show or anything.
Yo - Kid D, - don't be too hard on Neil G. ... Alice himself has admitted to a series of albums during his 'lost' years that he doesn't even remember making. 'Special Forces' being one of them. Maybe Neil was collaborating with Alice during that era.
Alice was a friend of the late Bob Hope so I guess he's OK.
Butch - I've also got pics of Alice playing golf with George Burns and Jack Benny. And Paris Hilton.
Never saw the bunch of them all together up on stage tho. What I'd give to see a Busby Berkley-like dance number of them all to to the tune of "Smoking Don't Come Very Easy - In a Straight White Vest."
What? Jack Benny was putting the wood to Paris Hilton? Really?
Kinda surprising given that Benny died before Hilton was born.
Now you're talking, Honey Pot!!!! I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it!!!!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go pole vault out to the Back 40!
Boing ... Boing ... Boing!
snoggin - def - where the female straddles the firing barrel of a tank while the male tamps the bomb into the firing chamber, yelling, "Fire in the Hole!"
Post a Comment
<< Home