BOOKS
Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs! My Adventures in the Alice Cooper Group Dennis Dunaway and Chris Hodenfield (St. Martins)
The first time I
heard the Alice Cooper band play was back in the
early days of the band, around 1971. I was get- ting ready to enter high school, and this was the most pivotal time in my ongoing music education. It was the same year I discovered The Allman Brothers Band, but that is a whole different story. I was drawn to Alice be- cause of the theatrical aspect at first, but soon I was buying all the albums. The first of the albums I had was Love it to Death, followed closely thereafter by Killer. It would actually be a couple of years before I owned the first two, Pretties for You and Easy Action. Like I say, that was over 40 years ago, and in 2015 I remain a die hard fan of not just Alice the guy - actually Vincent Furnier- but the entire orig- inal band. I was thrilled like a kid when I saw all of them together during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. Of course it was somewhat bittersweet, in that the late Glen Buxton was not there. At the recent Southern Festival of Books in
Nashville, I was tapped to perform on the outdoor music stage, accompanied by Donnie Winters. I would also do a panel and book- signing. One of the biggest thrills of the whole
Festival was meeting Dennis Dunaway in the hallway just prior to his panel discussion about his new book. I had to perform onstage during his panel, so I made a bee line to try and catch him before the event. There were several big time Alice fans in tha hallway, and I think I was the first one to actually recog- nize Dennis. Very fortunate for me. I recog- nized him from his recent band photo with Blue Coupe that I obtained when Dennis was my guest on The KUDZOO Radio Hour a cou- ple of years ago. Dennis could not have been a nicer guy. I
spoke to him for a few minutes, had my friend take a photo and asked him to sign my copy of the book. I had actually stood in line to buy the book. Normally I get review copies free, but in this case, I had no problem buying it. Hey, it was one of the Alice Cooper group, for goodness sakes. There have been several books about Alice
Cooper, and I have read them all. I truly thought I knew all there was to know about the band’s history. After all, I read every rock magazine article that came out on the band as well. Dennis’ book fills in many gaps, and it is written with obvious love for all of his former band mates. I find it very refreshing that Dunaway chooses to not talk trash about his old friends. Dennis tells some great stories from his
High School days back in Phoenix, AZ, when he and his best friend Vince ran track and studied art. There are fun stories about their earliest bands The Earwigs (originally a Beat- les parody) and The Spiders,all the way up to the formation of Alice Cooper. Dennis shares, perhaps for the first time, the true story of how the name came to be. In fact, many of the urban legends about Alice Cooper are de-
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