Detroit author commemorates Alice Cooper's 75th birthday in new book

Gary Graff's 'Alice Cooper at 75' gives the full history of the Detroit-bred shock rocker's Hall of Fame career.

Adam Graham
The Detroit News

Gary Graff was 12 years old when he heard Alice Cooper's "No More Mr. Nice Guy" on the radio and fell in love with its brash attitude.

Fifty years later, the song still resonates. And Graff is still following Cooper's career, as the longtime Detroit rock journalist is now the author of "Alice Cooper at 75," a new unauthorized biography of Cooper, the Detroit-bred rock and roller who turns 75 years young on Saturday.

Music writer Gary Graff holds a copy of his new book, titled Alice Cooper at 75, at Found Sound records in Ferndale.

"Music would not look the same had it not been for Alice Cooper," says Graff, on the phone from his Beverly Hills home (that's Metro Detroit's Beverly Hills, not Southern California's). "There were showmen before, but he introduced real vaudevillian showmanship to rock and roll. It's not going to be jeans and T-shirts anymore: we're going to put on a show, we're going to tell a story on stage.

"When he did that and was successful with that, I think all the other bands were like, 'OK, we've gotta up our game a little bit,'" Graff says. "The clothing got a little flashier, the special effects got more interesting. It really got the rock world to look at showmanship as something that wasn't just hype, it was entertainment. And that's what the audience wanted."

The shock rocker made noise by pushing boundaries on stage, making snakes and guillotines a part of his routine. But behind the flash, there was — and still is — substance to back it up, Graff says.

"The music holds up," he says. "It's not just the dead baby dolls and the beheadings and the killing the chickens and everything that got him the headlines. The music holds up to the height."

PREVIOUSLY: Rob Zombie, Alice Cooper bringing 'Freaks on Parade' tour to Pine Knob

Graff, who was born and raised in Pittsburgh and moved to Detroit in 1982, was approached to author "Alice Cooper at 75" by publisher Motorbooks, whose "at 75" series also includes books on David Bowie and Elton John.

The former Detroit Free Press staffer, who now covers the Metro Detroit music scene for the Oakland Press, has previously written books on Neil Young and Bob Seger, and he edited a book on Bruce Springsteen.

"Alice Cooper at 75," by local music writer Gary Graff, is the third in Graff's series of books profiling famous rockers at age 75.

He took on the Cooper assignment near the end of 2021 and worked on it over the course of about five months, researching old stories on Cooper and interviews with the rocker (born Vincent Furnier), including his own. Graff has interviewed Cooper numerous times over the years, starting in 1986, and last year he hosted a chat with him at Motor City Comic Con. He's even played 18 holes with the avid golfer.

The book has 75 chapters, most a page or two in length, covering Cooper's life and career, from his Detroit upbringing to his 2011 induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and everything in between. "It's meant to be like a needle drop," Graff says. "The reader flips it open and they get a self-contained chapter, but by the same token if you read it cover to cover, it reads like a linear narrative."

The book covers all 28 of Cooper's studio albums, and to help set the mood, Graff listened to every album as he wrote about them. "I did take my vinyl out and stacked it up beside the desk, just for whatever juju that would provide," he says.

Alice Cooper, seen here in a publicity photo for 2021's "Detroit Stories."

Graff, 62, first saw Cooper in concert in 1982 and has since seen him live many times over the years. He estimates he's seen around 6,000 concerts total in his lifetime, and as artists such as Cooper reach their retirement years and other rock icons graduate to the sold-out arena in the sky, a huge chunk of music history is on the precipice of being lost forever, he says.

"We've taken their presence for granted for a long time," says Graff, who says a shift started happening around the time Bowie died in 2016, which was followed shortly thereafter by the deaths of Glenn Frey and Prince.

"I think this has been a metaphysical smack upside the head for people to appreciate these musicians while they're still around, to take that chance to see them, because we're being reminded, weekly almost, they will not be with us forever," he says. "The music will, and the art and creativity will. But they won't be. And I think it's created a different kind of appreciation for people and a real sense that we need to take a chance to see them while they're alive, so we can enjoy them and we can appreciate the music more because they're with us, and it's not just a memory piece."

agraham@detroitnews.com

@grahamorama

'Alice Cooper at 75'

By Gary Graff

Motorbooks/ The Quarto Group

In book stores now

Book signing event

Gary Graff will be signing copies of "Alice Cooper at 75" at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, and will be discussing Cooper and the book with WDET's Rob Reinhart, leading up to a screening of the 2014 documentary, "Super Duper Alice Cooper." For tickets and information, visit the Michigan Theater's website.