Alice Cooper is often called ‘The Godfather of Shock Rock,’ and he didn’t earn this title without a reason. His live shows often feature props like electric chairs, fake blood, reptiles, and creepy baby dolls. You shouldn’t be surprised that fans and media tend to believe any crazy on-stage story about Cooper without questioning it first.
Cooper isn’t a conventional performer on stage, that’s for sure. But even he was falsely accused of something unbelievable: biting a chicken’s head off on stage. Ozzy Osbourne did a similar thing, but there aren’t many cases of killing an actual animal on stage in rock history.
Alice Cooper Denies Doing This
Alice Cooper’s newly formed band got the opportunity to perform at the 1969 Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival festival. A member of the audience threw a chicken on stage in the middle of the show, and rumor has it that Cooper bit the poor animal’s head and drank his blood right there.
As Cooper himself said multiple times, this is not the actual story. What really happened is that the person threw the chicken on stage, and he thought it was a bird that could fly. He had never been to a farm as someone from Detroit, so he didn’t know what chickens looked like. Cooper threw the chicken back at the audience as a reaction and thought it would fly off.
The chicken obviously didn’t fly, and throwing it to an already raging crowd wasn’t exactly the best idea. The audience instantly tore the chicken apart and threw its pieces back on stage. The newspapers headlined the incident the following day: Alice Cooper bit the chicken’s head off on stage and drank his blood in front of his fans.
The real story from Cooper himself:
“Somebody threw a chicken on stage. This was in Toronto and I’m from Detroit. I’ve never been on a farm in my life and I said, ‘It’s a chicken, it’s got wings, it’ll fly.’ So I threw it back to the audience, I thought it was gonna fly away. It went right at the audience and they tore it to pieces and threw the parts back on stage.
The next thing I knew, it was ‘Alice Cooper bites the head of a chicken and drinks the blood.’ That’s what the papers said the next day. I got a call from Frank Zappa and he said, ‘Did you do that?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Don’t tell anybody that. They love it.'”
You can watch Cooper’s defense below.
