During a recent interview with NME, beloved shock rocker Alice Cooper revealed that one of his biggest influences is The Beatles. This may be surprising to many fans considering the fact that The Beatles are fairly upbeat and Cooper is a bit on the edgier side. Cooper told the outlet about when he heard “She Loves You” as a child, saying 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.”
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While in school, Cooper formed a band called The Earwigs, which seemingly poked fun at The Beatles. The Earwigs won their talent show with their farce of the monumental band, but Cooper has just disclosed that his childhood band was not just a joke on The Beatles, but an actual celebration of the band.
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Cooper included Meet The Beatles! in his top bands of all time list for Rolling Stone. The “School’s Out” singer also spoke to NME about the early Beatles record, saying, “It was the first one that totally knocked me out because I’d never heard anything like that before. We were listening to the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons, and all of a sudden, here’s this band coming along with all this hair and Beatle boots and these suits, and they were singing these songs that you could hear them one time, and you knew them.”
Cooper continued to discuss his love for Meet The Beatles!, saying, “I’ve always said this, and people might disagree with me, but it’s easier to write something like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ than it is to write something like ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’ I’m still pretty sure they’re aliens. I don’t think they’re from this planet.”
Other albums included on Cooper’s top ten list include The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, The Doors by The Doors, My Generation by The Who, England’s Newest Hit Makers by The Rolling Stones, and East-West by the Butterfield Blues Band. Cooper spoke to Rolling Stone about his love for East-West, which featured performances by Elvis Bishop.
Regarding East-West, Cooper said, “It’s one of those albums that nobody knows about. Musicians know about it. The thing that really topped it off, I think, after I had worn the album out maybe five or six times — and I still have it in my 1968 Mustang — is I talked to Elvin Bishop, and he mentioned that most of those tracks were done live in the studio. One or two takes, maybe, which made it even more astounding. Because there’s not a mistake, there’s nothing. The feel is magnificent on every song.”
(Photo Credit: Atom Splitter PR)
