ALICE COOPER Recounts Concert Performances That Went Really Wrong

In a recent interview with The News Tribune, ALICE COOPER recounted three of his concert performances that went really wrong.

On a show at House of Blues in Los Angeles during his Rock 'n' Roll Circus Tour when the boa constrictor he was holding decided to let it all go.

"In 30 years, I've never had a snake defecate on stage, and this one decided that was gonna be the night. And let me tell you something: There is nothing on this planet more foul…

"The audience was laughing at all the wrong times, so I knew there was something wrong. I didn't realize it at first. Then all of a sudden I went, 'What's that!' 'Cause it was a really horrific smell.

"It left I'd say about eight piles that if you saw it, you'd say a Doberman pinscher or a Great Dane would have left a pile like that — and all down the side of my stage clothes.

"So now the (roadies dressed as) clowns are on stage trying to clean all this stuff up, and it smells so bad that the clowns are throwing up. Now I have clowns throwing up on stage and boa constrictor crap all over.

"And everyone thinks, 'What a great ending for this show.' How sick is that?

"Johnny Rotten (of the SEX PISTOLS) at the end of the show goes, 'That was bloody brilliant! Do you do that every night?'

"I go, 'Oh yeah, we do it every night. I know just where to touch the snake to make it go.'

"Whoever was at that show that night got a show that no one else got. We had to pretend it's part of the gig."

On the urban legend that said Cooper sacrificed a live chicken during a show originated at a 1969 performance in Toronto:

"That was one of the ridiculous things that launched the career. It was before we really had an album to sell. We had early stuff with Frank Zappa, but it was before we really made an album that was worth selling.

"There were 60,000 people there, and we were playing between THE DOORS and JOHN LENNON," he said. "We used feathers at the end of everything, and all of a sudden there was a chicken on stage.

"Now we didn't put the chicken on stage. Somebody threw the chicken from the audience. I threw the chicken back in the audience, and the audience ripped it to pieces. The next thing in the paper, it says, 'Alice Cooper rips chicken to pieces.' The kicker to that was the first two rows were all in wheelchairs, so it was all the crippled people who killed the chicken.

"Of course Zappa calls me the next day and says, 'Did you kill a chicken on stage?'

"I say, 'No.' He says, 'Don't tell anybody. They love it.' And that's how the urban legend got started.

"It was one of those times when the negative press couldn't have been better.

"If you got banned in London, you soared right to No. 1. So you were trying to get banned in London."

On nearly dying in 1988 while attempting a hanging stunt:

"You have the rope that goes around your neck, and behind the rope is a piano wire with a hook. And under what you’re wearing, you have a vest on with a hook on it.

"When the floor drops out, you drop about two feet, the rope hits your neck. But the wire is actually shorter than the rope, so the wire stops the rope from actually hanging you. But it looks really real. This is the way they do it in movies.

"So one night after 100 shows, the floor drops in. The wire has done this 100 times, and it just snaps. And the rope catches just the front of my neck and my head snaps back, and it goes over my head, and I go right through the floor.

"If it would've caught under your chin it would definitely do a lot of damage."