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Mon 15 December 2025 20:30, UK
Brushing with death was par for the course most nights famed shock rocker Alice Cooper took to the stage.
Be it the electric chair, the guillotine, or the hangman’s gallows, Cooper’s been treating his fans to his very public, grisly demise for well over 50 years now. Legend has it that all eager bandmates are set three important expectations upon recruitment: “You’re gonna get paid, you’re gonna see the world, you’re gonna get stitches.”
This wasn’t said for nothing. Wielding deadly props and all-too-real-looking execution devices, many a jousting accident or stage fall has befallen their horror vaudeville frontman. Gruesome theatre nearly turned into deathly infamy in 1988, when his traditional hanging routine was snagged by a snapped safety wire during rehearsals at Wembley Stadium, the rope catching his chin while falling eight feet and leaving him unconscious.
Broken ribs, concussions, and asphyxiations were all features of the live show kept strictly within the band. Yet, such ghoulish shenanigans only ever once reared its head off the stage, following a surprise invitation alongside a star-studded ensemble eager to meet the King.
Occasionally, 1970 is the year given for the meeting with Elvis Presley, but fans and rock historians have expressed doubt about Cooper’s dating. Firstly, the band was still in their stale psychedelic phase, yet to hit Billboard success with Love It to Death and cement their shock rock direction. Then there’s the company he was keeping. While heading to meet the rock icon with Liza Minnelli and Chubby Checker, both dwelling in the lofty celebrity peaks before the end of the previous decade, the fourth entourage member, Linda Lovelace, found fame two years later with her starring role in the Deep Throat porn film.
In any case, the quartet enthusiastically headed toward Presley’s room in Las Vegas’ Hilton Hotel in the early 1970s. Initially searched for guns by Presley’s minders, Cooper struggled to contain his starstruck awe as the King greeted the arrivals, yet to fully succumb to the bloated parody act he would lapse into in a few short years.
“Hey, man. You’re the cat with a snake, ain’t you?” Presley reportedly quipped to Cooper. “That’s cool, man. I wish I had thought of that.” Before long, Presley directed Cooper to the kitchen, presented a loaded .38 snub-nosed revolver, and handed Cooper the firearm, “I’m going to show you how to take this gun out of somebody’s hand.”
Cooper revealed the rush of temptation that overcame him in such a moment of fateful, choice overload during his hosting appearance on BBC’s Never Mind the Buzzcocks in 2011. “Put a little devil here on my shoulder,” he remarked, pointing to his left side mid-anecdote. “’Shoot him.’ The little angel over here says, ‘Don’t kill him. Just wound him.’”
Before Cooper’s moral dilemma was decided, the King had swiftly disarmed the gun and firmly placed his boot on the shock rocker’s neck. “Ha, that’s good, Elvis, that’s good,” Cooper spluttered on the floor.
It turned out that Cooper was nearly killed by Presley, but a routine near-death experience was business as usual for the future ‘School’s Out’ crooner. Adding a glammed-up, rivet boot imprint to the neck along with his litany of war wounds, Cooper recounted the hotel meet-up turned karate disarm with pride, as well as harbouring a real affection for the King. “I tell you what, he was an amazing character,” Cooper concluded. “Very funny guy.”
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