Alice Cooper Once Tossed a Chicken Into an Audience. A New Doc Captures the Mayhem
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When it comes to iconic moments in rock history, one can include the Beatles’ rooftop concert, Jimi Hendrix’s literally incendiary set at the Monterey International Pop Festival, the 1973 Kool Herc party that helped launch hip-hop — and, of course, Alice Cooper and the chicken.
In September 1969, Cooper, not yet a household rock-weirdo name, was on the lineup of the Toronto Rock N Roll Revival, a festival that brought together two generations of rock stars. Pioneers like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Bo Diddley were on the bill, sharing the day-long stage with relative newcomers like the Doors, Chicago, and Cooper. The event became best known as the moment that John Lennon first stepped outside of the Beatles onstage. His ad-hoc set with the newly configured Plastic Ono Band (Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann, and Alan White) featured covers of rock oldies, his own “Cold Turkey,” and Ono onstage in a bag — anything but Beatle songs. Renowned documentarian D.A. Pennebaker shot most of the day, although the Doors declined to be filmed.
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Some of the footage from the Revival has been seen before, in Pennebaker’s own 1971 documentary Sweet Toronto, and sets by Lennon and Chuck Berry had been released separately. But coming June 28 is Revival69: The Concert That Rocked the World, a full, two-hour documentary about the festival that includes Pennebaker’s original footage along with new interviews with organizers and musicians (and Rush’s Geddy Lee, who was in the audience). We also hear recordings of phone calls between Lennon, Ono and the organizers, including John Brower, about getting Lennon onboard.
At the time, Alice Cooper was a relatively unknown band from Phoenix that had just released its first album; stardom was several years away. As the Toronto footage shows, they were already setting themselves apart as one of the most theatrically minded new bands: We see the members wrestle onstage with one another and trash drum sticks, and Cooper himself picks up a watermelon and throws it into the crowd. Cooper then grabs a feathered pillow, rips it open and watches as the feathers fly into the air to create an eerie snowstorm effect. In the film, Cooper remembers seeing Lennon and Ono watching offstage and reveling in the special effect.
But the chaos didn’t end there, thanks to Cooper’s manager Shep Gordon. “The next thing you know there’s a chicken onstage,” Cooper says in the film. “It seemed in the mayhem … it should fly.” Grabbing the bird, Cooper also tossed that into the crowd, assuming someone would catch it and make it, he says, “a pet” named Alice. Instead, the chicken plummeted and, in a horrifying moment, was reportedly ripped apart by the audience. The excerpt here also includes comments from Gordon, Brower, and Canadian singer Claudja Barry.
Portions of the set were included in a documentary on Gordon, but Revival69 features more of Cooper’s set — and also puts his appearance in a larger context. In the days that followed, headlines like “Alice Rips Head Off Chicken” put Cooper on the road to becoming, as he puts it, rock’s new villain. Looking back, that moment was also a preview of Seventies rock & roll, and the way it giddily trashed the music and stage shows of the founders, declaring that a new generation was waiting in the wings.
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