How Alice Cooper reimagined 'I'm Eighteen' and 'School's Out' for a kids album

Alice Cooper has been tinkering with the lyrics to a number of his most iconic singles for an album he’s been tracking at his Solid Rock Teen Centers in Phoenix and Mesa — a various-artists compilation of songs he feels are better suited for impressionable young minds than most of what he hears these days.

“It’s a takeoff on our own stuff,” Cooper says. “Instead of ‘I'm Eighteen,’ it's ‘I'm Thirteen.’ 'School's In.' And ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy' is 'Now, I'm Mr. Nice Guy.' It’s kind of a positive take on the stuff we used to do.”

The album, titled "Solid Rock Revival," also features some of Cooper’s famous friends.

Rob Halford, the voice of Judas Priest, is featured on a song called “Pleasant Dreams” about overcoming your fear of the dark, while Darryl “DMC” McDaniels of Run-DMC has reimagined Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” as a hip-hop children’s song called “Midday Hour.”

Cooper’s daughter Calico is also on the record, singing a song with her dad about learning how to ride a bike.

'Solid Rock Revival' is 'music we would want our kids to listen to'

The idea grew out of a conversation Cooper had one night while dining at Christopher’s at Wrigley Mansion with Joe Norelli, a longtime Solid Rock supporter who runs the Norelli Family Foundation with his wife, Judy.

“We were talking about the Teen Center and wouldn't it be great if we did music we would want our kids to listen to?,” Norelli says. “Or our grandchildren in this case.”

Proceeds from the album will benefit the Norelli Family Foundation and Cooper’s Solid Rock Foundation.

Halford, who divides his time between his English hometown of Walsall and Paradise Valley, Arizona, was happy to lend his talents to the project.

“Now you've got two heavy metal guys in here doing the fun little songs,” Cooper says. “And I think it's really unique — you know, going back into your own songs and changing all the lyrics.”

How Alice Cooper came to cover 'Monster Mash' for kids

Cooper also covered Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash” for the collection.

“That was just, like, off the cuff,” Norelli says. “Like, wouldn't it be cool for Alice to do 'Monster Mash'? ‘Cause he's the guy that should've done it in the first place.”

Not that Cooper could have done it in the first place.

“I was a little kid when that song came out,” Cooper interjects.

But he loved the idea of sinking his teeth into that hit from 1962, released as he was starting freshman year at Cortez High School here in Phoenix.

“We just queued it up,” Norelli says. “We did it on a whim one afternoon. He said, 'Yeah, I can do that.’ A couple takes, we had some music, and it was ready to roll.”

How Alice Cooper's 'I'm Eighteen' became 'I'm Thirteen'

So how does “I’m Thirteen” compare to “I’m Eighteen,” a breakthrough hit released in 1970 on which Cooper poured his thoughts on how it felt to be 18 into such classic lyrics as “I got a baby's brain and an old man's heart/ Took 18 years to get this far?”

As Cooper explains it, “'Eighteen' was about 'I'm getting kicked around. I'm not a boy. I'm not a man. I've gotta go to war and get killed, but I can't have a drink.' It was all that angst. Then, finally, the kicker is, 'I'm 18. And I like it.'”

At 13, you may think you're getting kicked around but your complaints are made of different stuff.

“At 13, I don't have any say in anything,” Cooper says. “I can't make anybody do anything. I'm at that age where everything is wrong. I have pimples.”

'School's Out?!' Alice says, 'I couldn't wait for the first day of school'

The new lyrics to “School’s Out” are probably closer to how Cooper really felt about school when he was running track and playing rock songs in the Cortez High cafetorium as a skinny kid named Vince Furnier, lead singer of the Earwigs.

“I couldn't wait for the first day of school,” Cooper says.

“I didn't know what girls were gonna be in my classes. I didn't know what guys were gonna be there. Everybody grew another five inches over the summer. All of a sudden, that girl... what happened to her?! It was the greatest day.”

Then, with a laugh, he adds, “To me, school was a social event. It wasn’t a learning event. I mean, I was Ferris Bueller. I wasn’t there to learn anything. School, for me, was getting away with whatever I could get away with. As long as you were funny, the teachers loved you. I said, ‘I’ll keep the class entertained. Just give me a C.’”

Getting the kids at Alice Cooper's Solid Rock Teen Centers involved

The album also features contributions from a handful of the kids who show up after school each day to hone their musical abilities.

“So now, you've got a drummer from the Teen Center and a bass player recording with Rob Halford,” Cooper says.

Actually, Norelli says, the drummer on that track is 12.

“Isn't that cool?,” Cooper says, with a smile. “That kid can go, 'Yeah, I did that track with Rob Halford.' Or 'I did that track with Alice singing on it.'”

These kids are also learning what it means to make a record.

“This is all new to them,” Cooper says. “We've done it 1,000 times. But to these kids? I know the very first time I went in the studio, it was like Disneyland. I was going, 'What?!'”

Alice Cooper says he'd like to release a garage rock album by the teens

Cooper and Norelli hope “Solid Rock Revival” leads to more recording projects with the kids from Cooper’s Solid Rock Teen Centers.

"I would like to do an album now of songs that these kids write,” Cooper says.

“Let them write it. Let them go in and produce it. You'd have really good garage rock. That's what garage rock is. Unpolished rock 'n' roll. Which some of it, that's what you want. You don't want polished. You want it to be rough and raw. Sometimes those ragged edges are what makes it interesting.”

Young musicians still learning their way around an instrument are often more likely to stumble across a really cool idea, Cooper says.

“When you get somebody that doesn't quite know what they're doing, they accidentally make some really good mistakes,” he says. "That’s why some of the stuff these kids in here are doing is more interesting than some of what you’re hearing on the radio.”

That’s also why the Alice Cooper group’s first album, 1969’s “Pretties for You,” is what it is — a willfully experimental psychedelic oddity recorded by Frank Zappa that still sounds like it was beamed in from another planet.

“Our first album was us not knowing how to write a song,” Cooper says. “That's what made it so unique, was us learning how to write a song while we're doing the album. Frank Zappa would sit there and go, 'I don't get this. Either you guys are way past everybody else, or you don't know anything.' We said, 'We're somewhere in between.'”

Norelli and Cooper have been working together for at least 10 years. The Norelli Family Foundation co-presented Alice Cooper’s Christmas Pudding in December and donated $1 million toward the building of a third Teen Center opening this year in Goodyear.

“He’s one of the guys that really supports us,” Cooper says. “We wouldn’t be where we are now without him.”

Cooper hopes this album draws attention to his Solid Rock Teen Centers

In addition to raising funds for both foundations, “Solid Rock Revival” is meant to draw attention to the work they do at Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock Teen Centers.

And where they are is important to Cooper. He and his wife, Sheryl, founded Solid Rock in 1995 with a mission of making an everlasting impact on the lives of teens in the community.

The first Teen Center opened in 2012 on the southeastern corner of Thunderbird Road and 32nd Street in Phoenix, built in partnership with Genesis Church and Cooper's Solid Rock after more than a decade of fundraising through Alice Cooper’s annual Christmas Pudding concerts and an annual golf event each spring.

In 2021, a second Solid Rock Teen Center opened in a former elementary school at 122 N. Country Club Drive in Mesa.

“My wife says we're the best kept secret in Arizona,” Cooper says. “As successful as it's been on every level, people will go, 'Oh, that School of Rock you do. And we'll go, 'No, it's not the School of Rock.'”

Both centers offer free after-school programs in music, arts and dance as well as vocational training in related fields to students 12 to 20.

“Most kids can’t afford to go to music school or dance school,” Cooper says. “They have the talent, but they don't have the money. That's where we come in. They've taken all the culture out of the schools. And kids have got to create their own culture or they don't have a voice. You have to let a kid express himself or herself somehow.”

Norelli executive produced the “Solid Rock Revival” album, working with award-winning producer, engineer and songwriter Ruben Salas and producer/artist and studio owner Dana Kamide, to co-write, produce and record the album’s tracks.

The album is expected to be out on Aug. 9.

The two foundations are planning a limited run of “Solid Rock Revival” on vinyl, complete with autographs, to auction off at Christmas Pudding and other fundraising events.

“We should spray it gold and say, ‘It’s already gone gold,’” Cooper says with a laugh. “About an hour ago. It’s still sticky."

In the meantime, Cooper is hosting his annual spring fundraiser, now called Coopstock, on Saturday, April 13, at Las Sendas Golf Club in Mesa.

This year's guests include Micky Dolenz of the Monkees, Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon, Tommy Thayer of KISS, Orianthi, who rose to fame as the lead guitarist in a Michael Jackson documentary, actor Patrick Warburton, performance artist Rock Demarco and performers from the Solid Rock Teen Centers.

Coopstock

When: 5 p.m. Saturday, April 13.

Where: Las Sendas Golf Club, 7555 E. Eagle Crest Drive, Mesa.

Admission: $69-$500.

Details: 480-396-4000, alicecoopersolidrock.com.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @EdMasley.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Alice Cooper rewrites his legendary hits for a children's album