{"id":137613,"date":"2025-05-28T03:37:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T03:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/137613\/"},"modified":"2025-05-28T03:37:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T03:37:09","slug":"why-did-alice-cooper-point-a-gun-at-elvis-presley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/137613\/","title":{"rendered":"Why did Alice Cooper point a gun at Elvis Presley?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Alice<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Who is the hardest musician in rock and roll? It\u2019s a question that raises several paradoxes within the music world. Because perhaps the most intimidating and chaotic figures, were so slight in stature that physics was surely against them. Yet there was always a twinkle in their eye that told you they would never back down from anything or anyone. And in the case of Alice Cooper<\/a>, that thing was often a snake.<\/p>\n

He typified the sort of blood and guts approach to rock and roll that supports my point. The more outrageous and frightening, the better. It was perhaps symptomatic of a development in music whereby the music alone was not enough to create shock and awe. Since the evolution of rock from the more conservative 1960s, the music industry had explored most avenues of sonic disturbance and now it was time for the performative element to catch up. Whether it was make up, snake charming or Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off bats, the atmosphere was fostering a wild sense of anarchy. <\/p>\n

When Elvis Presley burst onto the scene, he didn\u2019t need theatrics. Pearls were clutched on the sheer sight of his wobbly knees<\/a> and charming grin. His more genuine sense of charisma and performative magnetism was shocking enough for the white-picket fence families of conservative America. <\/p>\n

But come the 1970s<\/a>, the world was in danger of leaving him behind and he watched as the world of music changed around him and rock became more edgy altogether. But deep within was still a steadfast belief that his title of \u201cThe King\u201d was still warranted within music and so upon an encounter with a burgeoning prince of chaos Alice Cooper, took it upon himself to prove it. <\/p>\n

At the start of the decade, Cooper was invited to meet Elvis in a hotel and proceeded to recall the bizarre set of circumstances in which he found himself. He said, \u201cSo we went up and they searched us for guns which was kind of silly because there were guns everywhere when you got in when he came in the room he was Elvis he wasn\u2019t the fat Elvis He was Elvis he was the guy he goes \u2018hey man you\u2019re the cat with a snake ain\u2019t you?\u2019 I said yeah, and he goes \u2018that\u2019s cool man, I wish I would have thought of that, that\u2019s cool man\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cWe go in the kitchen, he opens the drawer, takes out a loaded 38, snubnose 38, puts it in my hand, and he says \u2018I\u2019m going to show you how to take this gun out of somebody\u2019s hand\u2019. A little Devil\u2019s here on my shoulder says, \u2018shoot him,\u2019 a little Angel over here says \u2018don\u2019t kill him just wound him.\u2019 Before I could decide what to do, I was on the floor and he had his boot in my throat. I go \u2018ahhh that\u2019s good Elvis\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was one of many bizarre occurences that night<\/a>, as Chubby Checker, Linda Lovelace and Liza Minnelli were also present in what was a night of Elvis holding court in peculiar ways. After releasing Cooper from his death grip, he proceeded to perform karate moves for a bemused entourage. While maybe Presley\u2019s intentions were to prove he was still the king of entertainment, it was more likely they all left, realising that heavy is the head that wears the crown.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe To The Far Out Newsletter <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Who is the hardest musician in rock and roll? It\u2019s a question that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[60036,39145,77,269,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-137613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-alice-cooper","9":"tag-elvis","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114583374680577509","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}