Alice Cooper was still in high school when Phoenix promoter Jack Curtis took the Spiders under his wing at the VIP teen club and Mascot Records.
Alice Cooper talks about why he plays a villain onstage. One reason: Mick Jagger wasn't doing it. Cooper performs Sunday at Mann Hall in Fort Myers.Alice Cooper was still a kid named Vince from Cortez High the day he showed up with the Earwigs to audition for Jack Curtis, hoping to bring home a gig at what he calls"the best club in Phoenix," the VIP.
“He was like Dick Clark to me in that he was always tuned into figuring out the next flavor of gum that would be popular with teens,” Dunaway said. Curtis often had the Spiders open for national acts he brought through Arizona, from their heroes, the Yardbirds, at the VIP to a three-gig run of concerts with the Byrds at the Phoenix VIP, the Tucson VIP and the fairgrounds.
“We didn't really intend it to sell. I think he did it more so he would have the songs to play during ads for the VIP on the radio," he said."How many club owners would even think of doing that? It made us feel like stars even though we didn't have an actual single on the AM charts. We had so many ads that it seemed like we did.”
“The kids had used them as frisbees and thrown them around and stomped on them. That’s one of the reasons the Spiders 45 on Mascot is so rare. Because there's only a few copies that actually sold. The rest were destroyed.”In addition to booking the Spiders every weekend at the VIP, Curtis got them a gig as Conrad Birdie's backing band in"Bye Bye Birdie” at the Star Theatre, which later became the Celebrity Theatre.“And we were all still living with our parents.
“He would rather have somebody that looked like the Buckinghams or something. And here we come with all our crazy songs getting more out there. But we were still packing them in. So Jack was in a conundrum about should he allow this?” That’s how the Spiders ended up at Copper State Recording Studio in Tucson, where they tracked the song with Forster Cayce for a label called Santa Cruz Records.
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