Alice Cooper found his longtime manager in a room with Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. He has Hendrix to thank for the introduction.
Before breaking out as one of rock’s most iconic frontmen, Cooper rubbed shoulders with stars and soon-to-be legends. He ran in the same L.A. circles as the Doors in the ’60s and even shared a house with Pink Floyd.
But it was another, more unusual living arrangement that sparked an all-important moment in his career.
“In 1968, we were so poor in L.A. that we were living in the Chambers Brothers’ basement in Watts. Jimi Hendrix used to come over and they’d all smoke grass together, and we’d come out of the cellar like rats,” he tells Professor of Rock.
“Jimi was buying his grass from Shep Gordon, who at the time was just this New York kid that was selling grass to all these people at the Landmark Hotel.”
Beyond his knack for selling marijuana, Gordon didn’t have much of a professional future mapped out. As Cooper recalls, Hendrix saw him as a walking target for the police.
“Jimi says, ‘You know, they’re going to bust you, man. You’re a young guy. You’ve got a lot of money and you don’t have an occupation.’
“He said, ‘I know a band that needs a manager. You should be a manager.’
“So he brings us over. I opened the door, and I thought there was a smoke machine inside! I walk through this, and there’s Jimi, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin. They’re all sitting there getting high.”
It wasn’t exactly the typical environment for a business meeting, but then again, this was rock and roll. Cooper was in the company of rock royalty — and three future members of the infamous 27 Club.
“Shep hands me a handful of marijuana. And this is when marijuana was really illegal in LA.
“And I went, ‘That’s our manager!’” Cooper continues.
“The very next day, we were supposed to sign with Frank Zappa’s [Straight Records]. We walked in, and Shep walked in, and they said, ‘Who’s he?’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s our manager.’ They said, ‘You didn’t have a manager yesterday.’ I said, ‘Yeah, we got him last night.’”
More than five decades later, Gordon is still Cooper’s manager and a vital part of his success. Cooper says their arrangement has always been so informal, and their trust in one another so strong, that they still don’t have a contract.
The band’s first two albums, Pretties for You and Easy Action, failed to make much commercial impact. Their fortunes changed with their third, Love It to Death, as their partnership with producer Bob Ezrin began to take shape. Ezrin later encouraged the band to revisit the Pretties for You track “Reflected,” ultimately transforming it into the satirical political anthem “Elected,” one of their biggest hits.
But the relentless schedule eventually took its toll, and by 1974 the original Alice Cooper Band had split. Its sound had been potently powered by Glen Buxton’s fiery lead guitar work.
“When we got Bob Ezrin, everything went through the roof,” Cooper says. “But after seven years, we never took time off. We just toured and toured. In those days, you made two albums a year.
“It was normal because if you didn’t, somebody behind you was going to take you out. We had Bowie breathing down our neck. So we made two albums a year, writing these songs while on tour. The original band just burned out.”
The original lineup reunited for 2025’s The Revenge of Alice Cooper, with Buxton, who passed away in 1997, a notable absence. But his influence was still felt, thanks to a rediscovered riff that became part of the album. He even made a posthumous appearance on the record.
“I had a cassette of Glen and I, and Glen had an idea for this song he called ‘Astute Lobotomy,’” bass guitarist Dennis Dunaway explains to Guitar Player. “And that’s all he had: the title and this riff, definitely a fiery, Glen Buxton riff.
“His spirit was in the room with us the whole time,” Ezrin adds. “We talked about him more than we talked about anything else, I think.”
