"School's Out"

Cooper, Alice

album cover

"Well We Got No Class. . ."

Here, in heavy rock form, is the euphoria that spreads through schools everywhere when the final bell rings and the long-awaited summer vacation begins. Reckless and brazen, it's audio wildfire, the feeling of running full-tilt through the halls and raising hell, feeling invincible. "Well, we got no class," singer Vincent Damon Furnier (who later changed his name to Alice Cooper) yells proudly, anticipating unstructured days ahead. "And we got no principles, and we got no innocence. . .. We can't even think of a word that rhymes."

That last line offers a clue about the enduring appeal of Alice Cooper. Unlike many of its emulators, this prototypical early '70s "shock rock" band exhibited a winking self-awareness, a sense that the heart-attack clanging chords and the parent-baiting refrains were, in fact, just show business. It helps, too, that Alice Cooper's songwriting brain trust had killer hook sense: "School's Out" is a parade of addictive melodies, each one grabbier than the last, interspersed with one spectacular "bridge" section. That's when the abrasive guitars recede, and the band veers into a miasma of vocal harmony and sound-warp wizardry that still, even after all these years of heavy classic-rock radio play, has a riveting power.

"School's Out" was a summer song of 1972—it spent weeks in the Top 10, and helped the album of the same name become Alice Cooper's first platinum seller. Listen to it alongside some of the band's other singles produced by the amazing Bob Ezrin—the stomp-anthem "I'm Eighteen," "Elected," "No More Mr. Nice Guy," "Under My Wheels," all collected on The Best of Alice Cooper—and discover that Alice Cooper wasn't just among the first heavy rock bands, but one of the best ever.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1972, Warner Bros.
Appears On: School's Out; The Best of Alice Cooper.
Catalog Choice: Killer; Love It to Death.
Next Stop: Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine
After That: Marilyn Manson: Antichrist Superstar.
Book Pages: 187–188