The traumatic day Alice Cooper fell from a stage, broke six ribs, and almost never returned
It is difficult to imagine anything standing in the way of Alice Cooper, at this point in his extensive career as the ‘Godfather of Shock Rock’.
He is a performer who has seen it all; a focal point of the American rock landscape for well over half a century. Still, there have certainly been moments in Cooper’s life where his performing career and health were put in jeopardy as a result of his usual theatrics. 50 years ago, an entire tour was shrouded in doubt after the ‘Dead Babies’ singer took a tumble off stage.
By 1975, Cooper had firmly established himself on the upper echelon of the American rock scene, having expertly toed the line between the dark inventiveness of albums like Killer and the mainstream accessibility of School’s Out. Constantly looking for ways to move forward and embrace different avenues of artistic expression, the frontman embarked upon a particularly ambitious project, in the form of Welcome to My Nightmare. Not only was the album his first solo project, created away from the usual Alice Cooper band, but it was also a concept album.
Soundtracking the nightmares of protagonist Steven, the album came complete with a television special accompaniment and an extensive tour, which fostered its own range of nightmares for Cooper himself. Envisioned as an exhaustive world tour, with Cooper visiting 60 cities across North America before heading to Europe for an equally impressive run of dates, this was the tour that would reaffirm the performer’s position as an indisputable rock god, but it didn’t go exactly as planned.
“My ribs hurt when I try to catch my breath. I tried to sing and couldn’t get any volume.”
Alice Cooper
Beginning in March, with a show in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the tour proved its credentials instantly, silencing any doubts over the quality of the musical material on Welcome to My Nightmare. By late June, the tour had moved north of the border, with the inaugural Canadian show taking place at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver. This was the show that would derail the entire tour, as early on in the set, Cooper fell headfirst from the stage, breaking multiple ribs and rendering himself seriously concussed.
“I was using a toy box as a prop and it fell over and knocked me off the stage,” the vocalist later explained to the Associated Press. “I cracked my ribs and hit my head on the cement floor. I put my hand on my head and it felt like a baseball.”
Although the band gallantly returned to the stage after a brief interlude, this “show-must-go-on” attitude, as Cooper called it, didn’t last very long. Quickly, the show was cancelled and Cooper was left in serious doubt over whether the rest of the tour could go ahead.
After all, broken ribs and a concussion are not easy things to deal with, particularly when travelling around the country on a tour bus and getting up on stage night after night. Asked whether the tour would continue after his accident, the performer bravely declared, “I’m going to try. I think I can,” before revealing: “My ribs hurt when I try to catch my breath. I tried to sing and couldn’t get any volume.”
Ultimately, the resilience and dedication of the rock icon pulled him through the ordeal, and he returned to the stage mere days after the accident, continuing his tour with a show in Edmonton, Alberta. Still, the Vancouver incident would not be Cooper’s last brush with broken ribs. During rehearsal for a show in 2008, the Welcome to My Nightmare section caused a much older Cooper to knock into a prop staircase, once again breaking two ribs.
A few broken ribs might seem severe, but they were little more than temporary setbacks for Alice Cooper. After all, nobody fosters such a lasting and beloved career as a rock god without encountering a few injuries along the way. If anything, those Welcome to My Nightmare injuries only strengthened Cooper as a performer, and he never dialled down the theatrics involved in his unplanned stage dive.
