Watch Alice Cooper controversially inaugurate the ABC series ‘In Concert’
Once upon a time, Don Kirshner had a brilliant idea. The legendary and occasionally infamous American music executive had seen the massive blowup in rock concert attendance throughout the end of the 1960s and into the early 1970s. People couldn’t get enough live music, and Kirshner wanted to bring rock shows straight into people’s living rooms. In order to do that, Kirshner needed an eye-catching act. In 1972, nobody was more eye-catching than Alice Cooper.
Formed by five high school students out of Phoenix, Arizona, the original Alice Cooper group had been Frank Zappa’s pet project during their earliest years. At the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival in 1969, the band gained national notoriety when their lead singer (then known under his birth name Vincent Furnier) threw a chicken into the crowd, only for the animal to be killed and torn to shreds by the audience members.
After that, Alice Cooper became highly controversial due to their shock rock stage antics. Although they had found little in the way of commercial success before 1971, that year saw the band’s third album, Love It to Death, vault into the top 40 of America’s album charts, largely fuelled by the success of the hit single ‘I’m Eighteen’. They would never be pop stars, but Alice Cooper forged a different path by making their live shows absolutely unforgettable.
So it seemed like an obvious choice for Kirshner to pick Alice Cooper as the first band to appear on In Concert, launched by ABC in November of 1972. The band of shock rockers were headlining a concert at Hofstra University on Long Island, New York, on September 21st that featured a diverse lineup, including rock and roll pioneer Bo Diddley, soul icon Curtis Mayfield, and soft rock duo Seals & Crofts. At worst, Alice Cooper could at least rile up some of the more conservative viewers who might be watching across the country.
That’s exactly what happened when the first episode of In Concert was beamed out to Cincinnati, Ohio. The station manager for WKRC-TV was watching the broadcast when he became shocked by the revulsion he was seeing on screen. At that time, Alice Cooper’s stage act had expanded to include corpse paint, staged fights, and usually ended with Furnier’s execution via the electric chair. Although none of the more sinister elements made it onto the broadcast, the band’s performance was shocking enough for the station manager to demand the show be cut off.
Within a few minutes, a rerun of the 1960s western Rawhide was being shown instead. The station manager undoubtedly thought he was saving a whole city from the devilish antics of Alice Cooper, but what he didn’t realise was how popular the group had become by 1972, especially in the midwest of the United States. The censorship stirred local controversy, which also allegedly included a bomb threat against the station for pulling the Alice Cooper performance. Kirshner wanted a response, and boy, did he get one.
Kirshner only actually contributed to two episodes of ABC’s In Concert: the first and the second, with the latter featuring The Allman Brothers Band (in one of their final appearances with original bassist Berry Oakley, who died a month before the episode’s broadcast) and Chuck Berry. After that, Kirshner left the series to start his own syndicated show, Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, which went on to outlast In Concert by more than half a decade.
Watch Alice Cooper controversially inaugurate ABC’s In Concert down below.
