The brutal night in 1982 when Big Country were bottled by Alice Cooper fans
In the early 1980s, the disparate worlds of veteran shock rocker Alice Cooper and Celtic indie popsters Big Country both had things to prove.
‘School’s Out’ felt a long time ago as Cooper was gearing up for the tour promoting Special Forces. The first of his ‘Blackout’ trilogy, so called due to massive alcoholism and scant memory making the records, a wayward drift once glam’s glitter had grown stale saw the Detroit star jump into the world of new wave for a stripped-down, tauter sound smattered with the day’s synthy trends.
It didn’t quite work, despite 1980’s ‘Clones (We’re All)’ faring well on the disco charts of all places. But needs must, sparking a career relevance that would eventually bloom into the ‘Poison’ Billboard explosion at the decade’s end. Yet, such a flux meant anything went in the promotions department. No More MC5s and Grand Funk Railroads to open the show, the Cooper team had to look toward the new wave when eyeing up a suitable support for the shock rocker’s new stylistic venture.
Now, from 1983’s The Crossing debut, Scotland’s Big Country would stand as one of the era’s most loved bands. Centred on frontman Stuart Adamson’s anthemic songcraft, everybody would heap praise on the band’s uniquely post-punk folk work, U2, Ray Davies, The Rolling Stones, and BB King would all state their fandom, John Peel dubbed Adamson “Britain’s answer to Jimi Hendrix”, and Kate Bush lent her vocals to 1986’s ‘The Seer’.
It would take a couple of years to enjoy such company, however. It hadn’t been long since Adamson was playing guitar for Dunfermline punks Skids, calling it quits after 1980’s The Absolute Game to kickstart his swirling pop venture. Dwelling on a certain pedestal of the punk world, Adamson found himself down a peg or two, shopping his Big Country demos to a steady string of various big label rejections and a frustrating lack of momentum. The reception of their big support slot did little to instil further confidence.
While a couple of low-key gigs had been played in their hometown’s Glen Pavilion earlier in the year, February 1982 would see the fledgling Big Country play their first real show, opening for Cooper during his UK leg of the Special Forces tour, signing up for both Brighton and Birmingham dates. It seems absurd now, but naturally, the Cooper team thought they’d smartly bagged the next new wave sensation befitting the vintage rocker’s keen embrace of the Second British invasion.
Wrong. “Everybody had long hair, leather jackets, denim with the patches,” guitarist Bruce Watson recalled in Adamson’s Stay Alive biography. The fact was, most of the fans had filled in the Brighton Centre to hear ‘I’m Eighteen’ or ‘Under My Wheels’ and just about tolerating the electronically coated new material, let alone enduring the pop-rock stylings of Big Country. “We got bottled,” he furthered. “Bottles of pish. ‘Boo! Get off, fucking poofs!’”
The following night in Birmingham was more of the same, the Cooper fans making their dislike for the Big Country poppers in no uncertain terms via a volley of bottles and anything else at hand, forcing the band’s boot from the tour after just two gigs. Cooper often told his bandmates three things: “You’re gonna get paid, you’re gonna see the world, you’re gonna get stitches.”
Extending to Big Country’s disastrous support slot, they could at least walk away having ticked two of Cooper’s terms and conditions.
