‘It was tribal and sexual’: Alice Cooper on the debauchery of Detroit rock (good read)

VT: A few of us at VT are Detroit kids who grew up in this era, exactly this era.  This is why VT is more ‘biker gang’ culture than the prissy bitches of the militias, transplanted hillbillies from ‘up north’…who thought being a badass was breaking into vacation cabins…

Like most people, I live in my ‘play list.’  It is seeded with loud rock, with forgotten Motown along with Ella and Django.

There were many ‘last hurrahs’ of rock in Detroit, the return of the Eagles to Tiger Stadium, the recycled Doors at Pine Knob where the Righteous Brothers did their next to last gig…

It was about the audience, it is all described below.  It was auto plants, biker gangs, small clubs and an era none seem to remember…something I try to convey as best I can from time to time…

Eventually, for most of us, it was about leaving Detroit, just to stay alive.  Too many of us are back…with our ‘up north’ vacation homes and Florida condos…those that can afford such…and our little lives…which are quickly wasting away.

I still remember, when heading up the Lake Michigan coast, how much it looks like the paved two-lanes of the early 1950s that would, for two weeks a year, take us out of the soot covered hellhole of Detroit…the feeling of freedom seeing real trees and the possibility of swimming in water where you weren’t (as) likely to bump into the body of a murder victim….and so it goes…read on

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Guardian: In the beginning there was the production line; the hammering and the pumping and the noise. Always the noise. “Detroit was an industrial city,” says Alice Cooper. “It was like Newcastle. Everybody worked for Ford or Chevrolet or GMC. Everybody’s parents worked on the assembly line. The kids were street kids. I think the Detroit sound has something to do with working with big machines; it made people feel at home hearing big, loud, rock music.”

Cooper’s new album Detroit Stories celebrates the city he was born in and that made his name, full of songs that evoke the spirit of Detroit’s 1960s rock’n’roll scene, where the bands were faster, harder and tougher than in any other American city, and the records sounded like they were recorded with everything pushed into the red.

“You had to come on stage in Detroit with attitude, and that’s what crowds loved,” recalls Cooper, now 73. “For some reason, that midwest mentality was not sophisticated at all. It was tribal and kind of sexual.

Here’s the difference: in Los Angeles, if a Detroit act was in town, people would come home from work, put on their torn-up Levis, put on a black leather jacket, and try to look like they belonged. In Detroit, they’d just go from work like that because that’s the way they dressed; they had combat boots on. There was nothing phoney about it. So if you were a Detroit band, you better bring it or you’re not going to be there.”

Over the years, the high-energy sound of Detroit rock’n’roll has been pared back in the imagination to an endless repetition of two names….read more…no pay wall…

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/feb/26/alice-cooper-detroit-rock