📰 Through the Looking Glass – Feature : Dec 1971

Creem Magazine — December 1, 1971

A sprawling six‑page feature in Creem titled “Through the Looking Glass,” pulling readers straight into the Alice Cooper Group’s surreal, nightmare‑cabaret universe at the close of 1971. The piece explored the band’s chaotic energy, theatrical menace, and rising notoriety as they pushed further into shock‑rock territory during the Killer era. It framed their world as a distorted funhouse of glam, danger, and dark humour — a place where the band’s onstage mayhem and offstage mythology blurred into one.

A vivid period snapshot capturing the band’s growing cultural impact as 1971 gave way to their breakthrough year.

A sprawling six‑page Creem feature, “Through the Looking Glass” dragged readers straight into the nightmare‑cabaret world of the Alice Cooper Group at the dawn of their shock‑rock ascent. Creem didn’t just report on the spectacle — it immersed itself in it, documenting the violence‑as‑vaudeville, the surreal humour, and the ritualised chaos that defined the band’s early stage mythology.

The article captured the full sensory overload of the show:

Alice smashing a dummy to pieces with a hammer

The spasmodic “execution” during Black Juju

The hypnotic swinging of the oversized pocket‑watch

Feathers erupting across the hall like a blizzard

The band blasting CO₂ to send them swirling through the air

A delirious encore with Alice hurling rolled posters into the crowd

Creem framed it all as a waking fever dream — a place where theatre, horror, slapstick, and rock collided in a way no other band of 1971 dared attempt.

A landmark early document of the Cooper aesthetic, and a reminder that the shock‑rock revolution didn’t just happen onstage — it rewired the imaginations of the writers trying to keep up with it.

Alice drags Creem readers into his nightmare – dummy disembowelment and all!

Alice Cooper Group’s Through The Looking Glass, a six-page feature in Creem Magazine, December 1, 1971.

More early shock-rock carnage added weekly.

He throws it on the floor and flails away at it with the hammer. Bored, he wanders over and sits down in the chair. Behind him the band build up to the screaming climax of Black Juju. Suddenly lights flash around the chair and his body jerks spasmodically and then slumps.

What seems like hours later he comes back to life, picks up an enormous watch and chain and starts swinging it in front of his eyes. The stage lights reflect on the metal casing. It is impossible not to stare at the clock as it swings backwards and forwards. He throws it to the ground and it breaks. Cooper moves to the front of the stage, a cushion in his hands. As the song builds to its last highpoint he swings the cushion over his head and showers the front rows with feathers. More feathers start to cascade from the ceiling of the hall. The other members of the band rush to the front of the stage with fire extinguishers and blast the feathers all over the auditorium with bursts of pressurised CO2

As the band files offstage the stunned audience erupts into deafening applause. The band comes back for one encore. Cooper stands at the front of the stage throwing rolled publicity posters of the group out into the audience. "