Most Outrageous Rock Stars Feature: 1973

Alice & Bowie's 1973 Outrage Spotlight

Published in the US on January 1, 1973, Circus Magazine’s four-page feature “Most Outrageous Rock Stars” highlighted the wild public reactions to Alice Cooper and David Bowie in 1972. The article noted that a Pittsburgh preacher denounced Alice Cooper from the pulpit, a self-appointed British censor tried to wipe him off the airwaves, and the University of Houston student body elected him home-coming queen. It also described David Bowie’s astonishing Carnegie Hall debut, which attracted more pink, green and blue hair, dyed afros, men in gowns, and girls with silver glitter glued to their cheeks than America had ever seen gathered in one audience before.

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In 1972, a Pittsburgh preacher denounced Alice Cooper (below left) from the pulpit, a self-appointed British censor tried to wipe him off the airwaves, and the University of Houston student body elect- ed him home-coming queen. The astonishing Carnegie Hall debut of David Bowie (opposite page) attracted more pink, green and blue hair, dyed afros, men in gowns, and girls with silver glitter glued to their cheeks than America had ever seen gathered in one audience before.

Hordes of mascaraed male rockers and battling multi-million dollar managers made 1972 The Year Of The Unbelievable.

1972 was the year of unadulterated outrage in rock. It was the year of men in hot pants and lipstick mincing around the stage, baby dolls hacked to bits amid showers of blood, and lawsuits so large they rivaled the Pentagon budget. It was the year of a Cocker comeback that competed with the Howard Hughes affair for intrigue and suspense, a T. Rex tour that rivalled the downfall of Oedipus for tragic disappointment, and a Cros- by, Stills, Nash and Young breakup so murky that not even the group itself seemed to know if it was still together. But despite the billowing clouds of stage smoke, the heaps of silver sparkles, and the countless storms of controversy, there were seven rockers so utterly outrageous

that they stood out like King Kong marching through a crowd of extras for Planet of the Apes.

Alice's Panties:

When it came to no one being outrageous in 1972, there was but no one who could compete with Alice Cooper. Oceans of rosy-cheeked, innocent children flocked to American, Eng-lish and European theaters to see a grown man dressed in torn women's tights and mascara hack off a baby dolls' leg with an axe, lasciviously bite the severed thigh, then toss the bloody memento into the crowd. But while the converted were swarming toward the stage to catch the coldly mangled pieces, their parents were screaming in red hot rage. Life Maga-zine's middle-aged rock critic, Albert Goldman, bellowed that "the advance publicity for Alice Cooper almost turned my stomach." A disturbed Pittsburgh preacher delivered an im-passioned sermon entitled "Can the Church Compete With Alice Cooper -or Boredom as an Enemy of Life." And Mrs. Mary Whitehouse, head of England's "National Viewers' and Lis-teners' Association," sent a spate of letters to government leaders and the BBC stridently demanding that "School's Out" be expunged from the airwaves before it could trigger "in-

creasing violence in the schools." But as the cries of protest grew shriller, Alice's spectacles grew ever more as-tonishing. At stadiums in New Jersey and California, helicopters dropped a torrent of paper panties on the crowd while onstage Alice was dragged to the gallows. In England Alice captured headlines for staging "a strip show riot." And in Munich Alice rode into town on a blandly un-sexual ele-phant!

David Bowie's Super-Sex: If Alice

Cooper was the biggest outrage of the year, David Bowie was the harshest, weirdest, and most tantalizing shock. A year ago when the British press gave a series of Bowie interviews full-page coverage, it looked as if David was getting the star treatment not for his music or performing skills, but because he sometimes wore a dress and openly admitted to being gay. But when Bowie stepped onstage in Cleve-land, Ohio, ten months later with his gold and black jumpsuit and his blaz-ing carrot-orange hair, then gave an electrifying performance of songs from Ziggy Stardust, it became obvious that he was more than just a man with a gimmick. Newspapers and TV stations began to cover David as if he were 1972's answer to the Beatles. Flam-boyant drag queens in plumed hats

For two years running, Grand Funk Rail-road ( above left) captured the rec-ord for outraging the largest number of critics. This year they captured the rec-ord for bogging down the highest number of judges, lawyers and courtroom clerks. Leon Russell's ( below right) stag-gering three-and-a-half month, 600,000 at-tendance 1972 tour may have started out as a godless sexual carnival, but it ended up as a love-filled holy crusade. The critics had Elton John (opposite page) dead and buried. But he came back from the grave with a force that took their breath away.

and multi-colored afros began to storm the stage wherever David play-ed. And David's Ziggy Stardust LP rose to a higher place on the Circus Top Twenty than the Rolling Stones' Exile On Main Street. By the time Bowie's wife-the girl with the pur-ple-and-red-streaked hair-deserted his tour for England amid rumors that she had nipped rock writer Lillian Roxanne's breast and fondled a fellow female during her husband's Carnegie Hall concert, one thing had become a foregone conclusion. In 1973 David Bowie was going to be the strangest rock monster America had ever seen.

Jagger's Nude Birthday Cake:

When Mick Jagger dashed onto the sparkling white stage erected special-ly for the occasion in New York's enormous Madison Square Garden and began to prance like a high-speed, spastic chorus girl-punching the air, dangling one leg like a broken tree

limb, and stretching his arms like glider wings he brought to a close a 30-city $4,000,000 tour that had probably created more furor than any other musical event in history. Dick Cavett put Jagger on television, Life Magazine gave him a cover, Time worshipped him with a major article and an unprecedented two-page essay complete with color photos, and Bos-ton's mayor interceded personally to bail Jagger and Richard out of a Rhode Island jail after they'd been arrested for brawling with a photog-rapher. But the grand finale came af-ter the last custard pie had been thrown and the last overwhelming en-core had been given on the Madison Square Garden stage. At two A.M. that morning, Mick and his wife Bi-anca strolled through the lushly dec-orated entrance to New York's ex-clusive St. Regis Roof and joined a crowd of 500 for Mick's 29th birth-