In 1969, Alice Cooper – the band and the artist – were still two years away from releasing Love it To Death, the album that would catapult them to the rock forefront.

They had put out two records that were – if I’m being kind – interesting to say the least, but their live shows were a different story, and had already seen the band’s antics label them as a crazy night out. At one of these shows in Toronto, Alice Cooper’s legend would go from crazy to insanity and would see the man behind the paint accused of first-degree poultry murder.  

During the gig, a chicken found its way onto the stage and then into the audience, who proceeded to tear the thing apart.

It’s a story that has followed Alice Cooper around for the last 50 years plus, but just how true is it? What actually happened on that night, and was  it pre-planned or a spontaneous act?

According to Alice himself;

“Somebody threw a chicken on stage. This was in Toronto and I’m from Detroit. I’ve never been on a farm in my life and I said, ‘It’s a chicken, it’s got wings, it’ll fly.’ So I threw it back to the audience, I thought it was gonna fly away. It went right at the audience and they tore it to pieces and threw the parts back on stage. The next thing I knew, it was ‘Alice Cooper bites the head of a chicken and drinks the blood.’ That’s what the papers said the next day. I got a call from Frank Zappa and he says, ‘Did you do that?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Don’t tell anybody that. They love it.’”  

This was the accepted version of events for a very long time but over the years friends and former bandmates have offered a different take on it that seems to suggest it was all pre-planned, with Michael Bruce in particular stating;

“When we first started out, we broke open feather pillows stolen from the Holiday Inns, and used them on ‘Black Juju’, spraying them on the audience and all over the stage. As the source of pillows at the Holidays Inns turned to foam rubber, and the club owners were reluctant to have us back because they were picking feathers out of the stage, we thought it would be clever to throw the chicken with the feathers attached. We didn’t do it every time, but we threw some doves, chickens, whatever, watermelon, so I guess you could say we repeated it, it’s all a blur…As Alice tells it, it was always the audience that portrayed the violence, and we were just the parody on stage, which I guess is what most likely happened. Mob violence. Scary. I’m sure it happened more than once.”

So, was it as innocent an accident as Alice has suggested? Or was Alice Cooper responsible for chicken-cide? I’ll leave that to you to decide…