Devil on My Shoulder: A Memoir

The definitive autobiography from Alice Cooper, the Godfather of Shock Rock and one of the world's most iconic musicians with a career spanning six decades.

In the beginning, Alice Cooper was the name of a rock group. Then my stage name. And then a monster. Now I’ve written a book that tracks Alice’s evilution, how he and I became almost fatally intertwined, and how I’ve tamed him at last. After over thirty records and sixty-plus years, the story of Alice Cooper has become a tangle of embellishments, elaborations and outright fabrications, that I think it’s time to sort reality from myth: the slaughtered chickens, the bans and record burnings, the evangelical terrors, Ouija boards and poltergeists, resurrections and revenge from the grave, the cross-dressers, thieves, drug addicts and hopeless alcoholics, the house fires and car crashes―all will be revealed for what they really were.

I’m also coming clean about the extent of my addictions, my blackout years, the creative process fuelled by alcohol, drugs and round-the-clock TV, my scramble to the top of the pile and the terrible slide back down. I want to talk about the origin of Cold Ethyl, the guillotine and the dead babies, the best and worst of my reviews, my feelings of guilt and regret after people got hurt or died, what life was like on the road until the wheels came off the bus, what a romantic I am at heart and how I’ve stayed married for half a century even after my wife came at me with a frying pan.

And I want to talk about God. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna bang you on the head with a Bible, I just want to describe how it is that I found Him dwelling in me. Alice, that inveterate liar, was a voice in my ear for so long, whispering lies and sweet nothings, pretending to be my better conscience and my inspiration, pretending to be me, that I think it’s only right to present both sides of the story: the angel on one shoulder, the devil on the other.

No stranger to doing things his own way, Alice Cooper has cast a long shadow over rock music with an unrivaled live show and timeless anthems like “School’s Out,” “No Mr. Nice Guy,” and “Poison.” Selling over 50 million albums worldwide, he earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame® in 2003, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame® inducted him as part of its class of 2011. Boasting one of the most influential catalogues in history, Rolling Stone cited 1971’s platinum-certified Love It To Death among the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time,” while other platinum releases spanned the seminal Killer [1971], School’s Out [1972], the Billboard 200 #1 Billion Dollar Babies [1973], Welcome to My Nightmare [1975], and Trash [1989], to name a few. The latter even graced Rolling Stone’s “50 Greatest Hair Metal Albums of All Time.”

"Mr. Nice Guy takes a hard-earned victory lap in this well-told tale."―Kirkus Reviews

“An extraordinarily detailed account. . . . Cooper sets the record straight. . . . and comes across as surprisingly humble, funny, and personable.”―Publishers Weekly