Devil on my Shoulder

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 unrivalled 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'.

He’s so embedded in generations of popular culture that he not only made a cult-classic appearance in Wayne’s World during 1992, but he also starred alongside John Legend and Sara Bareilles in NBC’s 2018 production of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert - and also memorably appeared on both The Muppets and That 70s Show! as well as in Dark Shadows. Beyond hundreds of syncs, everyone from Etta James, The Smashing Pumpkins, Megadeth, and The Flaming Lips has covered his tunes. The Beastie Boys, Disturbed, and countless others have sampled him. His collaborators have notably included the late Vincent Price, Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses, and Jon Bon Jovi, to name just a few. Plus, he co-founded Hollywood Vampires alongside Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and Johnny Depp. Most recently, 2025’s 'The Revenge Of Alice Cooper' reunited the surviving members of the original Alice Cooper band to widespread critical acclaim. After thousands upon thousands of gigs and easily a million miles travelled, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame® Inductee continues ever onwards into rock 'n' roll folklore.