ALICE COOPER

We were kids, just discovering The Beatles and Rolling Stones, The Who and the Kinks. Then all of a

sudden, I heard I’m A Man by the Yardbirds. And I went: ‘What was all that?’ That guitar had its own life. They were my favourite

band. I think Rave Up might be one of my favourite five albums ever made. They weren’t just a blues-rock band. Every time

they’d come up with a song – Evil Hearted You, Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, Shapes

Of Things – I’d never heard anything like it. “How many bands can say they had Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page as guitar players? I’d like to read about the transitional period when they were going from Beck to Page. How would you like to walk into a club in London and see Page and Beck together doing Chuck Berry or Train Kept A-Rollin’?

That’d be something you’d remember for the rest of your life. The only record they played on together was Happenings Ten Years Time

Ago – but that record is still futuristic.

“How about this: when we were 16 years old, we were a house band called The Spiders, playing in Phoenix. And we did all Yardbirds songs, alright? Like, an hour of Yardbirds.

And we opened for the Yardbirds. We did all of their songs. And they were at the back of the room. Then they got up and blew us off the stage. Because this was Jeff Beck when he was 19 or 20 years old. Can you imagine how good they were at that point? I mean, they were arguably the best band in the world.

“I told Jeff that story. I said, ‘In 1965 or 1966, you guys played in Phoenix…’. And he said, ‘There was this band that did all of our songs!’ And I said, ‘That was us!’ He remembered it. And I met Jimmy when we played the Whisky A Go Go. It was Alice Cooper and Led Zeppelin and nobody had ever heard of either one of us. As soon as they walked in, I went, ‘Hey, that’s Jimmy Page’. I walked up to him and I said, ‘You are rock royalty, you were with the Yardbirds, so we’ll open for you…’”