The early 1970s were a weird and transitional time for kids. After the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, the hippie movement that had defined youth culture in the Sixties simply vanished. No one was going to be sent halfway across the world to have their legs blown off anymore. Everything was fine. Politics? Protest? Patchouli oil? Who needed it? Poof ... gone.

In the vacuum emerged a new generation of teens — a new army of dopey little mutants with bad shag haircuts who lacked any real ideology or identity other than hanging out at the growing number of fast-food joints, strip malls and 7/1 Is that were dotting the American landscape. They were searching for something new ... something to call their own ... but what?

They knew what they didn’t want. They had zero interest in listening to old farts like Bob Dylan or John Lennon grouse about the “government” or their “relationships.”

A cross-dressing smart aleck named Alice Cooper was one the first artists to feel the shift. With a smirk permanently tattooed on his lips, makeup on his face and his body wedged into a pair of skin-tight leopard pants, he knew damn well that the times were indeed a-changin’.