‘We didn’t divorce so much as separate. We were always friends more than a band’

Having shocked society in the 1970s before splitting, the Alice Cooper band tell Michael Hann why they’ve reunited

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When they were young men, the members of the band called Alice Cooper were a threat to the very fabric of our society.

On 28 June 1972, they appeared on Top of the Pops, performing “School’s Out”, and, yes, by that point in glam rock’s evolution, seeing men in candy-coloured Spandex on your TV wasn’t out of the ordinary. But other things seemed all wrong.

The way the drummer, Neal Smith, hunched over his kit like a caveman. The way the two guitarists and the bassist seemed sullen and uncaring. And most of all there was the singer, all in black, with shirt open to the waist, and black gloves - conventional rock star attire from the neck down - but with a face that looked ruined, as if he’d just been let out of a dark cell after a very long time. He wore makeup, but not to make himself look feminine or glamorous. He looked like death.

“We got no class, and we got no principles,” he sneered into the camera. “And we got no innocence/ We can’t even think of a word that rhymes!” Neither Alice Cooper nor the rest of the band of the same name cared one little single bit about being acceptable. And, lo, they were not accepted.

“Top of the Pops has given gratuitous publicity to a record which can only be described as anti-law and order,” said the “morality campaigner” Mary Whitehouse. “Because of this, millions of young people are now imbibing a philosophy of violence and anarchy. This is surely utterly irresponsible in a social climate which grows ever more violent.” Whitehouse demanded the BBC ban the record from Top of the Pops. They didn’t, and Cooper credited her intervention with helping it to No 1.

At least she hadn’t seen the stage show, featuring Cooper being guillotined, executed in an electric chair, tortured and beaten up, though if she had seen the group on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1971, she’d at least have known about him wrapping himself in a live boa constrictor.