Alice Cooper: Pretties for You

At 7 I contracted meningitis. It affected my brain, and I slipped into a coma. I spent a year in hospital, and during that time music didn’t play much of a major part. I was in total confusion and frustration and really not recognizing the people in front of me who were telling me all manner of strange things. It was very, very hard to get to grips with myself, and it took a good four years to recover my memories. Music wasn’t really there.

By 10, though, I was running a mini-cab service, doing the bookings, which was the best job ever. I loved the responsibility, and people were surprised that a little boy was booking their journey. The money was great so I started buying music.

I was going to two record stores at that time: one in Finsbury Park, run by a sweet little white-haired old lady, that used to have nothing but Jimi Hendrix and big, deep, dense, dark dub—it was always full of Jamaicans. The other one was run by two long-haired chubby fellows who had great taste. That’s where I picked up Alice Cooper’s Pretties for You. It was a long time before he became popular. The idea of buying singles wasn’t good enough for me, albums were like wow, eight more songs, and the covers would absolutely fascinate me. A lot of times I would just buy things because of the artwork—but that’s not to say it was all good. Pretties for You is a really good example of bad artwork.