Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne are two legendary shock-rockers known to some as much for their on- and off-stage antics as their music.
Osbourne, who was recently voted for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his solo career (he went in with Black Sabbath in 2006), famously made headlines for biting the head off a dove. It happened in March 1981. Two years earlier, Ozzy had been kicked out of Black Sabbath, for, in his own words, "being loaded all the time," according to Mojo.
Hoping to kick off his solo career with a bang in the U.S., Osbourne attended a CBS Records sales convention in Los Angeles. The plan was for Ozzy to release two white doves after giving a speech to those in attendance, but things went a little sideways.
According to Ozzy biographer Mick Wall, Osbourne got drunk on brandy. "I just remember this PR woman going on and on at me," Ozzy told Wall. "I pulled out one of these doves and bit its f---ing head off. Just to shut her up. Then I did it again... that's when they threw me out. They said I'd never work for CBS again."
Yet decades before Ozzy ran afoul of the CBS brass with his dove stunt, Alice Cooper gave the bird to another crowd.
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It happened in September 1969 at a concert known as the Toronto Rock N Roll Revival that featured a mix of rock 'n' roll legends like Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Bo Diddley along with Cooper, the Doors and John Lennon making his first live performance apart from the Beatles. Noted documentarian D.A. Pennebaker was there to film the proceedings, save for the Doors' set, since they didn't want to be filmed. (Revival69: The Concert That Rocked the World, a two-hour documentary on the festival, featuring performances and new interviews, will be released on June 28)
Cooper, however, had no problem playing things up for the camera. Long before Gallagher (not Liam or Noel of Oasis, but the single-named comedian, Cooper tossed watermelons into the crowd and then ripped open a feathered pillow and let the feathers fly into the crowd in a frenzy that would make the MyPillow guy's head explode. Things got stranger from there, courtesy of Cooper's manager Shep Gordon.
"The next thing you know there's a chicken onstage," Cooper recalls in the film (see clip below). "It seemed in the mayhem ... it should fly." Cooper chucked the bird into the crowd, thinking maybe a fan would catch it and adopt it as "a pet" named Alice. However, the chicken reportedly fell into the crowd where it was ripped to shreds by rabid fans.
In the following days, Cooper's star rose as sensational headlines like "Alice Rips Head Off Chicken" appeared. Somewhere, Ozzy Osbourne was taking notes.
