ALICE COOPER - “School’s Out”
(#317, 12th August 1972)
My first French teacher was a great heap of a man who I remember for his sweat patches and his bitterness and the way he changed the seating plan in the class around every few weeks, based on test results. If you came first, you got to sit front and center, and the rest of the class would zig-zag back behind you until the back row was filled with the worst half-dozen students, so he and they could ignore one another. This was a poor motivational tactic, as Monsieur M. smelt bad and if you did well you were best placed for a whiff of him. I was either too guileless or scared or proud to do badly, and so I ended up at the front, a lot, nose full of sweat while I glumly conjugated.
Monsieur M’s seating policy simply locked down the social divisions that exist in every school anyway. If I’d had free choice I might have tried to sink into the anonymity of the middle two rows, but I wouldn’t have chosen the back. As an illustration of why, the kids in the middle rows liked pop music, which I liked. The kids at the back liked hard rock and metal, which I didn’t.
This being 1983, pop music meant Duran Duran and hard rock didn’t mean Alice Cooper, it meant Maiden and Priest and especially AC/DC. The biggest tracks - the ones passed round on walkman headphones on class trips - were AC/DC’s “The Jack” and the one which goes “I’ve got big balls”. Even as a front-of-the-class guy, I heard those a lot. And when I heard “School’s Out” for the first time, years later, that was the world I fitted it into.
Of course, this was a boys’ school in the heart of Home Counties England, and we were all upper middle class kids, so the ones at the back of the class weren’t hoods or bullies - even if they aspired to be tough kids, and flirted with an idea of toughness that AC/DC was an access to. I wasn’t scared of them - didn’t like them either, but the overwhelming macro-system of social class was enough to jam most of the more tribal signals that might have been starting to reach our 10-11 year old brains, so there was never a sense of threat from the kids themselves. I projected the threat onto the music, a little: without ever actually listening to it I assumed hard rock would be something too savage for me, too aggressive, exclusionary and shrivelling and mocking. It wasn’t, mostly, which in a strange way explains to me why so much rock has been so disappointing to me. Why, I wondered, was it so easy to take?
Alice Cooper, like a lot of the music I would have assumed to be scary at 10, aren’t scary here: Alice is energetic, flamboyant, blazing with life, aggressive in a showy way but not really threatening, even to the school or the teachers. I don’t remotely mean that as a criticism: “School’s Out” is a glorious kid’s fantasy of the end of school, a playground brag, a smile at the days when “for Summer” and “forever” could happily smush together and when school’s summertime erasure was so complete that it might well have been blown to pieces. The rising glee on the “No more teachers” chant carries the real sting - mockery being a far more likely weapon for kids than explosives. But mostly this is rampaging boy exuberance, captured perfectly in that crunching, pealing opening riff. (Honestly, have guitars ever sounded as full and sweet as in the glam era?)
Maybe if I’d listened to more rock I wouldn’t have kept landing in the front row, or maybe I’d have found a way to balance liking it and landing there. Life is full of maybes and it doesn’t really matter, except that by not listening to Maiden or AC/DC in my teens I seem to have blocked a way to really loving them now. “School’s Out” dissolves my rock block, just like it offers a way to dissolve the front-row/back-row split by unimagining school completely: in the end I like it because it’s such an inclusive, generous record. 8
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Richard B on May 15th, 2007
Thanks for a wonderfully evocative review. Reflects my own feelings about rock, about growing up in the 80s, and about this record, perfectly. Only now I’m all grown up can I appreciate how clever and charming it is - a fully grown man imagining himself as a schoolchild, in order to share a feeling with them.
It’s the same reason why I’ve - slowly - come to love ‘Baggy Trousers’ by Madness, which pulls off the exact same trick. Contrast this with Pink Floyd’s horrible ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ which does the exact opposite - projecting very adult views and perspectives onto the school experience to make a clever-clever political point.
Tom on May 15th, 2007
I loved “Baggy Trousers” when it came out (and ever since really) even though its description of the school experience had very little to do with mine - it was and is like a Bash Street Kids strip come to aural life.
Marcello Carlin on May 15th, 2007
I was eight when “School’s Out” came out and AC went on TOTP and thereafter to number one. It scared the shit out of me, which I guess was the point.
The older one gets, of course, the more visible the strings and the showbiz, so I’m rather ambivalent about it now in a “yes, Alice, very good, now away and play golf with Tony Danza” sense and much prefer “I’m Eighteen” and “Elected” as records and, particularly, performances - but it certainly worked at the time and outraged my headmaster at primary school so much that he spent ten minutes denouncing the record one morning at school assembly.
The next step on from Arthur Brown and his Calor gas colander, I suppose.
Billy Smart on May 15th, 2007
This recording is particularly well-deployed at the beginning of Richard Linklater’s ‘Dazed & Confused’, where it plays over scenes of classes disbanding at a Texas high school on the last days of Summer term 1976, as menacing bullies gather outside.
Rosie on May 15th, 2007
Couldn’t have been more appropriate for me, I’d just left school, just passed my eighteenth birthday, just had my first legal drink (served with a wry grin by the guv’nor of the Waggoners, where I and my friends had been weekend regulars for ages), and was embarking on the long, anarchic summer before uni.
And it caught the mood perfectly. I hear it now and I’m transported back to those days. I can feel the slightly clammy sunshine, smell new-mown grass (I was working as a skivvy in a rural management training centre for the summer), and feel the thrill of new-found liberation and irresponsibility.
The track that catches the mood even more effectively was Argent’s Hold Your Head Up, which was a biggish hit but won’t be troubling us. Its shimmering organ just is the sound of summer for me.
Eight’s a good call, I reckon.
Erithian on May 15th, 2007
I’d recently seen a Granada programme showcasing Pentangle in concert, so when I saw the unfamiliar name “Alice Cooper” in the TV listings for that Thursday’s TOTP I remember thinking that she might be a Jacqui McShee-type folky light vocalist. Hmmm. Instead it was one of those classic moments you talk about in the playground the following morning, “blimey-did-you-see-THAT-it’s-gotta-be-number-one”.
I was only ten and it was primary school, so to me and my friends it was pure end-of-term feelgood, and yes a fantastic guitar sound. None of the malevolence of Pink Floyd, as Richard points out – when I hear that “we don’t need no education”, I think “yes you do, you bunch of scruffs”, while School’s Out and Baggy Trousers make me think “yes, I’ve been there, felt that”.
This was one of a couple of iconic late-’72 TOTP performances featuring people from the audience, as at that time they used to have dancers quite close to the performers. Remember the girl Alice pulls towards him for a dance, who doesn’t look fazed at all and has a good time doing the Bump? The other one is the geeky-looking lad in the sleeveless pullover who gets in shot between Bowie and Mick Ronson during “Starman”, watching himself in the monitor. I wonder if they cringe every time those clips get shown?
Number 2 Watch – this could have been the hairiest 1-2 in chart history. Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine” stalled at 3 while Alice was number one, the pair being split by Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs (aka Jona Lewie) with “Seaside Shuffle”. What a great summer.
intothefireuk on May 15th, 2007
AC was one of the acts that made TOTP compulsory viewing in ‘72 & beyond. An outrageous performance guaranteed you were the talk of the playground for the next few weeks (see also Bowie, Glitter etc) and no doubt thrust you firmly in the direction of number one. AC were, at the time, seen as a glam act, it was only in later years they were placed back into the rock rack. I remember also finding AC a little unsettling but SO did sum up that sod school lets party feeling - personally I couldn’t wait for school to break for summer. It used to be said that school days are your best days - well mine never were and ACs one fingered salute feels about right to me.
Pete on May 15th, 2007
A song must be really good when the Daphne & Celeste cover of it ISN’T better!
jeff w on May 15th, 2007
I’ve not heard the D&C version, but I do own a cover of this by Emma ‘Wild Child’ Ridley. It’s not very good: the plays on words - “class”, “princip(les)/(als)”, etc - clearly go straight over her head.
Rosie on May 16th, 2007
Where’s my response gone? I swear I posted it and when I tried to repost I was warned of a duplicate post…
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on May 16th, 2007
might have gone into the industrial-strength spam filter, rosie — it gobbles mine like nobody’s business and i’m on the management team!
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on May 16th, 2007
there you go!
Erithian on May 16th, 2007
P-nk Lord - you have a filter and the word “gobbles” gets through?!!
Rosie - Argent, yeahh, lovely song. There were some great underrated singles in ’72 which won’t be troubling us, by not-many-hit wonders: Lindisfarne’s “Meet Me on the Corner” and Blackfoot Sue’s “Standing in the Road” come swiftly to mind.
FT's Alan on May 16th, 2007
I very much hope that when logged in you should no longer be getting marked as spam.
plz?
jeff w on May 16th, 2007
“Standing in the Road” would be perfect for the poptimism podcast. I shall try and locate an mp3.
Mark Grout on May 16th, 2007
Emma Ridley’s version!
I have this on VHS cassette taped off “Night Network” being reviewed by Mark E Smith!
God, “Night Network” had loads of golden nuggets like that!
FT's doofuus2003 on May 17th, 2007
This is a great No.1, and so was Elected (if it got there)My favourite remains No More Mr Nice Guy (I opened doors for little old ladies, indeed)
Sorry not a dynamic entry, but felt I should remark on the return of Popular updates - I missed them
Waldo on May 17th, 2007
The first time I heard “School’s Out” was when Tony Blackburn (for it was he) went totally out of character (and then some) and choose it as his record of the week when it was first released. I was eleven and about to start secondary school at a hellish South London comprehensive. The track took my young head off and the follow up “Elected” was just as good with a cracking arrangement. Teachers and politicians. Don’t you just want to hug ‘em?
Erithian - Good tracks. Might I also add “Sylvia” by Focus and “Say You Don’t Mind” by Colin Blunstone?
Johnney B on May 17th, 2007
LOL at Alice Cooper@the Muppet show!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA2UF1xwGP4
fivelongdays on May 17th, 2007
See, what you have to say is something I can identify with…except I was in the mid 90s and I was one of the kids who would’ve been towards the front - and I was into metal.
If that made sense.
Tom on May 17th, 2007
What were the kids at the back into then?
Doctor Casino on May 19th, 2007
As usual, I’m indebted to the mentions of obscure British singles that made not a dent over here - I’m listening to “Hold Your Head Up” right now and it’s totally great. One of the liquidiest organ sounds I’ve ever heard.
As for “School’s Out,” it’s impossible to dislike but it stirs no particular associations for me except maybe the “History of Rock and Roll” special that used to run on PBS. It’s never been a major classic-rock staple; I’m surprised to discover how unfamiliar I am with it upon hearing it now. It’s good stuff though! Gotta love “We got no class, and we got no principals” (principles). That’s good, that.
Marcello Carlin on May 20th, 2007
But the best line has to be - “We can’t even think of a word that rhymes!”
richard hillman on May 21st, 2007
I left school after O levels that summer; what a great LP for the time. Remember the original sleeve with the paper knickers (I think i gave them to Felicity Markham). John Topping vomited in the plastic sleeve at a party.
I have my ‘play this at my funeral’ CD all prepared, and ‘Alma Mater’ is the penultimate track thereon: brilliant, chilling, sad……..it would have been the final track as i go to my resting place, but frankly couldn’t resist Roxy’s ‘Both ends burning’ for the cremation.
Erithian on May 22nd, 2007
Back to Tony Blackburn for a moment – it was around this time that Tone had a two-week feature on his show where he played the top 100 best-selling number one singles of the past ten years, i.e. 1962-72. It was a good primer in music history, as in many cases it was the first time I’d heard the songs. And the fact that five of the top six were Beatles songs – the exception being “Tears” at number 3 – emphasised their importance. Anyone else on here remember that top 100?
Marcello Carlin on May 22nd, 2007
Can’t say that I do. Personally I would have thought “Stranger On The Shore” would have walked it.
Erithian on May 22nd, 2007
Would have walked a list of the best selling number two singles of the period!
Marcello Carlin on May 22nd, 2007
It was number one on both the NME and BBC charts - as usual (”Please Please Me,” nearly all subsequent Beatles singles straight in at number one first week, etc.) Record Retailer just had to be different.
I’m assuming that “She Loves You” came top.
Erithian on May 22nd, 2007
That’s right – “I Want To Hold Your Hand” no 2, “Can’t Buy Me Love”, “I Feel Fine” and “Day Tripper” at 4 to 6. When Channel 4 did a definitive Top 100 of the chart era in 2002, the period covered by Blackburn’s chart occupied 16 of the 100 places.
Waldo on May 22nd, 2007
Yes, I too claerly remember Blackburn’s Top 100 and “She Loves You” was indeed top. I’m so tragic that I actually recall John Noakes being on air when Tony revealed which record had won the thing after just having played “Back Off Boogaloo” by Ringo Starr - I should really be sectioned for holding this in my memory.
The “Stranger On The Shore” debate has always been a mute point but the fact is that the disc peaked at Number Two, as Erithian says, although it stayed in the the chart for months. It also has the distinction of being the first record by a British artist to top the charts in The United States. The first group/band were The Tornados not long after.
Marcello Carlin on May 23rd, 2007
The first record by a British artist since Vera Lynn.
The fact is that the disc peaked at Number Two in one chart as I clearly stated above. The Record Retailer lists were by no means the definitive or official ones prior to the BMRB’s standardisation of the chart in February 1969; the NME chart carried far more credibility in the industry and it is a shame that copyright issues prevented it from being used as the official record for Guinness, as it should have been.
Erithian on May 23rd, 2007
Marcello, I meant to address this subject in a few entries’ time, apropos of singles going straight in at number one – only “Get Back” had done so in over a decade, and it happened four times in 1973 – but since you’ve moved onto it now, let me ask (as you seem to be well informed on this). How did the Record Retailer chart come to be the “accepted” one? You hint at copyright issues preventing the NME chart being used for the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles – but the Guinness book first came out in 1976, and the previous “authoritative” book I had, Tony Jasper’s “20 Years of British Record Charts” from 1975, used the same chart as Guinness.
I heard someone say once that before the BMRB there were three or four versions of the chart which were no more definitive than a variety of pre-election opinion polls, but I guess, given the NME’s circulation, its chart was, as you say, more credible than the rest. So in the eyes of most people at the time, “Please Please Me” was a number one and the Beatles habitually went straight in at one afterwards? Whatever, the Record Retailer list is the “accepted” canon now, which you no doubt see as Orwellian rewriting of history – but how exactly did it come about?
Tom on May 23rd, 2007
The Ackerphant in the room!
Marcello Carlin on May 23rd, 2007
I’ve still got that Tony Jasper book somewhere with its green cover (75p IIRC)! But II also RC that was a Record Mirror publication so it used Record Mirror charts, and since RM was published by the same publishers as Record Retailer/Music Week that presumably answers the question.
Since Record Retailer was the principal industry magazine its Top 50 was, strictly speaking, the official industry chart but the chart was never widely circulated outside the industry and was not used for practical purposes in the media, or indeed most of the industry itself - George Martin and the Beatles, for instance, have always regarded “Please Please Me” as their legitimate first number one.
In the sixties there were four main singles charts - the NME, Melody Maker, Record Retailer and the BBC. The BBC one tended to be a compilation or reckoning of the other three - based on points IIRC, so you might not want to trust them too much - but the NME one was generally regarded as the definitive list since it had the greatest number of chart return shops and a weekly Friday-Thursday compilation schedule which corresponded with record release dates of the time, since singles in those days were released on Fridays rather than Mondays. This for instance is why Beatles singles didn’t tend to enter at number one in the Record Retailer list since they based their chart on a Monday-to-Saturday schedule - i.e. only two days’ sales for new releases. Also, the NME chart allowed EPs, so several of their number ones (e.g. 1965’s Kinda Kinks, lead track “Well Respected Man” which reportedly outsold everything else that year bar “Tears”) do not register in Guinness at all.
Intriguingly, “Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane” did make number one in NME but everywhere else stayed second to Engelbert and thus that has passed into historical lore.
By 1968 there was pressure, largely from the BBC as well as certain quarters of the industry, for the chart to be standardised, and the contract was won by BMRB with effect from February 1969. Most of the 350 chart return shops in Britain registered with BMRB, with the consequence that, although NME and MM continued with their own charts, they suffered a steep decrease in sources and so became less authoritative.
Erithian on May 23rd, 2007
Marcello - that’s brilliant, answers something I’ve long wondered about - thanks.
DavidM on May 24th, 2007
I was introduced to this in the mid-eighties when Rik sang an excerpt from it (”Schoools OUT for… EVAHHH!”) in an episode of The Young Ones. From then on I would always do the same whenever we would break for half term or anything.
I’m not to keen on the actual track, however.
wichita lineman on May 22nd, 2008
Thanks for that Marcello, but I’m confused by the 40 Years Of NME Charts book I’ve got that has Strawberry Fields stop at 2 and no best-selling claims for Kwyet Kinks (which does turn up a lot but not toooo often).
Matt DC on May 23rd, 2008
I’ve never been able to separate this record from its essential cartoonishness, it’s always been associated with the Bash Street Kids in my mind. Still love it though.
FT's DJ Punctum on May 23rd, 2008
I double checked my copy of said NME publication and you’re right - both might have been number one on Melody Maker.
FT's lonepilgrim on July 2nd, 2008
I spent a large part of the summer break of 1972 on holiday in Denmark so I was a bit detached from the charts. I think ‘School’s out’ had already got to number 1 by the time I got back but I had no hesitation about buying it - probably the third or fourth single I owned. It introduced the idea of pop/rock as provocation in a form that I could claim as my own. It coincided with me moving from a ‘Middle School’ to a Secondary School in what would now be Year 8 and there was the added sense of subversion in that both my parents were teachers.
The first album I owned was ‘School’s Out’ which I must have got for Christmas and I went on to get ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ and ‘Muscle of Love’ as well before my tastes/allegiances changed.
ian mccolm on July 11th, 2008
Actually, this record stands the test of time in the sense of bringing back INSTANTLY all the sights/smells/feelings etc that I had on (some of) the occassions I heard it.
I was 20 at the time (which oddly feels a little old for this record, I don’t know why), but to me it was like the pop equivalent of the first track on Led Zeppelin’s first LP, Communication Breakdown : you’re hooked within about half a second. (Like many others, that was the first half second I ever heard of LZ…clever layout on LP).
It doesn’t get any better than that first half-second, but in fairness neither does it get worse.
Think this rates a 9.
henry s on July 11th, 2008
a classic riff, the chords of which are eternally displayed on Glen Buxton’s gravestone…
http://www.sickthingsuk.co.uk/images/gb-mem.jpg
Chris Brown on July 11th, 2008
Just in case anybody was on tenterhooks, Mark Lewisohn’s Beatles Chronicle confirms ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ as a Melody Maker Number 1, but Number 2 on NME, Disc, the BBC and of course Record Retailer.
wichita lineman on July 12th, 2008
DJP, this again begs the question…. do you have all the Melody Maker charts in lever arch files? Somebody will print them, and I can’t be the only person obsessed with these wiggy details.
Too late in the day, but it’s quite odd that Guinness didn’t persist with the NME chart (it was the first, after all) until the BBC/BMRB one was introduced in ‘69. Would’ve seemed tidier as well as causing less grief. No Bachelors on Popular either!
DJ Punctum on July 12th, 2008
Yes indeed, I have them in lever arch files (how did you guess?); the only problem being is that they are currently in long term residence in the extensive attic of the Carlin family home up in Lanarkshire and every time I go up there to visit my mum I keep telling myself that I’ll climb up the ladder with my Woolworth’s pocket battery torch and sort everything out but it’s a big job…
I got a major telling off from my dad when the first Guinness Hit Singles book came out (1978?) since he reckoned I could have done it with a few weekends of research in the archives of the Mitchell Library…those dusty, pre-internet days of Proper Research, eh?…