1972 Alice Cooper: School's Out

Ah, now then - in remembering my previous life as a young lad growing up in the seventies, there are two songs that just hearing the opening bars draws back the curtains to a much simpler time and opens the memory floodgates like when Proust scoffed his madeleine cake. One of these is Simon Parks' 'Eye Level', while the other is this - 'School's Out'.

I've been searching the memory banks but I can't pin down where I first became aware of 'School's Out'. I can't remember where I was first indoctrinated into reciting the Lord's Prayer either, but I do know I was word perfect on both from an early age. I don't think there was ever a copy of it in our house - not the album anyway because I know I'd have remembered its school desk cover, but I do remember seeing them on TV and being struck by what a scary proposition Alice Cooper was (I know the name still referred to the band en-bloc at this stage, but Alice has always been frontman Vince Furnier in my eyes). I mean, blokes just didn't look like that 'round our way', or if they did then they didn't venture outside too often.

I do know why it's memorable though - because (ah! fond memory) I used to sing the chorus to myself every Friday afternoon in class to mark the approaching weekend, a personal tradition I carried on till I was old enough to know better. I sang it out loud to my mother too whenever school had broken up for a holiday and I did all this because it brilliantly captures the joy of leaving school behind for a few days at least, a feeling that's never revisited in anything like the same intensity whenever I'm on leave from work. And so 'School's Out' (if ever a title should have come with an exclamation mark it's this one) is one of those songs that will be forever clouded in a mist of dewy eyed sentiment that makes it hard to be objective.

Not that nostalgia is going to cause any problems here (and enough of my 'when I were lad' witterings) - 'School's Out' is a fine song whichever way you cut it. Much like the Donny Osmond song it displaced at the top, 'School's Out' has a specific audience in mind (i.e. schoolkids), but it doesn't negate the whiff of nostalgia it can generate within anyone who ever walked out of a school gate in July with the whole summer holiday ahead of them and you can enjoy this at any age with your head held high (at 24, it had been a while since Furnier himself had heard a school bell).

From the opening chords to the slo-mo grind to a halt close, 'School's Out' is pure rebellion in subject, but with a cartoon feel to take the edge off:

"Out for summer, out 'til fall
We might not come back at all"

The kids chanting on the verses might not need no education, but they don't sound half as sinister or nihilistic as those on 'Another Brick In The Wall'. These ones were just glad that the holidays had come round; they weren't offering a social critique or out to dismantle the state and it underlines the faux danger of the song:

"Well we got no class
And we got no principles
We ain't got no innocence
We can't even think of a word that rhymes"

How could anyone take offence at something as brilliantly dumb as that? It's pantomime writ large, the Ramones five years early and Alice Cooper to a man were playing a role of Grand Guignol crossed with amateur dramatics. All the while the guitars crunch with just enough grease and dirt to set it apart from the sparkle of the Slades and Sweets, but are bouncy enough to keep it fresher than the low rent junkie sleaze of contemporaries like New York Dolls and Hackamore Brick - serious as far as it goes, but you just knew they'd be quick to wipe the crap off their faces as soon as they got off the stage whereas you suspected Johnny Thunders always looked like that, even in bed. The chunky opening riff ricochets off the beat like a flywheel spinning and ensures 'School's Out' retains an urgency lacking in a great many modern rock acts who mistake speed and volume for power.

Though Alice Cooper went on to release singles and albums that I love almost as much as this, I sometimes wish 'School's Out' had been their sole effort, a one hit wonder straight from the top drawer. The rest of their output is either too loud, too comic, too knowing or too something else that makes it fall short of this spot on hybrid of Black Sabbath and the Banana Splits that nails a pivotal moment in almost everybody's lives and is proof positive that you can sometimes go home again. At least for the three and a half minutes this lasts anyway - while it plays, I can still see the chairs stacked up on the desks for the weekend and it gives a warm feeling that's the yin to the yang of the re-curring nightmares I still have about my maths O level.