Alice Cooper Spills all about Infamous “Chicken Incident”

A.J. Pike 

Hollywood - After decades of wild rumors and greatly exaggerated tales, Rock Legend Alice Cooper has finally set the record straight on rock ‘n’ roll’s most enduring myth: The truth about the infamous “Chicken Incident” is actually wilder and more incredible than the legend that has built up around it for all these years. 

The 77 year-old Shock Rock pioneer finally spilled the tea on what really happened that night at Toronto’s Peace Festival in 1969. The revelation came complete with several A-list witnesses who saw the entire incident unfold. 

Speaking with veteran journalist Dan Rather on AXS TV’s The Big Interview, the Detroit native came clean with the full story behind the moment that would define his career and create one of music’s most persistent urban legends. But the revelation also came with the shocking disclosure that fans never knew: John Lennon, Yoko Ono and The Doors were all there watching it happen.

Mr. Cooper explained how his then-unknown band scored the incredible opportunity to perform between John Lennon and The Doors at the massive 80,000-person festival. The strategic placement wasn’t by chance. Mr. Cooper’s manager, Shep Gordon, negotiated to put the band in prime time, sandwiched between two of rock’s biggest acts, John Lennon and The Doors.

The Chicken Incident itself was completely accidental, according to Cooper’s recent account. During their signature finale featuring feather pillows and CO2 cartridges creating a blizzard effect, a chicken mysteriously appeared on stage.

“It was early in our career. We weren’t that well known…We had the music pumped up to its highest volume and John and Yoko loved that, and the Doors said yeah, that was cool. And the good thing was we knew them, John Lennon and The Doors, we were all kind of friends. And all of a sudden this chicken appears on stage,” Alice Cooper related the scene to Dan Rather. “And I didn’t bring the chicken. And I’m from Detroit. And I had never been on a farm. So I’m looking at it. It had feathers. It had wings. It should fly I thought, it’s a bird, right. So I picked up the chicken and flung it into the audience. I figured somebody’s going to grab it. We’ll call it Alice… And, well, the thing is chickens don’t fly as much as they plummet. And the audience went crazy and for some reason tore it to pieces. And then they threw it back on stage. It was  a bloody mess. I mean this was the Toronto Peace Festival.” 

Alice Cooper’s assumption that the bird could fly led to the fateful decision to toss it into the crowd. What happened next became the stuff of legend - but not in the way Alice expected.

The chicken didn’t soar gracefully or majestically over the audience. Instead, it plummeted directly into the crowd. The audience’s reaction, at the Toronto Peace Festival, was swift and brutal, ripping the bird apart and throwing it back on stage, creating this bloody scene that even horrified the man who was destined to become the King of Shock Rock. 

The next day’s headlines screamed out about Alice Cooper killing a chicken on stage. This singular news story spawned decades of exaggerated rumors, the most outlandish one was that Cooper had bitten the head off the bird before throwing it into the crowd. Mr. Cooper firmly denies these tabloid embellishments, explaining that none of the more extreme versions of the story actually happened. 

What makes the revelation particularly fascinating is imagining how John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and The Doors reacted to witnessing this career-defining moment, as Cooper’s unintentional chicken-throwing act spiraled into creating one of rock’s most enduring myths. But, then again, it’s easy to assume these rock legends had pretty much seen it all before the chicken came flying back onto the stage.

Yet, in essence, Alice Cooper’s wild and crazy story perfectly captures the chaotic energy of the late-1960s rock culture. It was the waning years of Rock’s Golden Hippie era. It was a time when smashing guitars and destroying musical equipment on stage, a time when legendary performers were spinning out of control on drugs at concerts, and when extreme acts tried anything to grab the audience’s attention. It was the years that led up to the swan song of an era that started out with all the promise of a ‘new world dawning’ and ended up with bleeding chickens grabbing headlines by performers like Alice Cooper and all the acid/heavy metal rock acts of the approaching 1970s. It was the harbinger of the “electric banana” era that would wash the innocence and idealism of the hippie days right off the musical map as if it was foretold by the torrential rains of 1969’s Woodstock - the Age of Aquarius was dead.