Alice Cooper is Coming Back to Auckland

When I last saw him, school was out forever

I haven’t written about my high school days as yet. I’m sure there will be plenty of stories to come. I’ll begin at the end of my 3 long years at Kelston Boys High School. While I had a few good friends there, I wouldn't say I liked the school. I didn’t want to be there.

The decision was made while I was living in Holland with my grandparents after my parents split up. Other than not wanting to come back at all, I basically wanted just one thing. That was to go to a college that had a good music school because music was my passion.

After countless complaints on my part, my father told me he had done his best, and that the only school he could get me into was the one I was zoned for, KBHS. Kelston’s idea of a music class was 40 minutes of music appreciation once a week, which was pretty much an excuse for most people to zone out. I doubted that he tried at all because I had friends living in the same street, who went to other schools, known for having a quality music curriculum, who asked me why I didn’t join them.

To me, the school was about playing rugby and trying to stay out of scraps (big fights, where 300 boys would fence the combatants in a human circle and block teachers from trying to break it up). The school was a feeder to the Head Hunters gang and they could be brutal, not just to other kids. Ambulance visits weren’t unusual and sometimes they were carrying away teachers, and the causes were not accidents.

Being an A student, studying Latin, French and core academic subjects, I wasn’t a great fit, and learned very quickly that doing well in exams, was a good way to get yourself in trouble with some of your classmates. I learned how to stay under the radar most of the time, played guitar and clarinet in the school band (the only token music activity), wagged a lot, did a lot of detentions for things like talking back to teachers, and was caned for smoking. I had always played sports as a kid before going to that school, and in subsequent years, but at Kelston, I wanted to get away as soon as the bell rang. It was also a 6km walk if I missed the school bus. There was no way I’d be going back on the weekends to play.

In my final year there, I didn’t study a lot and spent a fair amount of time wagging, visiting music shops in the city, and hanging out with like-minded kids. Most of the teachers didn’t give a damn about our education (there were notable exceptions), and I suspect many teachers were either academically at the bottom of the barrel, and/or passionate about rugby, and were there for coaching prestige.

While you wouldn’t have known it by my performance during that final year, I was bright, and pretty much studied what I needed to get good grades in the exams. I made lots of study notes and played loud rock music while cramming, and it worked. I got excellent results, even walking out of exams an hour early.

I still had academic interests and was considering a Bachelor’s in psychology. However, there was no way that was going to happen at that school. I was going to leave when I turned 15, which was the minimum legal leaving age when my father offered me a deal. He would let me go to Auckland Alternative School to complete my University Entrance and pay for the first year, as long as I stayed at Kelston for the rest of my third year. It was tough, but I hung in there.

So it was on my final day of school, I walked out of the school singing Alice Cooper’s anthem, School’s Out. One of my best mates picked me up in our (his) red Mk 1 convertible that I had helped restore, and we took off.

School's out for summer
School's out forever
I'm bored to pieces

No more pencils, no more books
No more teachers, dirty looks
Out for summer, out 'til fall
We might not come back at all

I have to tell you that felt great!

I have a shirt that one of my daughters bought me with a picture of a Fender Strat and the words “I may be old, but I got to see the best bands”.

On April 4 1977, I was with a bunch of mates, including the one who had picked me up from school that day. Alice Cooper was performing at Western Springs. Now while I loved School’s Out and some of the other tracks on that album, especially Blue Turk, I wasn’t a big fan, and wouldn’t have paid to see the concert.

Back in those days, if you knew the right people, you didn’t have to pay. Not much anyway. Steve knew a couple of the security guards who made sure they would be stationed at the back fence, and the entry fee was a quart bottle of Lion beer.

We waited until the first few tracks were over, watching from the Bullock Track so that all attention was on and around the stage. Word had got around that you could sneak in at the back, but it worked one of two ways. You pre-arranged a time and a pay-off in beer, or you didn’t.

We arrived at the appointed spot and time and knocked on the fence. A pre-cut corner of the corrugated iron was pushed out, and we were in. There were no people sitting that far back, and after getting instructions from them as to the path we had to take to avoid spotlights, we paid with our obligatory bottles of beer, and a couple more as a thank you, (to make sure they would remember us for future concerts) we crawled army style down to where the back lines of the audience sat, ready to blend in with the paying crowd who were admiring an amazing light show with spider webs and other features that Cooper was renowned for.

As we got about 20 feet down from the fence, we heard shouting and yelling. Looking back, we saw a group of guys who had made their own way over the barbed wire fence, without paying off the security guards. This was unacceptable! If fans weren’t paying off the security people, they figured everyone would be trying to sneak in for free, and they would miss out on their toll. They also had to catch some people to justify having security around the perimeter fence.

So a bunch of people who didn’t pay were caught, given a few punches and kicks by security, and the ones who hadn’t been able to make an escape were dragged down the hill and handed over to the police.

Not our merry group though, we were safe and sound in the crowd and caught up with other friends enjoying the show. Of course, a highlight for me was a rendition of School’s Out.

Cooper has been back to New Zealand many times over the years, and at the ripe age of 75, is not that old yet when you look at some of his other rock and roll contemporaries. I have a lot of respect for him as a musician and entertainer, and for sticking to his knitting, but I won’t be going to his 2024 show.