My older brother and I were pulling into our gravel driveway after morning football practice when we heard the news on the radio. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the man said, “the king of rock and roll is dead.”

“Oh my god,” I thought. “Alice Cooper.”

It wasn’t Alice, of course, much to my relief. It was another rock ‘n' roller who had once been considered a threat to society. It was Elvis. But it’s no wonder Alice first came to mind.

Three nights earlier, my friend Greg Moore and I had seen Alice Cooper in Oklahoma City. We were just shy of our 14th birthdays. The fact that we had gone to the concert by ourselves may have been a sign that we were growing up. More likely, it was a sign of the times.

This was the tail-end of the free-range childhood era. Parents would push their kids out the d

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