“Rules of the Road” by Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper did in fact reveal his “5 Rules of the Road” to Billboard back in 2014. The A-list publication took notice, considering that, after all of these decades, he remains an effective stage performer. And for the most part, said rules pertained to how Alice keeps himself mentally and physically in shape in terms of being a performing artist.
But the focus of this song is a bit different, not speaking to the internal as much as the external “rules of the road” according to Alice. And this includes the likes of ‘finding yourself a killer band’, ‘collecting your chicks’ (with at least one being from East L.A.) and ‘buying a mansion and flashy car’, even if you can’t necessarily afford it, just “in case you actually do become a star”.
So it can be deemed that there’s a bit of a comedic element to this song. But in the interlude, Alice gets more serious, if you will, in putting forth that at the end of the day, it’s all about the money. Furthermore, he is espousing that as a professional rock musician, aspirants should be willing to more or less sacrifice anything or take any risk for that cause.
In doing so, they may find themselves dead “by the age of 27”, a statement that is also probably meant to be comedic (and obviously an allusion to the 27 Club), considering that the vocalist drops a “hahaha” afterwards. But as someone who has been successful in the game for over half a century, Alice is advising that if “you heed” these rules, then you too will successfully “be heading down that road to hell”. And within this context, we will take it that “hell” is synonymous with being an A-list rock musician.
“These are the rules of the road
These are the rules of the road
If you wanna be hot? If you wanna be cool?
You only get one shot, you gotta follow the rules
(These are) The rules of the road”
Release Date for “Rules of the Road”
It was released on 25th August, 2023.
Who wrote this track?
Cooper, together with Bob Ezrin (who produced all the tracks on “Road”) wrote this with Wayne Kramer.
