Alice Cooper’s second big hit seems like the perfect soundtrack for what was about to happen in the USA in November 2020.

It was the first single from his as-yet-unreleased sixth album, Billion Dollar Babies. It was also – not that I knew this until the other day – a re-working of their very first single, Reflected, back in 1969 (not that I knew that ’til very recently).

Musically it sits somewhere exactly in the middle between the hard-rocking heavy metal of bands like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and the crunchy Glam riffs of Slade, Sweet and T.Rex.

The promo for the earlier version betrays Cooper’s rock roots in Detroit, where he was born – he has the same tight silver trousers as the city’s most famoius rock’n’roll son, Iggy Pop, and Glenn Buxton’s heavily distorted guitar playing could easily be Ron Asheton, or even James Williamson, from The Stooges.

The psychedelic haze that hangs over that earlier version, released on Cooper’s debut album Pretties For You, is stripped away by producer Bob Ezrin for the new version, which cleans up the riff and changes the lyrics, matched by a video of Cooper, clearly three sheets to the wind, taking to the streets to meet his fans in an ‘Uncle Sam’ outfit. All that’s missing is an orange tan and yellow wig.

The dressing room scene is rather disturbing, Cooper staggering about with a beer and a fag, while a chimp – also smoking a fag – arrives with a wheelbarrow of cash. A fitting comment on the events taking place across America over the next fortnight.

“You and me together – young and strong!” he sings (Cooper, not the chimp). “I’m gonna be elected.” What kind of idiot would say that to his supporters?