Alice Cooper and Dennis Dunaway Dedicate Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Pinball Exhibit
When the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland recently officially unveiled a new pinball exhibit, "Part of the Machine: Rock & Pinball," the official dedication featured two special guests: Alice Cooper and his bandmate in the original Alice Cooper band, bassist Dennis Dunaway.
As it happens, the Rock Hall exhibit is the first place in public where pinball aficionados can play Cooper's new machine, Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle, which features voiceovers from the musician—more than 700 "custom speech calls"—and 10 songs from his catalog.
In remarks during the event, Cooper said Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle developer Spooky Pinball approached him about two years ago about producing a machine.
"It's like anything else: Every time you do something, by the time you get it done, it's outdated, 'cause there's 25 new things you could've done to it," he said, while noting he and his wife own a Dr. Doom pinball machine. "So you just have to settle on what it's going to be. Who knows what it's going to be 10 years from now?
"I think you should be able to get shocked from it," he joked, to much laughter.
In addition to the new Cooper machine, the "Part of the Machine" exhibit features a variety of fan-favorite rock 'n' roll pinball machines—including Guns n' Roses, Metallica, Aerosmith, Elton John, and two Kiss varieties—and memorabilia, including a Peter Criss drum kit. Museum visitors can play all of the machines.
The exhibit also features a vintage electric chair the Alice Cooper band used onstage that Dunaway apparently had in his garage.
"It worked well—it even got a lot of heads turned as we drove down the freeway with it strapped to the top of the station wagon. And it went on the airplane pretty much like it is, because it didn't have a case," Dunaway said, while adding the one in the Rock Hall has an Air India sticker affixed to its back. "We got a lot of attention whether we were using it onstage or not."
For good measure, the exhibit also features a Cooper-owned 1964 Andy Warhol piece, "Little Electric Chair." Depicting an electric chair, the print—which is acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas—was unearthed in 2017, when Cooper found it rolled up in a storage locker.
After the dedication ceremony, Ultimate Classic Rock asked Cooper during a separate interview if he had dug up anything else valuable from his garage since discovering the Warhol.
"No, I’m going to start selling tickets into my garage!" he said. "Whatever you find, you can have!"
Dunaway, who was standing next to Cooper, laughed and said, "I want to buy one!"
"Because there might be a Dalí in there—who knows?" Cooper quipped.
"Dalí might be in there!" Dunaway added lightly.
"Part of the Machine" is open now at the Rock Hall.
Classic Rock Pinball Machines