Alice Cooper is a rock ’n’ roll oddity. If you’re at all familiar with his macabre onstage persona, the notion that he’s not normal even by the standards of rock stars seems obvious enough. What’s not so obvious is the way his cultural influence has been felt. What makes him a true oddity is that he might be the only pop musician in the post-Elvis era whose aesthetic has been far more influential than his music. That’s not a knock on Cooper’s musical abilities. Hits such as “School’s Out” and “No More Mr. Nice Guy” have been radio staples for half a century for a reason.

But in Cooper’s new and richly deserved autobiography, Devil On My Shoulder, it’s noteworthy how much Cooper’s public persona and elaborate stage show shaped the look and feel, if not the sound, of rock in the decades to come. From the earliest days of Alice Cooper, when Vincent Furnier was fronting a popular high school band in Phoenix known as the Spiders, the band had a theatrical streak with elaborate lighting and onstage antics. (The name “Alice Cooper” originally referred to the whole of the band, years before Furnier eventually adopted it as a solo sobriquet.) By the time the band moved to Los Angeles, got signed by Frank Zappa, changed its name a couple of times, and eventually had some success, their stage show had evolved to include everything from wearing blood-spattered women’s clothing, a rigged gallows and electric chair where Cooper would pretend to kill himself onstage, as well as singing with a boa constrictor around his neck.