New Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Alice Cooper has exploded the myth he once killed a live chicken onstage by revealing the bird was ripped apart by disabled fans.
The shock rocker has always been connected to the incident, which happened during a 1970s show in Toronto, Canada, but he insists the reports of the bloody moment have been distorted.
But he didn't help matters - label boss Frank Zappa urged him to play along with the chicken death reports.
Speaking to America's Hln network host Joy Behar, Cooper says, "Somebody threw a chicken onstage in Toronto. I picked up the chicken (and I thought), 'I'm from Detroit - I had never been on a farm in my life. It had feathers, it's a bird and it should fly.'
"I picked it up and I kinda tossed it into the audience, figuring it would just fly away and it didn't fly as much as it plummeted and the audience tore it to pieces and threw the parts back onstage.
"The next day in the paper it was 'Alice Cooper kills a chicken onstage!' And Frank Zappa rang up and said, 'Did you really kill a chicken onstage last night?' and I said no. He said, 'Don't tell anybody; they love it.'"
But Cooper, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2011 on Monday night (14Mar11), insists the truth of the incident is much sicker than the story.
He adds, "The kicker to the story is the first two rows of that audience were all in wheelchairs; they were the ones who tore the chicken to pieces, which I thought was even more odd than if I'd have done it."