Watch Alice Cooper perform on 'The Gong Show'

In a fittingly bizarre gig, Alice Cooper once appeared on the equally odd Gong Show for a rendition of ‘Goin’ Out Of My Head’ in 1976. For the uninitiated, the show was hosted in the late 1970s by Chuck Barris and saw all manner of contestants display their talents to a panel of three judges.

In the annals of history, the project acts as a strange precursor to the X Factor, the best-case scenario was that you didn’t get ‘gonged’ by the three onlooking judges before you finished. The grand prize? A check to cash in at the oddly specific amount of $516.32.

Cooper’s performance begins and ends with him trapped in a guillotine, and the show’s intrepid host eventually calls time on his act by slamming it down on Cooper’s neck. It’s a playful nod to the title of the song Cooper covers, which was his version of ‘Goin’ Out of My Head’, first recorded by Little Anthony and the Imperials. Unlike his standard heavy rock vocals, Cooper’s voice is surprisingly melodic in this performance. Cooper wouldn’t be the last to cover the song, as The Zombies also chose to cover the single in a single they released in 1967. Equally, it wasn’t Cooper’s first bid for talent show fame.

In 1964, a then 16-year-old Cooper was desperate to participate in Cortez High School’s annual Letterman talent show. He enlisted the help of his cross-country teammates to create a group just for the show, banding together with Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway, John Tatum, and John Speer to form The Earwigs. The band donned costumes and wigs, modelling themselves on The Beatles. They performed a handful of Beatles parodies that referenced their cross-country connection, with their version of ‘Please Please Me’ replacing the line “last night I said these words to my girl” with “last night I ran four laps for my coach”.

Of the four, it was only Buxton who knew how to play the guitar – or any instrument, for that matter. The rest simply mimed playing theirs, getting an emphatic response from their high school audience and winning the talent show. This spurred them on to learn how to play properly, raiding the local pawn shop for cheap instruments to practice on. They soon renamed themselves The Spiders, featuring Cooper on vocals, Buxton on lead guitar, Tatum on rhythm guitar, Dunaway on bass guitar, and Speer on drums. In 1966, just as The Spiders graduated from Cortez High School, the band released their second single, ‘Don’t Blow Your Mind’, an original composition which became a local number one hit.

Following a quick relocation to Los Angeles, the band held a gig so disastrous that they emptied a room ten minutes into a set. Music manager Shep Gordon admired the reaction they provoked (even if it was largely negative) and put them in touch with Frank Zappa. Zappa was on the hunt for weird and wacky artists to fill out his new record label, Straight Records and wound up signing them to a three-album deal. No wonder Cooper loves a good talent show appearance.

Watch Alice Cooper perform ‘Goin’ Out Of My Head’ below.