Pitched somewhere between the nagging ner-ner-ne-ner-ners of the class clown and the staccato clarion blasts of Miles Davis’s Milestones, School’s Out’s opening guitar riff is the unmistakable sound of youth gone wild. Chuck Berry’s idealised, sweet sixteen American dream skewed through the dark prism of vintage Who Shepherd’s Bush surliness.
Guitarist Glen Buxton had been playing with the riff for some time, imbuing it with the hoodlum cool that characterised his magnetic whatcha-rebelling-against? street-punk personality, so when Alice Cooper – still the name of the band, not just their singer – were looking for a signature song for an album initially envisaged as a concept work about high school, Buxton’s delinquent riff fit the bill perfectly.
