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His transformation back and forth is as psychologically disturbing as any horror movie, but in the end, he decides, “I’m eighteen and I like it!” (Just as I’m sure the wolf man would admit, as he licks his chops over the entrails of some vestal virgin, he likes it, too!)

“Eighteen” was just one of dozens of brilliant written and performed songs by the Alice Cooper Band that celebrate and deconstruct the gnarly teenage mind. In other tunes, the Alice Cooper character runs over an annoying girlfriend with his car (“Under My Wheels”), has sex with the dead (“I Love The Dead”), blows up schools (“School’s Out”), gets caught masturbating (“Muscle of Love”), tangles with his dentist (“Unfinished Sweet’), gets elected President of the United States (“Elected”),Freudian id of youth with their horny tales of greed, lust, power and instant gratification. Lou Reed, on his 1973 tour, dressed as a glam Frankenstein, becoming one of the earliest positive gay role models in rock culture. More recently, Rob Zombie’s “hellbilly zombie” has empowered a nation of heavy metal geeks and nerds who live their graphic novels, sci-fi movies and video games.

Perhaps one of the most underrated bands in the Shock Rock elite is Slipknot, an astonishingly poignant voice for the lonely and disaffected teens — kids so lost, weird and anonymous that they may as well be wearing masks. Finally, there is the most provocative of them all: Marilyn Manson, a talent so dark, formidable and artistic that there is some sense that one day