Cooper has said he was inspired to write the song when answering the question, "What's the greatest three minutes of your life?". Cooper said: "There's two times during the year. One is Christmas morning, when you're just getting ready to open the presents. The greed factor is right there. The next one is the last three minutes of the last day of school when you're sitting there and it's like a slow fuse burning. I said, 'If we can catch that three minutes in a song, it's going to be so big.'"
Cooper has also said it was inspired by a line from a Bowery Boys movie. On his radio show, "Nights with Alice Cooper", he joked that the main riff of the song was inspired by a song by Miles Davis.Cooper admitted that guitarist Glen Buxton, was the one who created the song's opening riff.
The lyrics of "School's Out" indicate that not only is the school year ended for summer vacation, but ended forever, and that the school itself has been blown up. It incorporates the childhood rhyme, "No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks" into its lyrics. It also featured children contributing some of the vocals. "Innocence" in the lyric "...and we got no innocence" is frequently changed in concert to "intelligence" and sometimes replaced with "etiquette."
"School's Out" became Alice Cooper's first major hit single, reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart and propelling the album to #2 on the Billboard 200 pop albums chart. Billboard ranked it as the No. 75 song for 1972.In Canada, the single went to #3 on the RPM Top Singles Chart following the album reaching #1.In Britain, the song went to #1 on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks in August 1972. It also marked the first time that Alice Cooper became regarded as more than just a theatrical novelty act.
The single version of the song is a slightly sped-up mix of the album version with one major difference—the "turn-off" effect used upon the school bell and sound effects at the end of the album version is not used on the single version, allowing the school bell and effects to simply fade out.
Some radio stations banned the song from their airwaves, stating that the song gave the students a negative impression of rebelliousness against childhood education. Teachers, parents, principles, counselors, and psychologists also shunned that song and demanded several radio stations to ban the song from ever being played on the air.
In 2004, "School's Out" was ranked #319 on Rolling Stone 's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2009 it was named the 35th best hard rock song of all time by VH1 and the song appeared on the TV show American Idol in 2010.
Later performances saw Alice Cooper incorporate parts of the first verse in "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2", a song by Pink Floyd (also about school, and produced by Bob Ezrin) into "School's Out."
School's Out Lyrics
Well we got no choice
All the girls and boys
Makin' all that noise
'Cause they found new toys
Well we can't salute ya can't find a flag
If that don't suit ya that's a drag
School's out for summer
School's out forever
School's been blown to pieces
No more pencils no more books
No more teacher's dirty looks yeah
Well we got no class
And we got no principals
And we got no innocence
We can't even think of a word that rhymes
School's out for summer
School's out forever
My school's been blown to pieces
No more pencils no more books
No more teacher's dirty looks
Out for summer
Out till fall
We might not come back at all
School's out forever
School's out for summer
School's out with fever
School's out completely
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