Before shock rock was a genre, Alice Cooper was inventing it — and doing so with a theatrical ferocity that made the entire music industry stop and stare. Rising out of Detroit in the late 1960s and hitting full stride in the early ’70s, Cooper fused hard rock with horror theatrics, guillotines, boa constrictors, and black eye makeup that became one of the most recognizable looks in rock history. Albums like Billion Dollar Babies (1973) and Welcome to My Nightmare (1975) didn’t just sell records — they redefined what a rock concert could be, turning it into a full-blown horror stage production at a time when no one else had the nerve to even try. Rolling Stone took notice early, and the iconic Annie Leibovitz photograph used as the art for this mat — a close, raw, black-and-white shot of Cooper with a massive boa constrictor coiled around his neck — captures exactly why he commanded that attention. It’s dangerous, magnetic, and completely unhinged in the best possible way. Leibovitz was just beginning to establish herself as the defining portrait photographer of rock’s golden era, and Cooper was exactly the kind of subject who made her work legendary.