Alice Cooper's theatrical stage antics deliver all the visual thrills his concerts require. But for a time in the late 1980s, Cooper had an accomplice in the form of electric guitarist Kane Roberts, a muscle-bound, Rambo-like shredder who commanded his own fair share of attention. It wasn't simply that Roberts had the chops and stage presence to enthrall audiences — it was also his choice of axe: a fire-breathing guitar shaped like a machine gun.
Roberts has been known to brandish a variety of shred sticks, including Kramers and Schecters. But wielding a six-stringed machine gun, let alone one that shoots fire, was a different experience.
“Some kid called up [Cooper's manager] Shep Gordon and said, ‘Hey, I have a guitar that might be good for the Alice Cooper tour,’” Roberts tells Guitar Player.
"Shep called me up and said, 'Hey, Kane, take a look at this and meet with this kid.' So I did."
Roberts recalls his first impression of the axe. “I looked at it, and went, ‘This thing’s ridiculous.’ The kid was an Army brat, so he’d been around weapons his whole life," the guitarist says. "He followed his dad around from base to base, and he built this insane guitar.”
It’s easy to see why Roberts initially thought the electric guitar was absurd. But he was surprised to find it was more than a visual gag.
"That guitar played amazing,” he says. “That’s one of the things that shocked me. He just put together this incredible instrument.”
Playing great was one thing, but there was more to this guitar than meets the eye. “He demonstrated it for me,” Roberts says. “It shot flames for, like, 10 feet!" He laughs at the memory. "I was kind of amazed by it.”
Roberts was so impresed that he decided to add the machine-gun guitar to his rig for The Nightmare Returns, Cooper's 1986–'87 tour and one of the most successful road shows of the late 1980s.
“It became a bit part of the show,” Roberts says. “I had everything that would make people say, ‘This guy looks like Rambo!’" He laughs. "I had a headband, the gun belt, and this guitar. It was crazy, but it ended up being my signature thing.”
Although the guitar was oversized, it looked just fine on a player of Roberts' size. “If anybody picked up that thing, it would look huge on them," he says. "But for me, it sort of fit.
"I was a total Kramer guy, but that guitar didn’t feel heavy compared to them once it was strapped on. I gave it a primo setup, and it was perfect for me.”
But no setup could have prepared Roberts for some of the inherent kinks associated with brandishing a flame-throwing guitar.
“At the end of my solo,” he says. “I had to flick a switch to make it shoot flames. I had to do it at the appropriate time — and, hopefully, away from the audience.”
“Hopefully” was the operative word. And in one memorable instance, Roberts didn’t stick to his carefully prepared script.
“We were at a theater, and it didn’t shoot flames the night before,” he recalls. “So I did the dumbest thing: I looked back at the drummer and ended up pointing it at the audience And when I turned around, the flames were shooting into and out over the crowd!” He laughs. “I wasn’t paying attention!”
When Roberts left Cooper’s band after the tour, the machine-gun guitar left with him, never to return.
Although the shredder came back to Cooper in 2022 when Nita Strauss left the band to perform with Demi Lovato, he was toting a new machine-gun guitar. But to the disappointment of his fans, it didn’t shoot flames.
“Everybody was expecting me to do it,” Roberts says, but he acknowledges it’s probably just as well.
“It was one of those things,” he says. “With all the fireworks and the attachment that went with it, it could be tricky. That part of it was always in my head.”
