Alice Cooper

Finally I found an authentic bite of Americana. Or so I thought. The rodeo. A blaze of bucks and broncos, boots and bulls, shining golden in the dusk of the Teton mountain range. Jackson, Wyoming, far away from the raging culture wars and as unapologetically American as a bald eagle’s middle finger. A proud, if out-of-tune, “Star Spangled Banner” stirred me enough that for a moment I forgot I was English. The crackle and hollering, the stirrups and steers. This was real, I believed. Weeding through an air-conditioned continent of screens, plastic and corporate advertisements, I had found her at last: America. But then slipped the veneer. The rodeo barrelman — a ringmaster in clown maquillage — squawked at us down a dusty PA system. “Where are you from?...