IPOD
RADIO
Alice Cooper
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Feb 3, 2006
I remember the first time I saw Alice Cooper. It was some bizarre commercial on MTV. It was some janitor picking up an Alice Cooper album and commenting on how scary he was. Then he turned around and it was Alice yelling into the camera. I nearly shit myself and I went to sleep crying. Alice Cooper has that kind of impression on people. Once you see him, you never forget him.
Now you can see the tour that was Alice at his height of his powers on the Billion Dollar Babies Tour. Shout Factory has just released the DVD Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper - Live 1973 - Billion Dollar Babies Tour. Besides having Alice sing some of his classics such as I'm Eighteen, No More Mr. Nice Guy and School's Out, it also sports some great extras like an Alice Cooper commentary, deleted scene and outtakes.
Buy the dvd of Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper
Daniel Robert Epstein: you remember much of the tour that’s on this DVD?
Alice Cooper: [laughs] We were at the height of our insanity. I’ll tell you why I do remember a lot of Billion Dollar Babies was because I was still drinking beer with the band and I hadn’t really graduated to whiskey yet. That didn’t happen until later on when I was on the Welcome To My Nightmare Tour. So I do remember a lot of Billion Dollar Babies. I didn’t have as many dead brain cells at that point.
DRE:
When you saw the DVD, what’d you think of the tour?
AC:
The funny thing is; I look at Alice in two ways. when I was drinking Alice was an entirely different Alice. That Alice represented the outcasts of the world; the ones that didn’t listen to Crosby, Stills and Nash. My guys were looking for an alternative outcast leader and Alice was that. Alice portrayed that on stage because I noticed that I was always hunched over and I looked like the whipping boy for society. Everything happened to Alice. He got electrocuted, he got hung and he got his head cut off. That also feeds into the fact that he was an outcast. I think that kids looked at him and thought, “Ok, I’m just like that, I’m always getting picked on, I don’t fit into society.” When I got sober and started playing the new Alice, all of a sudden Alice was this arrogant, insufferable villain. He was Professor Moriarty. He was now Hannibal Lecter. He was this arrogant character that looked at the audience almost with disdain. But the audience loved that. They loved that he was the Captain Hook when all the other rock stars were Peter Pan.
DRE:
[laughs] Especially at that time.
AC:
There were two different Alices, but during Billion Dollar Babies I was much more of a victimized character.
DRE:
It’s really funny to see how much of your act has been co-opted by modern bands.
AC:
Absolutely and the thing is, I totally get that. We were the first to really capture a visual character. I saw Alice as Zorro, I saw Alice as Dracula. I saw Alice as a very defined villain. Whereas these rock stars were who they were but I completed invented Alice. He’s an animated character who is fun to play. To this day I really look forward to playing that character on stage.
We had nothing to lose then. There was nobody to compare us to. When Alice AC came out we were totally on our own. There was nobody there to say no. People just stood there with their mouths open going, “What is this?” The thing that made it powerful was the fact that there were hit records behind it. If we were just Alice AC the character, it would have lasted for a while as a novelty and then be over. But you take that same character and you give him 14 top selling hits and a couple of number ones then that’s a powerful thing.
DRE:
In the beginning how did you develop such a wild stage act?
AC:
I always treated Alice Cooper as my favorite rock star and if he wasn’t my favorite rock star then there was something wrong. Since I invented the guy I got to do anything I wanted to do. I wanted him to have a snake. I wanted him to be a duelist on stage and have a sword. I wanted him to have a mock execution. I wanted blood on the audience. To this day I still enjoy that. I started finding a lot more humor in the over the top violence. Scare the audience then make them laugh afterwards.
DRE:
After seeing the DVD, did you ever think you went too far?
AC:
I look at some of the stuff on the DVD and I go, “Man was I screwed up.” I can’t remember how much of the disoriented, drunk menace was real and how much I was acting. I do remember a lot of times I wasn’t nearly as out of it as I wanted the audience to think. To be honest with you I never drank on stage.
DRE:
Really?
AC:
The only time I never drank was on stage. For the two hour show, I was totally sober.
DRE:
You’re shattering all of my illusions here.
AC:
No, you have to figure that I was drunk the other 22 hours of the day [laughs]. I took the show very seriously though. I wanted to be in control when I was onstage.
DRE:
That’s so funny.
AC:
When I was in the process of getting sober I would blame Alice for all my problems. My psychiatrist would say, “How much does Alice drink onstage?” I thought for a second and I went, “Alice never drinks on stage” and he said “Wait a minute, are you telling me that the character you play never drinks.” “No” so he said “so, you’re blaming Alice, the character, who’s sober, whereas the other character for 22 hours is drunk all the time. Who has the problem here? Alice or you?” [laughs] Dr. Frankenstein had the problem, not the monster.
DRE:
You sound like you have a very clear delineation between who Alice is and who you are.
AC:
Oh absolutely. Right now I’m sitting here in a pair of Levi’s and I’m going to play golf this afternoon. Then I’m going to do homework with my kids and I’ve got a PTA meeting tonight. Everything a regular dad would do. But if I had a show tonight, by the time I hit that stage I would be Alice times ten. I would be this character that would be the best Alice you’ve ever seen. He would be the most devious, the most vicious and what’s great about it is that I know how to be both to people.
DRE:
What do parents say when you show up for PTA?
AC:
They get it. They finally get the fact that there are two of me. There’s the guy that’s responsible and does a lot of charity work and stuff like that. Then there’s the one that’s responsible for entertaining the audience. If you put golf clubs on my stage Alice wouldn’t even know what they were. He would look at them and think they were weapons. I divorce the two characters that much.
DRE:
How close are we to seeing a movie of your life?
AC:
You got to think Johnny Depp is going to play me [laughs].
All the drama is there. The kid from Detroit that moves to Phoenix and starts a band that has no chance. Every critic hates the band and every other band hates them too. Then they end up turning the whole thing upside down. There was no Goth before Alice. Kids weren’t walking down the street with makeup on and top hats until after Alice. It would make a good movie.
DRE:
Are you working with anyone on a movie?
AC:
No, I think it’s a little bit egocentric for me to be worrying about my life story. I would give it another ten years before somebody says, “This is a great story.” It is also a great love story because, here’s the poster boy for sinful rock and roll who would never cheat on wife.
DRE:
I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t ask how it was to work with Neil Gaiman on The Last Temptation.
AC:
Neil was great. Neil was one of the only guys that really got what I was talking about in The Last Temptation. I would talk with Neil for hours and hours on end about morality. We both agree that America needs a shot of morality. You would think we would say, “No, let everyone do what they want to do.” It was a really strange conclusion for a really dark underground comic writer and a very dark underground rock writer to come to.
DRE:
I got to speak with Dave Mustaine last year. How’d you guys decide to open up the restaurant, Alice Cooper's Town?
AC:
Well, when I was a kid here in Phoenix we had a lot of local good garage bands but really no place to play. When I opened Cooper’s Town, I said I want to make a great restaurant where we make great ribs. People come there for the food more than anything else, but it’s real comfort food. It’s going to be a sports bar with a Paul McCartney bass standing right next to it. On top of that, we had 10,000 square feet outside so we built a stage for local bands to play.
DRE:
How’s it working out?
AC:
It has become the local band hangout. It’s great because I’ll be in there and we’ll have five or six local bands in one night and I think they’re great. It gives these bands a chance to get up on stage in front of people and play. That’s something we never had.
DRE:
When I was younger, you and your image used to really scare the shit out of me. Do you get off as much on scaring people anymore?
AC:
Oh absolutely but I don’t think you can shock an audience anymore. I think you might be able to do a couple of shocking things. You could go up on stage and cut your arm off. But when it comes to illusional shock, like what I do and what Marilyn Manson does, it’s pretty hard to shock an audience. Especially when CNN is more shocking than anything we can do. Here I am with a guillotine on stage and my head gets lopped off and I don’t get that great gasp from the audience anymore. That’s because when they turn CNN on there’s a real guy getting his head cut off by the Al Qaeda.
DRE:
What are you working on next?
AC:
I love the idea of being a senior garage band. My last two albums have been garage band albums and they’ve been two of my best. I think Jet and The White Stripes are great garage bands. They are bands that don’t necessarily care about production as much as they care about the fun of the song. My last two albums have done that and I’m probably going to do the next album like that too. Let the band play new songs live in the studio.
DRE:
I heard this great quote not too long ago, “if you’re not liberal when you’re 20 you have no heart, if you’re not conservative when you’re 40 you have no head.” When did your views start to change into what you believe now?
AC:
Being a survivalist, I understood what made me survive. I went through the alcoholism; I went through all of that and I learned from it. Maybe back in the 70’s I would have said, “Sure there’s nothing wrong with this and that. Go ahead and try whatever.” Like live and let live. But the older you get, the more you start realizing what is destructive and what isn’t. My generation proved that drugs just don’t work and I include alcohol in that. Alcohol may be the worst drug of all. It’s responsible for more murders and, more deaths and more grief than all the other drugs combined.
DRE:
Oh definitely.
AC:
Now it’s not easy for me to look back and have the same attitudes as I had then. I can’t just sit back and say “Go ahead drink and get high.” I look at that and I see that it’s totally self destructive.” I can’t tell a kid to go party and get as high as he can, I think it’s a bad message.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
I remember the first time I saw Alice Cooper. It was some bizarre commercial on MTV. It was some janitor picking up an Alice Cooper album and commenting on how scary he was. Then he turned around and it was Alice yelling into the camera. I nearly shit myself and I went to sleep crying. Alice Cooper has that kind of impression on people. Once you see him, you never forget him.
Now you can see the tour that was Alice at his height of his powers on the Billion Dollar Babies Tour. Shout Factory has just released the DVD Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper - Live 1973 - Billion Dollar Babies Tour. Besides having Alice sing some of his classics such as I'm Eighteen, No More Mr. Nice Guy and School's Out, it also sports some great extras like an Alice Cooper commentary, deleted scene and outtakes.
Buy the dvd of Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper
Daniel Robert Epstein: you remember much of the tour that’s on this DVD?
Alice Cooper: [laughs] We were at the height of our insanity. I’ll tell you why I do remember a lot of Billion Dollar Babies was because I was still drinking beer with the band and I hadn’t really graduated to whiskey yet. That didn’t happen until later on when I was on the Welcome To My Nightmare Tour. So I do remember a lot of Billion Dollar Babies. I didn’t have as many dead brain cells at that point.
DRE:
When you saw the DVD, what’d you think of the tour?
AC:
The funny thing is; I look at Alice in two ways. when I was drinking Alice was an entirely different Alice. That Alice represented the outcasts of the world; the ones that didn’t listen to Crosby, Stills and Nash. My guys were looking for an alternative outcast leader and Alice was that. Alice portrayed that on stage because I noticed that I was always hunched over and I looked like the whipping boy for society. Everything happened to Alice. He got electrocuted, he got hung and he got his head cut off. That also feeds into the fact that he was an outcast. I think that kids looked at him and thought, “Ok, I’m just like that, I’m always getting picked on, I don’t fit into society.” When I got sober and started playing the new Alice, all of a sudden Alice was this arrogant, insufferable villain. He was Professor Moriarty. He was now Hannibal Lecter. He was this arrogant character that looked at the audience almost with disdain. But the audience loved that. They loved that he was the Captain Hook when all the other rock stars were Peter Pan.
DRE:
[laughs] Especially at that time.
AC:
There were two different Alices, but during Billion Dollar Babies I was much more of a victimized character.
DRE:
It’s really funny to see how much of your act has been co-opted by modern bands.
AC:
Absolutely and the thing is, I totally get that. We were the first to really capture a visual character. I saw Alice as Zorro, I saw Alice as Dracula. I saw Alice as a very defined villain. Whereas these rock stars were who they were but I completed invented Alice. He’s an animated character who is fun to play. To this day I really look forward to playing that character on stage.
We had nothing to lose then. There was nobody to compare us to. When Alice AC came out we were totally on our own. There was nobody there to say no. People just stood there with their mouths open going, “What is this?” The thing that made it powerful was the fact that there were hit records behind it. If we were just Alice AC the character, it would have lasted for a while as a novelty and then be over. But you take that same character and you give him 14 top selling hits and a couple of number ones then that’s a powerful thing.
We had nothing to lose then. There was nobody to compare us to. When Alice AC came out we were totally on our own. There was nobody there to say no. People just stood there with their mouths open going, “What is this?” The thing that made it powerful was the fact that there were hit records behind it. If we were just Alice AC the character, it would have lasted for a while as a novelty and then be over. But you take that same character and you give him 14 top selling hits and a couple of number ones then that’s a powerful thing.
DRE:
In the beginning how did you develop such a wild stage act?
AC:
I always treated Alice Cooper as my favorite rock star and if he wasn’t my favorite rock star then there was something wrong. Since I invented the guy I got to do anything I wanted to do. I wanted him to have a snake. I wanted him to be a duelist on stage and have a sword. I wanted him to have a mock execution. I wanted blood on the audience. To this day I still enjoy that. I started finding a lot more humor in the over the top violence. Scare the audience then make them laugh afterwards.
DRE:
After seeing the DVD, did you ever think you went too far?
AC:
I look at some of the stuff on the DVD and I go, “Man was I screwed up.” I can’t remember how much of the disoriented, drunk menace was real and how much I was acting. I do remember a lot of times I wasn’t nearly as out of it as I wanted the audience to think. To be honest with you I never drank on stage.
DRE:
Really?
AC:
The only time I never drank was on stage. For the two hour show, I was totally sober.
DRE:
You’re shattering all of my illusions here.
AC:
No, you have to figure that I was drunk the other 22 hours of the day [laughs]. I took the show very seriously though. I wanted to be in control when I was onstage.
DRE:
That’s so funny.
AC:
When I was in the process of getting sober I would blame Alice for all my problems. My psychiatrist would say, “How much does Alice drink onstage?” I thought for a second and I went, “Alice never drinks on stage” and he said “Wait a minute, are you telling me that the character you play never drinks.” “No” so he said “so, you’re blaming Alice, the character, who’s sober, whereas the other character for 22 hours is drunk all the time. Who has the problem here? Alice or you?” [laughs] Dr. Frankenstein had the problem, not the monster.
DRE:
You sound like you have a very clear delineation between who Alice is and who you are.
AC:
Oh absolutely. Right now I’m sitting here in a pair of Levi’s and I’m going to play golf this afternoon. Then I’m going to do homework with my kids and I’ve got a PTA meeting tonight. Everything a regular dad would do. But if I had a show tonight, by the time I hit that stage I would be Alice times ten. I would be this character that would be the best Alice you’ve ever seen. He would be the most devious, the most vicious and what’s great about it is that I know how to be both to people.
DRE:
What do parents say when you show up for PTA?
AC:
They get it. They finally get the fact that there are two of me. There’s the guy that’s responsible and does a lot of charity work and stuff like that. Then there’s the one that’s responsible for entertaining the audience. If you put golf clubs on my stage Alice wouldn’t even know what they were. He would look at them and think they were weapons. I divorce the two characters that much.
DRE:
How close are we to seeing a movie of your life?
AC:
You got to think Johnny Depp is going to play me [laughs].
All the drama is there. The kid from Detroit that moves to Phoenix and starts a band that has no chance. Every critic hates the band and every other band hates them too. Then they end up turning the whole thing upside down. There was no Goth before Alice. Kids weren’t walking down the street with makeup on and top hats until after Alice. It would make a good movie.
All the drama is there. The kid from Detroit that moves to Phoenix and starts a band that has no chance. Every critic hates the band and every other band hates them too. Then they end up turning the whole thing upside down. There was no Goth before Alice. Kids weren’t walking down the street with makeup on and top hats until after Alice. It would make a good movie.
DRE:
Are you working with anyone on a movie?
AC:
No, I think it’s a little bit egocentric for me to be worrying about my life story. I would give it another ten years before somebody says, “This is a great story.” It is also a great love story because, here’s the poster boy for sinful rock and roll who would never cheat on wife.
DRE:
I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t ask how it was to work with Neil Gaiman on The Last Temptation.
AC:
Neil was great. Neil was one of the only guys that really got what I was talking about in The Last Temptation. I would talk with Neil for hours and hours on end about morality. We both agree that America needs a shot of morality. You would think we would say, “No, let everyone do what they want to do.” It was a really strange conclusion for a really dark underground comic writer and a very dark underground rock writer to come to.
DRE:
I got to speak with Dave Mustaine last year. How’d you guys decide to open up the restaurant, Alice Cooper's Town?
AC:
Well, when I was a kid here in Phoenix we had a lot of local good garage bands but really no place to play. When I opened Cooper’s Town, I said I want to make a great restaurant where we make great ribs. People come there for the food more than anything else, but it’s real comfort food. It’s going to be a sports bar with a Paul McCartney bass standing right next to it. On top of that, we had 10,000 square feet outside so we built a stage for local bands to play.
DRE:
How’s it working out?
AC:
It has become the local band hangout. It’s great because I’ll be in there and we’ll have five or six local bands in one night and I think they’re great. It gives these bands a chance to get up on stage in front of people and play. That’s something we never had.
DRE:
When I was younger, you and your image used to really scare the shit out of me. Do you get off as much on scaring people anymore?
AC:
Oh absolutely but I don’t think you can shock an audience anymore. I think you might be able to do a couple of shocking things. You could go up on stage and cut your arm off. But when it comes to illusional shock, like what I do and what Marilyn Manson does, it’s pretty hard to shock an audience. Especially when CNN is more shocking than anything we can do. Here I am with a guillotine on stage and my head gets lopped off and I don’t get that great gasp from the audience anymore. That’s because when they turn CNN on there’s a real guy getting his head cut off by the Al Qaeda.
DRE:
What are you working on next?
AC:
I love the idea of being a senior garage band. My last two albums have been garage band albums and they’ve been two of my best. I think Jet and The White Stripes are great garage bands. They are bands that don’t necessarily care about production as much as they care about the fun of the song. My last two albums have done that and I’m probably going to do the next album like that too. Let the band play new songs live in the studio.
DRE:
I heard this great quote not too long ago, “if you’re not liberal when you’re 20 you have no heart, if you’re not conservative when you’re 40 you have no head.” When did your views start to change into what you believe now?
AC:
Being a survivalist, I understood what made me survive. I went through the alcoholism; I went through all of that and I learned from it. Maybe back in the 70’s I would have said, “Sure there’s nothing wrong with this and that. Go ahead and try whatever.” Like live and let live. But the older you get, the more you start realizing what is destructive and what isn’t. My generation proved that drugs just don’t work and I include alcohol in that. Alcohol may be the worst drug of all. It’s responsible for more murders and, more deaths and more grief than all the other drugs combined.
DRE:
Oh definitely.
AC:
Now it’s not easy for me to look back and have the same attitudes as I had then. I can’t just sit back and say “Go ahead drink and get high.” I look at that and I see that it’s totally self destructive.” I can’t tell a kid to go party and get as high as he can, I think it’s a bad message.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
