Article Database
Publications
Observer
School Was Out Years Ago
(Observer, 1997-07-07)
Alice Cooper has always had a thing about props. In the past, he has used an electric chair and, most famously, and eight foot long python. One of my colleagues interviewed Cooper back in 1970 in his room at Blakes hotel in London's south Kensington. The python slept with him. It dined on fresh mice bought from Harrods. And, during Cooper's stay, it dissapeared into the hotel's plumbing, never to be found. These days, the American shock-rocker's props are rather more modest. In line with fashion, Cooper's new show is 'stripped down', which means we get nothing more spectacular than a leather whip (thrown into the audience), a sabre, and a metal crutch - on which he first pretends to limp, and then plays air guitar....
Fairway to heaven
(Observer, 2001-04-29)
Vincent Furnier, who started performing as the megalomaniac rock god Alice Cooper three decades ago, still looks more or less the same - he is long-haired, big-nosed, Cuban-heeled, with thin, pipe-cleaner legs. He is 53. He's recorded 25 albums, spent years as an alcoholic, dried out, converted to Christianity, taken up golf, opened a restaurant with a sporting theme in his home town of Phoenix, Arizona, and raised three children. Some things in his life have remained consistent - he still watches a kung-fu movie before every stage performance and eats a McDonald's quarter pounder with cheese afterwards. ...