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10 Questions with Alice Cooper

Since his 1970 debut on the rock 'n' roll scene, Alice Cooper has been a disturbing proposition. "We were into fun, sex, death and money when everybody else was into peace and love," laughs the macabre music maven. "We wanted to see what was next. It turned out we were next, and we drove a stake through the heart of the love generation."

Cooper, with his outrageous leather ensembles, satanic make-up and sharp edged, rebellious lyrics, sent parents just resigning themselves to that quartet of mop-tops from Liverpool into a full blown frenzy. By forbidding the buying of posters and magazines with Cooper's image, banning the playing of his records, and reaching for smelling salt at the thought of their impressionable offspring attending a Cooper concert, parents were probably as responsible for Cooper's meteoric rise as their kids.

With the advent of Cooper came a dramatic change in music, fashion, sexuality and the way we would forever view authority. Cooper, the undisputed original commingler of rock and theatrics, stirred a cauldron filled with imagination, irreverence and chaos to create a brew that made the pioneering, tie-dyed, hippie freaks of the '60s look like a bunch of choirboys.

Cooper's villainy mesmerized audiences from the beginning. His catalogue of eardrum-bursting compositions that violated the music charts and radio playlists touched a deep nerve, and established him as the Francis Scott Key of teenage rebellion. His most famous anthems include Eighteen, Elected, Department of Youth, School's Out, No More Mister Nice Guy and Poison.

While his recording successes became legendary, it was on stage, both musically and visually, where Cooper made his greatest impact. Long before anyone ever heard of Kiss or Ozzy Osbourne, Cooper was busy chopping heads off baby dolls, dancing with the dead, and acting out his own on-stage demise and resurrection.

By the time the first wave of imitators came along, Cooper had made old hat out of being beheaded, electrocuted, hanged, beaten up by gangs of thugs, strapped in straight jackets or narrowly escaping an onslaught of black widow spiders, mad scientists and other creature of the night. Each album's coinciding tour — Love it to Death, Billion Dollar Babies, Welcome to My Nightmare and Trash — consistently out-teched the one before it, each time setting a new standard for concert wizardry and theatrical imagination.

A self-described mix of Bela Lugosi and Eddie Haskell, Cooper (who regularly speaks of himself in the third person) was born Vincent Damon Furnier in 1948, the son of a Phoenix minister and his wife. He selected the name Alice Cooper, at first for his band and then for himself, because he thought it had the same rhythm as Baby Jane and Lizzy Borden. "Alice Cooper conjures up the image of a sweet little girl dressed in pink ribbons and lace while holding an ax behind her back," said Cooper. He is credited with producing one of the first "story-line," non-performance videos, Elected, years before the advent of MTV. His ABC television special, Welcome to My Nightmare, which co-starred Vincent Price, was essentially the first long-form video album.

Cooper has appeared with such silver screen notables as Helen Hayes, Mae West and Gene Wilder in movies and television productions such a Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, Roadie, John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, Something Wilder and, more recently, Wayne's World.

Whether he is called the master of shock rock, black-humorist supreme or simply one of the greatest showmen of the 20th century, Cooper's blend of theatrics and rock 'n' roll has been a major force in both music and pop culture during the 1970s, '80 and '90s. From glitter and punk to heavy metal or grunge, one only needs to look at the bands that top today's charts — Nine Inch Nails, White Zombie and Marilyn Manson — to see that Cooper's influence is still very much in evidence.

Although his legacy is assured, Cooper's quest to reach new heights of innovation is far from over. His 1994 release of The Last Temptation — a combination concept album and comic book — and his more recent contribution to The Lords of Tantrazz, a CD-ROM game in which he voices the evil entity, The Hunger, proves he is as innovative and relevant in the late '90s as he was in the early '70s.

This year Hollywood Records released a new live album, A Fistful of Alice, recorded during a 1996 Cooper concert in Mexico. "I think it's by far our best live album," said Cooper, who has toured extensively in Europe and the United States this year. "I'm still keeping busy, but I really play it by ear. I'm in a nice position now. I really don't have to do anything other than play golf, but I still do things if they sound like they'll be fun."

One thing that sounded like fun to Alice was completing our autograph questionnaire. We thought his blunt, to-the-point and typically off-the-wall answers would draw a smile from our readers as well.

Q: Do you sign autograph requests through the mail? How many requests do you get?

AC: No. Too many.

Q: What is the strangest autograph request you ever had?

AC: Spray-painted my name on a new Mercedes in Germany.

Q: Do you sign autographs when asked in person? If so, do you limit the number of items per person?

AC: Yes, always. Yes, depending.

Q: Are there any upcoming events where people might be able to get your autograph in person?

AC: I get around. Keep looking.

Q: How do you view people who pose as fans, but actually sell the autographs?

AC: They should be fed to meat-eating carp.

Q: Are there any famous people whose autographs you would want?

AC: Buddy Hackett and Slim Whitman.

Q: Do you collect anything?

AC: Watches

Q: Are there any items you refuse to sign?

AC: Genitals.

Q: How much do you think your autograph is sold for?

AC: $1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

(From the collection of Christian Strandell)