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Tell 'Em, Sell 'Em Alice Cooper

The press conference took place at poolside on the top of the Holiday Inn at 26th and Wisconsin. Alice strolled out about a half an hour later, naked to the waist, and followed by his lead guitarist, Neal Smith, the drummer, and Volman and Kaylan from Flo and Eddy. Volman immediately attempted to push Alice into the pool, but the good natured star eluded him, and took his place on the firing line. There were about 25 people asking questions, but throughout the whole ordeal Alice was laughing and good natured: a real nice guy.

Bugle: Would you draw a distinction between your music and your performance?

Alice: No, because there is none. You see, the thing is, theatre is theatre, and music is music, and we do 'em both.

Press: I'll buy that.

Volman: About a million people have.

Alice: If the Grateful Dead were to cut off all their hair and paint themselves green and go onstage, they'd still be able to play music.

Bugle: So the music contains the theatre...

Alice: Yeah, without the music the theatre would just... be there. The music's gotta be the backbone of the whole thing. It's too bad that people think we can't play. Y'know, the sicker the audience gets, the sicker we can get, the more theatre we can put into it.

Bugle: What's your attitude toward your audience?

Alice: (Laughter) We have an enormous love affair with the audience. They're sadists for awhile, and then we're sadists for awhile, its, its a love affair.

Bugle: Do you consider yourself decadent, or just opulent?

Alice: Well, I consider Mark Volman to be decadent — you should see his underwear.

Bugle: That's more of a question of opulence versus corpulence...

Press: What would happen if you just dropped all the trappings and played the music?

Alice: Well, we could do that, but why do it? Y'know that would be like being everybody else, like being the Grateful Dead again. That's been done, so why do it again? We get bored really easy.

Volman: Yeah, I'm bored right now.

Alice: You see, we're sensationalists, we go for the sensation, we went onstage once in New York and just played, but the audience didn't like it, they felt cheated. Like they hadn't gotten their six dollars worth of show.

Volman: But they also paid six dollars for their quaaludes, and they'd rather take six quaaludes than see the show.

Bugle: Do you pick up material for your music on tour?

Volman: We steal it, we steal it from everybody. In fact I wouldn't mind having that necklace right now.

Alice: I'm just the lyricist, these guys write the music. I get my material from Holiday Inn menus, y'know, from the Hollywood squares, from anyplace. By the way, the Clarks are up to ten thousand dollars on Gambit.

Bugle: Do you do any art other than the performance, the obvious career thing?

Alice: I just don't have any time for anything outside of the job, it takes all my time.

Press: How do you address yourself to your act?

Alice: You mean how do I approach it? I go for a reaction. You see, it's a moving thing, you'll see that in the concert tonight, even tho there's no apparent reason for what we do, you have to accept it on some level. It's like the art of chaos. If you leave, that's a reaction. If you throw up, that's a reaction. If you laugh, that's a reaction. I don't really care about the reaction as long as there is one. That's entertainment.

Volman: Look at Nixon — he's entertaining.

Alice: Watergate is the best quiz show ever on T.V. They have stickers in New York now that say: Free the Watergate 500. Everybody's gonna get in trouble with it. I'm probably going to be implicated. Did you see McCord's performance? I loved it. He just sat there and said, "Wow, I'm really in trouble." And everybody else said, "You sure are, Jim." He was cool.

Press: Do you get sexually turned on during your show?

Alice: Oh yes, and we try to get everybody else turned on too. In fact, I never have any sex the day of the concert so that I'm more up for the act. The hotter you are the better you are. You see, our audience is a sixteen year old audience, and that's when you're most tuned in to that. Sex never hurt anybody. It never hurt me.

Bugle:. I used to watch you back when you were based in Detroit, and your act didn't have all this sexual violence directed at the audience, all the implicit cruelty. Why does it have it now?

Alice: It's part of the love affair that all performers have with their audience. Like when we throw the posters out, there's everybody killing each other for a little piece of paper, but nobody ever gets hurt. It's like a John Wayne movie. And they go home and say Wow, man, lookit, I got this thing here...

Volman: Like the scene from Blow Up where the guy fights to get the guitar, and then throws it away after he leaves.

Alice: Yeah, but everyone is having a good time doing it, they're laughing. We're laughing.

Bugle: That's what I mean. It's like you're above all the chaos down there, and you're like, orchestrating it.

Alice: Right! That's neat though, that's fun. And if we didn't do it, they'd be mad.

Press: How much of the real Alice Cooper do we see on the stage?

Alice: All of it, that's where you see it all. Offstage, like now, I'm Fred Macmurray. Television man, I love television, I never turn it off, I leave it on all night. That fuzz, man, that's great! It's so great, it's as neurotic, it's life. I hate trees, man. Things like chipmunk, man, I shoot at those things, BANG! Right now I can't wait to get back to New York and all those brick buildings. I just love to wake up and see all that gray. I hate being out in nature.

Bugle: Did you get that sun tan in New York City, Alice?

Alice: Ahh ... I love sports, too. Everybody always thinks we're in our rooms beating up groupies. We're not, we're watching baseball. Hey man, get a hit!

Volman: Then we beat up the groupies.

Bugle: Mr. Kaylan, what's your relationship with Frank Zappa now, amicable?

Kaylan: It's better than it was.

Bugle: Well, you've got his band...

Kaylan: Nobody took Frank Zappa's band away from him man, be realistic. We haven't got the name or the money to do that. The band just decided that they could get a better deal with us, we didn't steal anything from anybody, and that's it.

Press: What did you get your mother for Mother's Day, Alice?

Alice: I sent her flowers. Roses.

Press: Are you an alcoholic?

Alice: Sure.

Bugle: Do you enjoy your work, Alice?

Alice: I don't like press conferences, my head's about to explode. I like the confusion, it's the greatest artistic medium there is, because you don't have to explain anything. People say "What does that mean?" and I say I dunno. I was talking to Salvador Dali, and he like puts a crutch under a chocolate eclair and says it doesn't mean anything, but it's great, isn't it? and I said sure, it's terrific! Our next album is going to be live, I think we'll call it "A Kiss and a Punch," or "Pelvic Thrust." We're going to market an eyeliner called Whiplash, Sears and Avon will carry it, and we're going to get Herb Score to endorse it. I work best in confusion.

Bugle: What do you think about the media's treatment of you?

Alice: Well. I think Time Magazine was wrong when they said I was a bad actor. I'm a good actor. I'm a good liar too. That's what an actor is, actually, he plays a role, and that's a lie because it's not himself. In fact, I've been lying to you all afternoon. Isn't that great?

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Later that night...

Concert Review by Dave Ziglin

At the main entrance to the arena, a few minutes before concert time, I met Mr. Average American. Middle-dressed, middle-aged, middle-bulged — a nice guy. He was there trying to sell a ticket since his son couldn't make the concert.

He seemed a bit uncomfortable surrounded by all that hair and "Glitter" but I figured he thought five dollars was five dollars and so he'd grin and bear it. Then I learned that he had two tickets — he had planned to join his son.

My first thought was that he must be somewhat relieved. Poor dad was doing his part to bridge the generation gap that the media has convinced nearly everyone not only exists, but exists as a threat to home and hearth. And now he had a way out of it. He could take his son fishing instead.

When I offered to relieve him of both tickets, he informed me in a kind but startled manner that he was still going to the concert. Wouldn't miss it! I mean, this stranger in a strange land was going to the Alice Cooper Concert! Then it hit me: while the Grateful Dead remains as obscure to most people as Dynamite Duck, just about everybody has at least heard of "Crazy" Alice Cooper (note the quotes).

Yes, friends, Alice Cooper is with us, and this time around the US means not only you and me but just about every individual in this or any other country exposed to the Miracle of Mass Media (trumpet fanfare).

Like an up and coming Hollywood starlet, Last Tango, or Pringle's Potato Chips, Alice has been packaged, programmed and promoted to make the Big-God-Bleess-America-Buck. And like Raquel Welch, GI Joe, toy torture chambers, and the Mail Order Mauser, Alice is directed straight at base taste and primitive desire — and it's paying off. In millions of dollars.

In the arena lobby could be heard the hustle-pitch braying of the program men. That's right! Get your red hot Alice Cooper Souvenir programs. Only two dollars. Two dollars! And you must have heard of Alice's Whiplash UniSex Mascara and soon to come perfume, rouge, deodorant and bubble bath. Can you see it coming — Alice Cooper dolls with cosmetics, clothes, snakes, knives, guillotines and other assorted plastic to be had for a small additional cost.

Being an ardent fan of Speculative Fiction, I fear the worst. Take anything happening today, exaggerate it and you have the future. Read old SF and you have the present. The Big Flash by Norman Spinrad tells the story of a rock group, The Four Horsemen, which leads the country into a growing obsession with death by nuclear explosion. At the end, the ultimate trip — the Big Flash and everybody goes with them. Then there's the corpses activated by electrical input dancing for the folks under green light. Help! What's Next!

The saving factor in all this, at least for Alice Cooper, is that he is up-chuck, hype-shuck-shlock, bull-shit — and he admits it often if you've been listening.

Just like P.T. Barnum's admission "There's a sucker born every minute," Alice not only blatantly admits his love of the lie, he even gets the faithful to expose themselves ready to be humiliated at the feet of their by now bored lord. Alice suggested to the audience that he thought maybe they were crazier than he. Alice was about to prove it but they just couldn't wait. Their agreement was instantly expressed. The Id Kid then started throwing his posters into the audience (the commercial break meets the concert hall). And the fans' hands went flay, flay, flay and the spot went spot, spot, spot. And Alice threw even more posters. He said, "You're all crazy!" But he was lying again, don't you see! I'm not crazy. You're crazy.

Don't you see what he's doing. He's trying to get us like The Four Horsemen. You're all escaping (he didn't lie about that — sometimes he tells the truth but it's all part of his lie). Reality's gotten too big for you. Future shock is here. You can't take it and it shames you so you're suffering from that too. Don't you see? Oh, God, it's so clear!

Everything is turning into theatre. Where's the damn music? What's with the doggone mirrors in the hat crap? Rolling Stone Beer! T-Rex Lard! Alice Cooper Mascara by Avon! What is all this shit. You're crazy! One of these days you'll be wiping your butt and find a picture of Jerry Garcia on every square. Double ply. Oh, God! Remember all you chucks and chicks, Marc Bolan uses Gleem toothpaste. Toothpaste! Oh my God, that tube of toothpaste. And that tooth! And those roots.

Purely pruriently pornioious, and then to confront us with the horrors of tooth decay and improper dental hygiene was too much. You've got to stop standing on your chairs too, don't you see. It's part of the plan. You've got to sit back and demand the very best, like they say on TV. You see, it's even getting to me. Those late night concerts are to get you primed. John was right about Paul, too, you know. The dressmakers are in on it. They want everyone in those glittery soft things that feel so good when you move. Just watch — you'll see I'm right. Did you see the classifieds last issue?

Some guy wants to buy a sword. What does he want that sword for? And he says he's SERIOUS! Password is starting now and Sylvester's the guest personality. I have to go. Don't forget — see your dentist twice a year and don't stand on the fucking chairs.

"The noblest thing to which I carn aspire is insanity." — Rousseau