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Alice Cooper Goes To Sunday School

Having just completed his third solo album, 'Lace And Whiskey' (Warner Brothers) Alice Cooper is venturing into serious acting on both screen and stage. His latest project is the lead role in the stage drama, "Billy Sunday." The story is based on the superstar evangelist, Billy Sunday, whose vivid proselytizing at the turn of the century caused quite a stir. According to Producer Bill Sergeant (producer of 'Give 'Em Hell Harry' and erstwhile promoter of a $50 million Beatles reunion) the cost will exceed $3.1 million, making it "the most expensive staging in the history of theatre."

What sold Sergeant on Alice was his "Welcome To My Nightmare" staging. "After seeing the show," said Alice, "Sergeant felt the only difference between Sunday and me was that I worked through rock and roll, but Billy Sunday's evangelist meetings were also theatre. He didn't go up there, sing a song and then say, 'Now we're going to talk about Cain and Abel' like most preachers. He damned everybody. He'd say, 'You buncha hog-jowled, weasel-eyed, white-livered, Presbyterians, you're going to Hell. That's not Hades, that's Hell. H-E-double-L.'

"He had the same tactics of sell on stage — anything to illustrate a point. All of a sudden he'd tell the audience, 'Yeah, there's the devil. He's sitting in that chair, and he's a big one.' And he'd sit down in the chair and become the devil and say, 'Now Billy, me and my boys — we ain't that easy to get.' He converted more people because of his theatrics. This guy converted whole cities at one time. Teddy Roosevelt and John D. Rockefeller would go to him."

Cooper said that he didn't accept the part until he'd read several books on the subject and tested the toughest scene in costume on videotape. He found the result convincing. Debuting in Los Angeles, the play will tour three weeks in Chicago, three weeks in Philadelphia and three weeks in New York on Broadway.

Cooper will also appear in Robert Altman's film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions" and do a song-and-dance routine opposite Mae West in West's film, "Sextette," which the grand dame of risque penned 30 years ago and for which she was briefly jailed. Plus, he's at work on a multi-faceted music project with Bernie Taupin, his best friend ("one of the only people I hang around with"). Beyond revealing that he spent December with Taupin in Mexico at work on it, Cooper insisted on leaving the project a mystery for now, saying that it will entail another year of labor.

"A lot of people are thinking that I'm not going to do the Alice Cooper thing anymore. That's not true," said the man who made a living out of sickness. "I'm just trying to broaden what I do now. The only way to do that is to go out and get the experience. You just can't talk about it. I want to get out there and play another part, play another person, just for my own head. You have to prove to yourself that you can do it."

In truth, Alice spoke most excitedly about 'Lace and Whiskey,' a non-conceptual collection of good material that didn't fit onto his two previously ballad-heavy albums. (Producer Bob Ezrin had reminded Alice about this material). "There are cuts that I completely forgot about," Alice exclaimed. He's excited, he concluded, "because it's a really good rock and roll album." Alice remains Alice.