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The Continuing Re-Invention of Alice Cooper

Evil, evil Alice. It's been 17 years since he first rose from the murky depths of Vincent Furnier's twisted mind to terrorize an unsuspecting legion of rock fans hungry for new meat. Since then, he's shown more resilience than Friday The 13th's Jason Voorhees, surviving a big slump in the lat '70s, a musical identity crisis in the early '80s, a serious bout with drugs and alcohol, and finally a self-imposed, three-year "retirement."

But, like the best of the movie ghouls Alice is so fond of, he has risen once again to scare the hell out of those who dare to listen. The question is, in the 1980s, when Ozzy bites the heads off bats and Blackie tortures half-nude women onstage, is there anything that can still shock us?

Alice thinks so. He brought out a lot of old tricks and a few new ones for his "The Nightmare Returns" tour last year. Backed by a new band featuring muscle-bound Kane Roberts on guitar, Alice performed plenty of new material as well as "metallicized" version of some old songs, drawing mixed reactions from some diehard fans. But his nasty habit of chopping up baby dolls piqued the interest of the bloodthirsty young 'uns, and he soon found himself playing to a whole new generation of headbangers. He even brought back the old guillotine, but this time the blade missed his head by a mere eight inches instead of three feet.

This year's Alice has done away with the guillotine altogether, opting instead for a good, old-fashioned hanging. And in the true rock 'n' roll splatter spirit, he decapitates a 10-foot tall monster, causing blood to spurt wildly over the fans in the front rows. Life is good.

So is Cooper's new album, Raise Your Fist And Yell. While it may not be as innovative as early Coop vinyl like Love It To Death or Billion Dollar Babies, it's much more focused than Constrictor, Alice's 1986 comeback record, and more than holds its own among the current glut of metal platters. Besides, who but Alice could call a song "Chop, Chop, Chop" and be taken seriously? That tune, along with "Gail" and "Roses On White Lace," comprises a nifty little trilogy on Raise Your Fist that recalls the days of Cooper's thematically-linked horror-tale LPs. Another track, "Freedom," is a fist-pumper with a cause, aimed at D.C.'s notorious Washington Wives. And Alice has been busy with other projects as well, including a sizable role in John Carpenter's new horror epic Prince Of Darkness, for which he wrote the title song.

I recently had a chance to talk with rock's darkest legend about the new record, the tour, and his horrific past, present and future. Actually, I spoke with Vincent Furnier, a polite, agreeable gentleman who happens to know Alice quite well. But throughout the interview, I felt a gnawing edge of uneasiness, sensing that beneath the wide grin and those docile eyes there lurked the mind of a madman...

You've been shocking us as Alice Cooper for nearly two decades now. How much longer do you think Alice can continue?

If I get fat, or if I can't communicate to the audience what Alice is about, I'll stop. But the last tour was out most successful tour! It was amazing to me because I hadn't toured for four years really seriously, with a big show, and I think that there was a real hunger for the classic Alice. Of course, I gotta do "Eighteen" and "Billion Dollar Babies" and that percentage of hits, but I really consider Constrictor like my first album of the new era, and Raise Your Fist And Hell is a great logical progression - only I think it really leaves Constrictor behind as far as energy goes. It's much stronger, it's just physically a lot stronger.

What do you think of this new crop of metal bands that have become popular since you've been gone?

I think the new bands have got a lot more energy than anybody. I think that's what's really great about the new groups. The energy and sound is just amazing. But I think where they're losing it is there's no signature on it. I can listen to KNAC (an all-metal station in Los Angeles), and I can say "Oh yeah, there's Ozzy, there's Motley," I can tell Vince's voice, and then all of a sudden I hear five songs and I go "That could've been anybody!" Because they all try to sound like Ronnie Dio. Every singer's trying to get that big Gaelic kind of "The gates of hell are falling." So I think they're falling into a rut right now, you know, "Let's go get as many studs as we can on as much leather as we can find and then we'll all sound like Dio."

Outside of your stage presence, what distinguishes you from that?

Well, I think lyrically, I'm pretty much into writing modern-day horror stuff right now, and I really like the idea of writing horror. I think it works on the trilogy, and on "Prince Of Darkness" and things like that. Especially on the trilogy, though. That's a good movie! This guy watches so many splatter videos that he doesn't know if he's in it or he's watching it. And he's got this fixation with a character named Gail, so no matter what he sees, no matter if the girl's name is Mary or Bernadette or Tracie, all he sees is the name Gail. I'm trying to make this guy into a character that's so demented, and he's really compulsive and all these things, but he's a romantic! Because when he kills her and she's in her wedding gown, he doesn't see blood. he sees roses. So that's really psychotic, you know?"

Speaking on lyrics, what prompted you to write "Freedom"?

"Freedom" was like, people keep asking me what I think of the PMRC, so I tell 'em "Just listen to the words of 'Freedom,' that's all I have to say about it." It was pretty much no punches pulled there. I'm not gonna debate Tipper Gore, 'cause I don't really want to contribute to her political career, you know? I don't really want to give her that much time, and I don't want to lend my name to hers. So I just said it all in "Freedom," and boom, then I'm out as far as I'm concerned.

What made you decide to update some of your classic songs in concert?

Well, we took songs like "Eighteen" and "No More Mr Nice Guy," and I told the band - you know, we had this great new band together, a good rock 'n' roll street kinda band - and I said, "OK, here's this song. Now take it and play it the way you would play it as if you wrote it last week." We just kind of updated everything a little. And we satisfied everybody, I think, because everybody loves hearing those songs again, but they love hearing them big and tough.

Are you getting a good response to those changes?

Yeah, great! I think there's always a few people that will say "I liked that a lot better the other way," and I can understand that, but I don't hear any of the young kids saying that. I'd say 75 percent of my audience now is pretty much 16 to 23.

Does it all ever get boring to you?

It got boring for a while during the disco period, but then I was also having such problems with drinking at that point that everything was kind of boring to me, and very depressing as well. Aerosmith was off the radio, Alice Cooper was off the radio, and these was really nobody rock 'n' roll on the radio anymore! If you had a guitar on your record, it wasn't on the radio during that time. They just took the radio away from the maniacs and gave it to the older maniacs, and everything was just so soft and dumb. And I think everybody went through a kind of rock 'n' roll depression at that time. The backlash came when the punk thing happened, and that later turned into disco in disguise, the techno-stuff...

That was when you were doing stuff like Flush The Fashion, which, incidentally, I liked a lot...

I like the lyrics on it a lot, and I like "Clones" a lot. I would love to have gone back and done "Clones" again now, the way we can do it now. It would be a real different record.

Soon after that you "retired" for a while. What were you doing for those three years?

I was pretty much trying to get better. I was traveling a lot then, just kind of traveling all over the world and really not doing anything.

Did you work on any music during that time?

I worked with Joe Perry for a while, Joe Perry and I did some writing during that period when neither one of us were doing anything. We did some writing, in fact, in the house where they wrote The Amityville Horror. We stayed there for four days, and the house was making noises like you wouldn't believe! We'd be sitting there and we'd hear all these noises going on in the house, and we were the only ones there!

What happened with the songs you wrote?

We still have them. Nobody's recorded them, but we do have like four or five things. It's some good stuff.

At the time, you were still heavily into alcohol. How did you finally like that problem?

It was just a matter of either stop or die (laughs). I took it right to the end, too, of being on this planet or not, and I really had to stop it. First of all, I wasn't having any more fun. I didn't even like to drink a beer, I used to like to drink whiskey, and it was a lot of fun. Then I realized I couldn't walk across the room unless I knew there was another drink on the other end of it, and that's really alcoholism. I couldn't really do anything unless I had my crutch there. When I finally realized that I could actually play Alice even better without it; I had more energy. If I can do a show like that now, which is a much harder physical show the Nightmare or Billion Dollar Babies, then to me it makes a lot more sense. I would never sit back, though, and say if I could live my live over I would never have been an alcoholic, because it taught me a lot. I wrote some of my best stuff smashed out of my mind.

What's taken the place of alcohol now?

Now it's pretty much work. I really like dedicating a full day towards even the details of the tour, getting those details done. I'm really not a perfectionist, but there's so much to do in a show like this. And the other part of the time I watch a lot of splatter movies.

Which conveniently brings us to the topic of your new film, Prince of Darkness.

Prince of Darkness was great. Shep (Gordon, Cooper's manager) produced the movie. He's been my manager for like 19 years, and he's had this movie company that does these little artsy movies that never do anything. I kept saying, "Shep the money is in horror movies. Not necessarily splatter, but at least pop horror movies: Friday The 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street. These movies cost four or five million dollar to make, and they make 60 million dollars. I'm not a business guy at all, but it looks pretty clear cut what sells and what doesn't. You just have to have a guy who can do it." So he comes to me about four weeks later and he says, "I just signed a five picture deal with John Carpenter." And I said, 'That's pretty good." (laughs)

How did you get involved?

Shep said, "Why don't you write something for the movie?" so we wrote "Prince Of Darkness." And then John Carpenter says, "Well, why don't don't you be one of these street people that just of stand on the sidewalk and we'll pan by you, and it'll be kind of a hip thing. Some people will recognize you, some won't." And they liked it so much - it looked pretty horrific, this character - and they said, "We need somebody to kill this doctor..." And so they made the part bigger, where I actually pretty much lead these people.

Let's talk about the new live show...

It's a lot more horror than the last one, "The Nightmare Returns." That introduced a certain amount of illusions. Like the Teenage Frankenstein (from the Constrictor LP). I build the thing in front of them, and there's no way that this thing can come alive, but it does, and it gets up and walks around and knocks me down and kills two or three people. Then it gets up on a pedestal where there's no way it can get out, and I knock it over and it disappears! People think "How did they do that?" It's an illusion that's been used before, but in the context of rock 'n' roll it really works.

I don't know if it would work for any other rock 'n' roll band except Alice Cooper. I think that we kind of have a license to do that kind of thing. Since we've been around and we have a reputation for anything goes at an Alice Cooper concert, you don't really know what's going to happen, but you know it's going to be fun.

There's been some Alice wanna-bes in the last few years, most notably Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P. How can the real Alice shock people in 1988?

You just have to do it better than anybody. You have to make it more believable. I think people believe Alice a lot more than they believe Blackie, because Alice is sort of a legendary sicko. When I talk about Alice I mean the other character, not me. I mean the character that's onstage, because I don't quite trust Alice myself. I don't ever want to know where he's coming from. But I know when he gets onstage, I don't have total control over him. That's what I like about him. After the show, I'll say "Wow, did you see what Alice did tonight?," because I can talk about him as another person. Whereas Blackie's thing is a lot more, I mean - contrived is one thing, but at the same time, so unoriginal! I mean Blackie's probably a pretty intelligent guy. I don't understand why he has to pretty much quote me verbatim from things I said in the '70s in CREEM magazine. One of my favorite "famous" things I ever said was "The sicker and audience gets, the sicker we'll get," and I just read that direct quote from Blackie Lawless in 1987! Geez, this guy must go right down the list of things that I have said and say "OK, now I"m gonna say thing and it will make me original." I don't understand that, 'cause he's a clever guy. I would imagine he is, I don't really know him.

Isn't that kind of flattering?

It's flattering, but it's getting a little irritating. It's to the point now where I think some people are actually believing that he's coming up with these things and that it's an original thing. I really haven't got time to bother with it, but every time we do something new onstage, it's a joke, we'll say "Well, Blackie will be doing this tomorrow morning." I think it's better when band that have been Alice fans - if they see something that inspires them to do something, then it's a worthwhile thing.

What do your parents thing about Alice Cooper?

Well, they only see the show maybe once. My dad's doing missionary work right now with the Apache Indians in Arizona, but he's always interested in what I do. He's not one of those closed-minded evangelists that sees the devil in everything that anybody does, so he's interested. And he's a rock 'n' roll fan! He used to love the Animals and the Yardbirds himself. We had a pretty good communication when it came to music, 'cause we both liked the same kind of music. That's not to say that I've got an unhip view of it, just that he was a very hip view of it! (laughs) He likes Aerosmith very much, too. So he's interested in what I do onstage. He likes to see what the production is, and how we're going to pull it off. And of course, my mom's nervous as hell about everything.

As an individual, Alice Cooper seems to transcend the realm of the typical rock figure. Where does he come from?

Alice Cooper comes from every horror movie I've ever seen. Alice Cooper comes from every comic book I ever read. He's a conglomeration of everything I want my favorite rock star to look like and represent. You know, if Alice weren't my favorite rock star, I would invent him to be my favorite rock star. I don't want Alice to be squeaky-clean at all. I don't want him to be clean in the least bit. I would much rather him be the darker side of me.

(Originally appeared in Metal, a Creem Close-Up, in the March 1988 issue.)