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It's Just Shocking

Alice Cooper spends every concert glad to prove he's still 'pure entertainment'

If rock 'n' roll is a carnival, says Alice Cooper, he is the sideshow.

The tongue-in-cheek master of shock rock is back on the road.

People who, since 1969, missed the point about what Cooper was trying to do with his music have missed the fun, he suggests.

"People who didn't see us and sort of were fed what Alice was, first of all missed a good show, and they still have a chance to see it," he laughs. "They missed the fun point if they though I was trying to be scary without a sense of humour." Half the fun of being frightened is to be made to laugh at the same time, he says. "If you just try to shock an audience and don't give them any place to go, it doesn't do anything," he explains.

What he's always been about, says Cooper, is "pure entertainment."

"When the audience walked out after a show, what did they want to see? Did they want to come back and see you again? That's the idea. That's the trick."

For anyone who wants to get caught up quickly, Cooper offers A Fistful of Alice, his first live album since 1977. Guests include Sammy Hagar, Slash and Rob Zombie.

The album updates fans on what he sounds like now, he says. He believes he is more high energy this time.

At 50, it's still fun for Cooper. That's because the music, some of it a chronicle of teen-age angst, is still valid, he says. Songs like "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy" still work with a young audience, he says.

The challenge for him is that younger people in the audience may only have heard of the Cooper legend and never experienced it. "To me, every night, it's a 'prove it,' " he explains. "I feel like I have to prove it. That's good for me. It keeps me really high energy. I'm very competitive. I want to prove it."

A former talented cross-country athlete in high school, Cooper, the son of a minister, now brings his skills to the golf course he used to run across. He has an excellent 4 handicap as a golfer and has won about a dozen amateur tournaments.

There is a definite sense of deja vu when he hears criticism of Marilyn Manson. "I feel for this poor kid. He's living my life through the rumor mill," Cooper says. "Controversy always works. Most bands don't do anything on stage that's too off the wall. Some rough language may be the worse thing about that," he says.

Would this father of three, ages 16, 12 and 4, caution his kids about any particular concerts these days? "I wouldn't let them see Pat Boone. You know what kind of influence he is," Cooper quips.

If Cooper would offer advice to anyone just entering music, he says he would suggest that they be original and professional.

"And be on time," he adds. "Enough of this star crap. You can't be a star unless you're a star. You have to earn stardom. You've got to be there for your interviews, be on time, be professional in everything you can. Be a pro. Don't be an amateur."

He is proud of the work he has done. And now he's considering taking a show to Broadway, and he dabbles in short-story writing. "They're ironic, sort of Twilight Zone-ish things, very much like my albums," he says.

"It's fun when people say 'If you hadn't come along, a lot of other bands wouldn't have been here.' I don't know if that's true," he says. "But it was fun to be the first, to take all those shots at us and prove we were right. Theatrics and rock did work."