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Alice Cooper: The Boogie Merchants

LISA ROBINSON traces the history of the wealthy minister's son who grew up to become rock's most outrageous superstar. From school, through his early bands and onto dresses, make-up and a "bloody" stage act. But what of the man behind the glitter and gore... the real Mr Alice Cooper.

WAY BACK in 1964 the Beatles helped to show five skinny athletic kids in Tucson, Arizona that they didn't have to become garage mechanics, that it would all be okay.

Instead, they could wear dresses, pass out onstage, sing behind a fluorescent green net, and only eight short years later wind up as millionaires.

"We got together in high school," remembers Alice Cooper. "I was a sophomore in high school, and the whole idea then was that the Beatles came out and all of a sudden you could be exciting — you didn't have to be a busboy any more, you could be in a band. I never worked an honest day in my life, to tell you the truth... at that time.

"My parents had a lot of bread and I didn't have to do anything, I never worked once. But I just liked the idea of getting all that attention. I was a really bratty little kid. So when the Beatles happened, well, that was an opening."

In High School, Alice, Dennis Dunaway, Glen Buxton, Mike Bruce, and an original drummer who went on to become the President of Alice's college, and now manages a group called Beans who sign TV themes and feature a lead singer named Rod Planet, got together. Neal Smith joined as drummer very soon and the band became known locally as the Earwigs. They played a lot of Catholic Youth Organization dances...

"Then we were the Spiders and then the Nazz." said Alice. "We used to wear Beatle hats and had yellow corduroy jackets... we were hilarious. We used to play in back of this enormous green web at a place called the VIP Club in Tucson, and all we played were Rolling Stones songs. We also had a pinwheel with dayglo paint and all black fights would go on; the kids wouldn't know what to think. This was before hippies and psychedelic lighting and all that...

"We were really into the music, but our music was a lot more inventive than it is now. More free form... but no one liked it! It Was really more 'artistic' than the music we're doing now, but our music now is definitely more appealing — it's much sexier. At that time our music was all mental, and that was no fun onstage."

Alice has always been ahead of his time. While Marc Bolan and David Bowie were singing to acoustic guitars onstage, while the New York Dolls were in grade school, the Theatre of the Ridiculous in New York City and Alice Cooper in Los Angeles were putting glitter on their eyelids... Alice was wearing dresses on stage... They were never your ordinary garage Rock-n-Roll band. Alice even let people wonder if he was a faggot before it was chic to do so.

"Back then we were probably wilder than we are now. We used to go onstage so drunk that I would pass out in the middle of a song, and they would have to pick me up... wake me up, to finish the song. That's how drunk we would get. We would have to buy really cheap wine because we didn't have any money."

"We went to California after two years of college to starve. Had to starve to be great." he laughs. "We all lived in Hollywood in a one room house — about nine of us."

L.A. was not San Francisco. Love and peace and flowers were not Alice's scene. Got any spare change? No. And they didn't relate at all to the music coming out of San Francisco at that time, those acid rock bands that supposedly affected everyone in America for a while.

"The only band I liked coming out of San Francisco was Quicksilver," says Alice. "I never really liked the attitude of San Francisco... I still don't. The music in L.A. Music in L.A. was always preoccupied with sex.

"The whole thing in L.A. was always sex, it was always the common demoninator. I love L.A. It's just about my favourite city. It's fabulous because it's so... sick. It's tacky and I like things like that. At least it's honest."

Alice met Frank Zappa who was just starting Bizarre. They needed a company and he was always interested in freaks. "He was the only one who would touch us, so that's where we went. No one wanted to touch a group that wore eye makeup ... except Shep! And that gave us some doubts about him!"

Shep is Shep Gordon, who along with Joe Greenberg and an extremely professional staff make up Alive Productions. They have been through it all with Alice Cooper, and they are smiling now.

The early Straight/Bizarre hype on Alice Cooper was... well... bizarre.

When the group performed at the L.A. Cheetah with the Doors and over 2,000 people walked out in disgust, Shep knew that he had made the right decision to manage such a "negative force." Frank Zappa was simply delighted.

The band hustled. Mostly playing small dates if they could get bookings. They played in New York at the Felt Forum in June 1968 on an unbelievable bIll with the Platters. They were performing material from their first two albums, "Pretties For You " and "Easy Action." Songs like "Nobody Likes Me." Not too many people did.

Reports about Alice began to drift into underground music sectors all over the country. They wore dresses... far out! But the other tales... those nasty ones about Alice killing, throwing around and biting the heads off live chickens onstage have all been greatly exaggerated, says their management. Alice did use chickens very early in the act though, as a prop. And then later feather pillows which with compressed air, were tossed into the audience.

"They really hated us in L. A. though," recalls Alice. "We couldn't get work there; they wouldn't touch us. We were really run out of L.A."

So the band lived in motels for about a year, and struggled. "We went to Detroit because we had played there and the kids went crazy for us. They really loved the idea of Alice Cooper, so we found a home."

Detroit — a town that was always ready to pick up on something new, as long as it was high energy. And by this time Alice Cooper had found a new producer — Bob Ezrin of Nimbus 9 Productions, who, along with Jack Richardson, had produced some pretty tight single hits.

Warner Brothers now had Alice on their label and they realised quickly that the hit, "Eighteen," changed everything all around.

"Eighteen " was released in October 1970... really took off by that winter, and along with the success of the LP "Love It To Death," Alice was able to take his show to larger and more major cities, and larger and more major halls.

Their first headline New York show at Town Hall on May 6, 1971, was the last time that rock was allowed there, because feathers got into the ventilation system and the Town Hall people were not amused.

"I was pretty crazy before all that," Alice says. "I was drinking an awful lot — and I thought I had to be Alice all the time. But we stayed in Detroit for a while, and then we got tired of it. Actually though, Detroit bad a pretty neat scene for a while.

"We used to play with all those groups — they were really good groups — the Amboy Dukes, Stooges, MC5. One night all of uS were on the bill and you can imagine the energy in that place.

The energy in Detroit was so intense that those bands all nearly went out of their minds. All except Alice. He left. But then, the only other band of that period to make it really big had to get out of Detroit too.... Grand Funk Railroad.

Between "Love It To Death" and "Killer" some changes were made. The "Killer" show had more leather. There wasn't the nurse who led Alice offstage in a straitjacket during "The Ballad of Dwight Frye".

In "Killer" he chopped up baby... dolls... dead. He was punished for his crime by being hanged by the neck until dead. But... in the good old showbiz happy-ending tradition, Alice is resurrected at the end of the show and appears with a bubble machine, top hat, tails and can and smile and tap-dances his way into your hearts.

Next came "School's Out." An incredible moneymaker for Alice and Warners, the LP changed the stage show again. This time it has brought the group more and more into the area of a choreographed stage show, for taped music of the "Jet Fight Song" from "West Side Story" is played onstage while the band re-enacts the rumble.

And the future? Broadway, for starters. In February, 1973, Alice Cooper will bring his first rock theatre show to the Palace Theatre in New York City... a place most famous for Judy Garland's concerts there at the peak of her career.

"I always thought we had the right idea," says Alice today. "And the right drive, all we needed was somebody to like our music and for people to catch up on the fact that we're not a regular rock group. In time we might not even be a rock group we just might be a group — and see what comes out of it."

---

Alice Is Really A Nice Guy

THERE WAS a girl named Andrea Feldman who lived in New York City. She grew up and became very blonde and changed her name to Andrea Whipps Warhol.

Andrea was very beautiful and everyone said she was crazy. She appeared in a few movies and was brilliant in them for she was playing herself. When she would sit in Max's Kansas City amid the bored, bleary-eyed habituees of the backroom, she would often jump up on top of her table and scream out "Showtime!!!" and she would put on a show.

Sometimes she would pull up her dress and reveal her body, sometimes she would throw glasses at other people in the room. Sometimes she would just sing songs — songs like "Everything's coming Up Roses," "Mame," "Roll Out The Barrel, We'll Have A Barrel Of Fun," and "I'm The Greatest Star." And all the people assembled would scream and applaud with delight. For everyone loves a good show.

Andrea lived among junkies and drag queens and sex and superstars and vio­lence and pain in New York City. To be able to take her kind of secret 'knowledge and discipline it into a career takes a special kind of talent that Andrea didn't have. A few months ago she jumped out of a fourteen story window and killed herself.

Alice Cooper knows that everyone wants a good show, and he's gonna give them what they want. Alice can see what's around him and use it in his show and survive very well, thank you.

There's a little magazine that comes out all over America each week called "TV Guide." It's the only magazine that Alice Cooper reads every week, without fail. Alice doesn't even really need to look at the TV Guide anymore though, because he is so familiar with every programme on every channel at every hour of the day.

But the guide is good for knowing which old movies are on each week, and after all the game shows, crime dramas, sex-oriented situation comedies, the melodramatic soap operas are all over — late at night, even after the talk shows, well... the old movies are divine.

To look through TV Guide is to understand a lot about Alice Cooper and America. There are, for example, in New York City alone, 65 crime dramas, 20 westerns, 45 Vietnam war newsfilms, 10 horror movies, 7 science fiction films, 30 sex-oriented situation comedies and soap operas on the homescreens each week. Right. Each week.

And there's a lot more... movies, talk shows, football and baseball games... See, everyone in America would love to watch TV all day long if they could. Alice is no exception. "Yes," says noted rock critic Lillian Roxon, "and see what a healthy looking boy he is."

In the U.S.A where the sex and violence comes into your homes via the small screens starting at one in the afternoon, Alice Cooper is just about our biggest rock star. But to simply say that this explains Alice, his vision and his show, is not enough. Sure, TV has numbed us all to some extent — we do tend to look at things as whether they are a good or a bad show, but Alice is more than all that.

He gives his audiences what they want, even if he does stop just a bit short of acting out the ultimate fantasies on stage. It's a good show, that's what counts, and Alice is above all a good showman.

"There's no business like show business..." we sang in unison as we sat down to talk. Alice was propped up in a black naugahyde chair in the top floor office of Alive Productions. We've talked before, and it's very relaxing to talk to Alice. He is perhaps the easiest interview one can come across, everything he says is like a first take.

It may not be that way in the recording studio, but when Alice talks, it's like... okay, cut, PRINT. One of the most verbal and articulate of the rockstars, Alice is totally in control, and knows what he is saying every minute. No matter what the public wonders about the image, we all found out real soon that Alice ain't dumb.

"We've all understood all along what direction we were going in," Alice replied to my question about whether all of the band had always had the same vision. "I never thought we were crazy, I just thought we had insight into what was going to happen later. We still have people with us who were with us eight years ago — like Charlie who does our lights, and a friend of mine named Dick who's been with us off and on... he gets ideas, and we sit around and talk about what we could do to make the audience go really crazy.

"When we went into this whole thing we had the idea that we would do something totally different. Maybe we would get very rich doing it, and it meant a hundred percent effort all the time. That meant getting to gigs an hour before we play — not ten minutes late — because that's the way to run it."

It's all fitting into place you see, like a master plan. And a lot of hard work and discipline and living in ratty motels, playing lousy gigs, being second on the bill to groups like the MC5 and The Stooges who are now in England trying to get it together again...

"I think the reason we've survived the hard times is because of chemistry, you know," said Alice. "Just the way you conduct yourself. Somehow you become more professional if you have to starve, to eat even, and the more you have to hustle and learn to survive it all. But the main idea is that the guys in the group — well, we're all great friends.

"I don't go anywhere without them, we hang around together. You would think that after all this time we would hang out with other people but we don't. I mean we hang around with our management; most groups don't even get near their management except for business — but we go out all the time. And those are the only people we do hang out with."

One of Alice's managers, Joe Greenberg has said, "A lot of people buckle up under pressure, but the more work Alice is given to do, the more he's able to create and produce."

Alice continued, "It's just been total work for five years. I mean total work. I don't look like I'm 24 years old, I look like I'm thirty... I haven't had a vacation in five years. But it's so much a part of my life now that I'm used to it."

So much of rock has been boring... circuses have certainly lost the excitement they once had... theatre is usually a drag and ridiculously expensive... and then, there's all that TV in the homes across the United States.

"So if people are going to go out now; they want to see a show. And of course the kids are going to go out... because they aren't masters of their own environments, they want to get away from their parents, and well, they just have to get out.

"I would go to concerts and would think how many times can you play the same old boring blues riff?" said Alice. "Every other line was the same one. I thought of groups — you could take ten of them, the way they looked, the way they sounded, and you could get four of those groups — English or American groups, it didn't matter, and you could mix them up and they would be able to play the same songs.

"It wouldn't even matter. I mean I think they're great musicians, but it didn't matter. Not in the least bit inventive, they didn't put on a show. I mean if you're up there in front of twenty thousand people and they paid six dollars to see you — my god you'd better do something or you're cheating the audience."

Alice's audience is made up of a great deal of the folk/rock backlash. And the words of his songs are rebellious, teenage, kick out the jams Rock-n­Roll. But it's like a book — it doesn't really matter what it says inside as long as the title is great — and Alice's song titles are great. "Eighteen," "School's Out," and now, "Elected." Timely.

It all seemed logical. On "Love It To Death" Alice was having a nervous breakdown and had to be taken away by a nurse. On "Killer" he took it further out and killed a baby. (That's still something that gets to people I guess...) And on "School's Out" — well, just tear down those walls, that's all. Tear down the walls forever of all those institutions that aren't helping anyone anyway. All those institutions like school especially, where children are merely being contained.

Alice Cooper. The group that caused one record company exec to remark: "That trash. I'm proud that they're elsewhere." Another one wasn't smiling when he said that he guessed he would have to try and sign some "freaky drag rock group" to compete with Alice's sales. Alice is really having the last laugh.

"We've mothered something. People have been wanting to do this and I'm really proud of it. The fact that if people give us credit for braving the whole thing for eight years and going through with it — doing it — and people finally accepting it, well — then I'm proud and I think it's great. I don't mind when I see groups doing this sort of trip — I think that's great.

"Because nobody's ever going to be in competition with Alice Cooper because we're not in competition with anybody. You can't really compare us to this group or this group because it'll always be Alice Cooper. I'd hate to use names, but there are certain groups wearing eye makeup... doing that bit... but if we have helped to open up that line, then we've done something good."

Although Alice is well past the are-­you-a-boy-or-are-you-a-girl-stage, lots of record company people still think that way, and there will be a rush on what they think are drag rock groups without any concept of what it's all about really.

"Well that will show up because people won't buy it," said Alice, "people can tell fakes. People can tell when somebody is doing it just to do it. As far as I'm concerned there are so many other things to do. We were never a drag rock group. It doesn't matter to us anymore though. But of course there will be groups doing that — when Blood, Sweat & Tears came out, Chicago and all that — there was a rash of big brass bands... but that will always happen. When something's successful it will always be limited."

Alice lives with the rest of his band about an hour and a half outside of New York City, in Greenwich, Connecticut. Bette Davis is a neighbour, and as far as we know, she neither owns a pet snake nor has a ten-foot canon in her storage room.

The Cooper mansion is an old, gabled, beautiful home out of some Hollywood fantasy. Set off from the road, it is 40 rooms of ageing, genteel splendour. "It's so big," smiles Alice, "I still think there's a movie star living there, we just haven't seen him yet. There are about fourteen bedrooms and a ballroom the size of a basketball court. I haven't seen all the rooms in the house yet and that's the truth. It's so big that you don't have to see anybody for days if you don't want to."

There is a lot of sculpture, a lot of plants, marble... gardens. The living room was turned into a studio and the band records there sometimes, although they save the heavy stuff for The Record Plant in New York. There are video­tape cameras... sound trucks, moose heads on the walls, mirrored bathrooms, brass beds.

The house shows the wear and tear of a band, but it isn't any crash pad for rock and rollers. Occasionally you'll see a beer can, or lots of cigarette stubs in a golden urn. A billiards room and an equipment room catch your eye on the first floor... the latter housing props, a cannon (which may not be used in Alice's next show because when they tested it Alice landed in the tenth row of a theatre orchestra...) and lots of trunks.

As you ascend the stairs you notice a Marilyn Monroe cutout on a table with a picture of Alice pasted on it. In Alice's private bathroom there is an inscribed still photo of Burgess Meredith... with best wishes to Alice. (Burgess Meredith recently won a whole new generation of fans for his portrayal of The Penguin in the popular "Batman" TV series.) And of course, there are lots of TV sets in the Cooper household.

People might get confused if they saw Alice offstage — in real life. He's polite and extremely well bred, he smiles, he talks... and he drinks beer. All day long. And he watches TV. Whenever he can.

"My typical day... well, first I get up and I go ppffff! (opens beer can), Alice laughed. "It just depends. I like to go to bars. I like to hang out in New York a lot, just because it's fun. I love baseball, but I haven't gotten a chance to go to any games this year. I watch TV constantly — I watch "Concentration" (game show), "Sale of the Century," "Password," "Hollywood Squares" (all game shows), and then at one o'clock in the afternoon it's time for the movie. I could just sit there all day and watch TV. I don't even need TV Guide anymore — I always know what's on."

Alice Cooper gets along well with his folks and says his father is his biggest fan. "I like the mystery of people not knowing my real name... also I like to keep my dad out of the news since he's a minister. Can you imagine, having a minister involved with all this??!! He loves it — he thinks it's great. The people in his life don't really know who I am. They don't really know what happened to that little kid who used to go to church..."

Are you a millionaire? I asked Alice... "Not yet," he replied. "All of our money is in one corporation, and the corporation is many times that, but if we took out the money we would have to pay so much in taxes. We own shopping centres and things like that. I tell my mom, 'Mom, you're shopping in my store!'

"My parents really like this who1e thing though; my mom made me these black leather pants that I wore onstage, and the back was cut out in a little valentine... so you could see the bare cheek. And she said, 'Turn around, let me see how it looks, nothing I haven't seen before, you know!!!"

Aice was about to go on a very short vacation to Acapulco, his first chance to get away in years. Even in Europe the band never had much time to see anything because they worked every night. He had just been to his doctor where he blew out a cardiograph and I asked him just exactly what that meant.

"The doctor thought it was real dynamic. It measures the electricity from your heart — and he strapped it on, turned it on, and I took a deep breath and the whole thing exploded! And he said: 'I've had that machine for 13 years!' It was like he'd lost a friend. I don't know what it means in relation to me, I told him I was a very dynamic person.

"But I drink too much now to keep in really good shape," Alice continued. "Beer. I don't gain any weight, I just wear it off onstage. I probably drink about a case of beer onstage."

Alice is reticent to discuss the rumours that hell get married soon ("I don't know, I've been going with a girl for four years..."), says he signs a lot of autographs for real little kids at his concerts ("I love that!") and still has trouble relating to himself as a star.

"I still don't feel a star, you know? I accept the autograph thing because I feel it's a compliment but if I walk down the street or if I go into a restaurant, I don't think anybody is going to recognise me. They always do, though. Like if I go to a straight restaurant and we've bad a lot of press in Earl Wilson or TV, and if I sit down and have gone about two or three days without shaving, with an old shirt on or something, someone will say 'Hey, Alice!!' — some old lady or something — 'I saw you on the Virginia Graham TV show!!!' "

America has produced some weird fads. Hula hoops, kids piling into phone booths, skateboards, panty raids, marathon dances, chicken-eating contests, chain letters. Alice Cooper.

While your Bonzo Dog Band was tragicomic, brilliant, sloppy, erratic, piercingly hysterical, remember that Alice Cooper comes from the land of chicken-eating contests and hula hoops. Also Las Vegas, colour TV, drive-in hamburger stands, Broadway, and the Lawrence Welk Show.

The cities in this country are full of noise and smoke and the underlying threat of violence and still... there is glamour underneath all of the soot. It's the same with Alice.

"If kids get to the point now where they are, they're buying the albums... so they're coming to see us because they like us," said Alice. "They like the music. So the show is a little less threatening to them. What we've been doing is gradually changing our show. We don't rehearse the choreography at all, we rehearse the music. When we get onstage everybody just takes care of themselves."

After the cheerleaders have done a rousing ALICE cheer and displayed their panties with C-O-O-P-E-R on them, the band comes out in total darkness. That's the way to come out and really make an entrance. Alice slithers and snarls across the stage — stalking his prey. They perform "Eighteen," "Caught In A Dream," "My Name Is Alice," "Under My Wheels," "Be My Lover," and others. While the band plays impeccably — no mistakes allowed — Alice prowls around the stage and shakes the microphone.

The music is all very tight, well arranged, well rehearsed. Alice keeps grabbing his crotch... "Look what I've got," he yells at the audience, "you don't believe I've got one." He tosses gloves into the crowd, plays with the mike stand, gropes himself some more, laughs at the audience. Poses as Cleopatra. Does a backward flip and then brings out the snake... coils it around himself. Alice throws bracelets and boots at the audience... he's giving away relics. They all love it.

The "Jet" song from "West Side Story" is heard and the members of the band come from behind their guitars (the tape is playing). "West Side Story," TV themes, Bacharach, those are what Alice has said his real musical influences are, what he really gets off on, and so in the "School's Out" show they have incorporated the rumble sequence from "West Side Story," and they perform it onstage to the taped music.

"I think it's a great thing to have the tapes, because you can get more sound that way as well. The Who have been doing that for a long time dubbing lead lines on tape."

During the "Jet" song there are flashing lights, sirens. It's a campy ballet. Alice puts the garbage can on his head and threatens to throw it at the audience. Michael lunges at Alice; they're holding silverfoil knives. Alice flips him over his back... he picks up a trashcan and throws it at him and bangs around. Neal comes up behind Alice and the kids in the audience are going wild, "Look out, look out Alice... behind you!!!!" they're yelling. Alice "kills" Neal and by this time the music is pulsatingly loud, and the audience is hysterical.

Since Alice has committed a crime he must be punished. I asked Alice about all this death simulation... "That's exciting," he said. "I think that's exciting. I don't think it has to get to the point where somebody's actually going to have to be killed onstage... I like living too much... but see, Alice always commits crimes and at the end he has to be punished. That's balance.

I could go onstage and commit a crime and not be punished, because that's the way I think. And that's sort of the moral statement right there. 'If you're going to be bad then you're going to get your hand slapped.' So if you chop up a baby doll, and beat up everybody in the band in the end you're going to get hanged."

Is there a possibility that hte kids enjoy watching Alice chop up the doll, or commit murder more than him getting hanged himself? "I don't know, that's an interesting question because I really don't know. It's fulfilling to see me get hanged at the end I think," Alice said. "But then at the end I always come back with the white top hat and tails, like Fred Astaire and everybody loves that."

As Alice comes back as a song and dance man he tosses posters into the audience and the audience goes insane. (Alice has been tossing posters into the audience for over two years now, and he used to toss... get this... dollar bills! Politicians always promise more money to the people... but Alice actually used to give it to them!!!)

As the audience is in its greatest moment of confusion — grabbing, pushing, and trampling for the posters, Alice laughs at them, "Look at you — you're crazier than I am! When we came out here we bet you thought we were funny... now do you still think we are?"

And all those American kids do indeed get crazy at the end of Alice's concerts... There's just this sort of... mood.... "They're out there killing each other for posters, I"m not!" Yes, but you encourage them... incite them... "Yeah, but like my mom always said, 'if I jumped off a cliff, would you?' " Alice laughs deliciously.

Does Alice have a stake in those kids continuing to be crazy? "Well I think it's really healthy. Then they're not like a bunch of little robots running around, they're having fun. That was something that was lost in the rock business for a while — going to a concert and having fun.

"I can't imagine what it would be like to be a kid seeing us onstage, I don't know what to think. I know I would like us, because I've always liked that sort of thing — I've always liked a show. I don't know if I would try to imitate Alice Cooper or if I would be horrified or what. I really don't know. I've always wondered that. I'd like to be hypnotised and see a videotape and be told that I've never seen us before and really look at us and then see how I reacted to it."

Alice says that his audiences don't scare him. "When you're on stage like that Alice is never scared of anything," he said. "I mean who do I have to answer to? The only thing I'm afraid of is getting hit with things... I mean, some kids must not think, because they throw bottles onstage and you could get killed by a bottle."

Frank Zappa? "Well, Frank didn't have any security. I told him. Of course he's going to get killed if he doesn't have any security, if somebody gets the chance."

We talked about the reaction Alice felt he had been given in England on their recent tour, and how well "School's Out" had done. "We're number one there now! Isn't that great? And I never thought we'd get played over there because the press is so weird, they can't decide whether they like us or not. We had a really good time there, but we hit them just like a two by four in the face!

"One second they heard about us the next we're number one! They were going, 'wait a minute... stop!' They didn't have much time to absorb and get involved, all of a sudden the kids went nuts. We packed Wembley and they didn't know where we came from — they thought we were from a different planet or something!

"I always thought the British were more theatrical, I always thought they had more culture than the Americans, but I don't know. See, there are kids over there, just like American kids, and what they do is react to what you give them. And there are some kids over there who say 'awhh, they can't play at all' and then there are others who say 'well, I think they can,' and then the reviewers are going: 'we don't know whether they can play or not,' and others say: 'the greatest thing I've ever heard,' and it's great to watch.

"The funny and thing is," Alice continues, "if a kid goes to a concert and he liked it and the reviewer didn't, the kid will write me a letter and tell me that he likes it and thought it was a lousy review. We get about 700 letters or more a week from our fan club."

Talking more about England and the tremendous influx of American bands there at the moment Alice said: "When I went over there I was so surprised. I went to the Speakeasy and I sat down and I saw some of the guys from the Flamin' Groovies and then one of the MC5 came in and then I saw Ron Asheton from the Stooges... and then I went to another place and I saw Iggy! It was just like Detroit re-visited, or homecoming or something over there, and I said now what is this?"

For Alice Cooper... next stop... BROADWAY. On February 20, 1973, Alice will open in a Broadway rock extravaganza at the Palace Theatre. The show will run once a night for five nights.

"It's all going to be very carefully rehearsed," explained Alice. "Michael Bennett (he won two Tony Awards for the recent Broadway productions "Follies" and "Company") will probably do some of it. We usually do things spontaneously, but this will be very careful. There will be a cast and dancers, it'll be us playing, then switch to film, then all of a sudden after the film something real will happen in the audience, and then the lights will go on that then something else will happen... no one will know what it is at the end!

"It will just be a conglomeration of lots of different things. Maybe we can take the show on tour, or maybe we'll just sell it to a troupe and have a different troupe do it all over the country — have someone playing Alice Cooper — that would be great, to have something running on Broadway when you're out in Los Angeles!

"But I still want to do concerts, I don't like to record as much as I do concerts — that's my favourite thing."

And now Alice has a new song to sing at those concerts — and a timely one in view of current American politics; it's called "Elected." "I can't stand politics," said Alice, getting no argument from me, "I think politics is possibly the most boring subject in the world." We listen to the single and Alice especially loves the last stanza, the end — which sounds like a campaign speech:

"We have problems right here in Central City... we have problems in Los Angeles, in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, everybody has problems... and personally... I don't care!"

Everyone laughs. "Very teenage," Shep comments. "I wonder how many states I'm gonna carry?" Alice mused. "HEY! Maybe we should have a blank ballot on the sleeve of the single??!! "But," he adds... seriously... "if elected, I'll impeach myself... ha-ha-ha!!!"

Alice Cooper, American. As American as apple pie, colour TV, Lee Harvey Oswald, fireworks on the fourth of July, Budweiser beer, sex ... I leave Alice in front of the TV with the ever-present can of beer in hand. High American Gothic.