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Mr. Nice Guy turns to Crime

In his quest for a new image Alice Cooper settles for a cross between Agatha Christie and Eroll Flynn.

I MUST admit to a slight attack of nerves as I climbed the steps of Alice Cooper's London hotel. After all, I was about to meet for the first time that hideous, sadistic dismemberer of babies — that ghoulish high-priest of demonic destruction whom Parliament has been asked to ban from this sceptred isle in order to preserve the moral purity of British Youth. And I had to ask him what he did in his spare time... But if I was expecting our meeting to resemble a scene from The Exorcist, the reality was distinctly tame.

Alice was leaning forward on the sofa, his nose six inches from the screen of a TV, a bottle of Michelob beer grasped characteristically in his right hand. "Hi! Wanna drink? " He gestured towards a heap of empties. "As you can see I've been up for quite a while." It was 2pm. He didn't seem in the slightest bit tipsy, and I remarked on it. "No — I don't get drunk on beer. It's just a kind of tranquilizer. Mind you. I used to have a real drink problem — two bottles of whiskey a day. But I don't allow myself Scotch until after ten at night, now..."

Throughout our entire conversation, his eyes remained fixed upon the telly. It didn't seem to distract him from the interview — in fact, it hardly seemed to impinge upon his consciousness at all. 'I'm just a real media freak," he admitted . "When I'm home in the States I watch it eight hours a day. I've just bought a new Japanese set. It's the biggest in the world, with a screen four feet square. I figure if you're going to spend most of your life staring at it, you might as well do it in comfort.

"My manager's got two hundred old movies on cassette, so if I went to watch the Marx Brothers or James Bond or something, I just slot one into my TV and sit back.

"I've got a small portable one by my bed, too. It's got an earplug for the sound, and mostly I fall asleep with it still on. American broadcasting goes on 24-hours a day, so deep down in my subconscious I must have the soundtracks of millions of movies I've never even seen."

Alice's interest in the visual media is not a purely passive one — at present he's grooming himself a career in films.

"How do you like my new tidy image?" he inquired. Hair relatively conventional (long but styled) — no trace of mascara or nail varnish — battered golfing shoes — old blue jeans. The only slightly suspicious touch is little badge on his cotton sports shirt which identifies him as the "Acapulco Princess". "I'm going to change my image. I'm getting a little tired of the glam thing — I'm going all romantic. I'll grow a little pencil mustache and look like Errol Flynn. In fact, I'm taking fencing lessons at the moment — two hours a day while I'm at home.

"I'd really dig to be the hero in a pirate film. Say! Do you get a series called the Snoop Sisters over here? Two old grannies who go around solving murders. Well they've made a full length feature movie, and I'm in it. I play this witch only I'm not really a witch at all, I'm a con-man making a lot of bread on the side. I hope you get to see it. It'll be called, 'The Devil Made Me Do It'."

Another current Cooper project is a novel called "The Adventures of Maurice Escargot ". "I write a page or two whenever I can. It's about this French smoothie detective who they always call in when all else has failed. You know, 'Alors, sacre bleu, zis eez a job for Escargot!'"

As if he didn't lead a full enough life already, Alice is developing his skill at golf with his customary zeal and energy. In fact, we were interrupted at one point by a phone call from the president of a famous Surrey golf club, confirming that he was welcome to play a round or two there the following day. "When I get home, I'm playing a match with Bob Hope, " he informed me with a mixture of pride and amusement. "You know, I really love the game. If you haven't played, you don't know what others see in it. But your first stroke and you're hooked. Like it's a great thing for getting rid of frustrations.

"I hate violence (except on the stage) — I'm like Jimmy Stewart at home. But last time I played golf I smashed five golf clubs — just broke them against a tree in a fit of temper.

"You'd think the old club members would hold it against me that I'm Alice Cooper, wouldn't you? But they don't. Provided you can play golf, that's all that matters to them. They might look at you a bit funny at first but when you out-drive them on the first hole then you're just a competitor like anybody else. There's quite a lot of people in the music world who play nowadays. At home I often take a round with Johnny Mathis, and I've played with Bernie Taupin and Carl Palmer in this country."

Any woman who could put up with her man being a pop star, an author, an actor, a writer and a golf fanatic must be pretty extraordinary — so I was interested to hear about Cindy, his lady of six years standing.

"We 've got a great relationship — we have nothing in common at all. She hates my stage show — she 'll never come and see the show. She doesn't drink either. She gets a bit uptight when she has to prise my fingers off the neck of a beer bottle after I've fallen asleep, but that's all.

"Otherwise we're eminently compatible because we don't have anything to say to each other. The only thing we agree about is marriage. We both think it's a stupid institution.

"Also, she's the only person in the world I can't lie to. You know, I can go to a press conference and lie my head off about anything," (how reassuring, I thought...), "but I can't fool her. It's the same the other way round, too. She's a very strong person, and so am I. Then she's got her own professional career as well. She's a model — working on Revlon cosmetics at the moment. I phone her up about three times a day. "

How does Alice reconcile the pressures and temptations of life on the road with a stable domestic scene?

"I don't think there's anybody in the world who could be completely good on the road. It just wouldn't be human. And if you've got a nice gig going at home, that's understood on both sides. Beyond that, no comment..."

It was time to leave. Alice had been invited to a party thrown by Ryan O' Neal who happened to be staying in the same hotel with his daughter, Tatum. He had to shower and change. "I've heard Tatum hates Alice Cooper," he grinned. "But then, she's never met me. As it happens, I'm very charming to little girls."

As I closed the door behind me, I passed a queue of anxious-looking journalists — suffering, probably, from the "dismemberer" fears I'd suffered myself. I felt like reassuring them: "Don't worry — he's very charming to little writers!"