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The Rock 'n' Roll Villain

The Valley's own Alice Cooper reflects the dark side of music — but only when he's onstage

A restaurateur sits in the office under his downtown Phoenix eatery and thinks back on the momentous decision that shapes his life. Alice Cooper's late-'60s decision had nothing to do with food.

"I looked around and everybody was rock 'n' roll heroes and there were no villains. I said, 'We need to be the rock 'n' roll villain — the dark side of rock 'n' roll,'" Cooper says.

It was a stroke of genius. Cooper and four classmates from the Valley's Cortez High School — the original Alice Cooper Group — forged a successful career as "the Darth Vader of rock 'n' roll," the world's first shock rockers. Thirty years and some 50 million albums later, frontman Cooper — who in 1972 adopted the band's moniker as his own legal name — continues to perform 60 shows a year around the globe.

But that's only one aspect of his personality. The man is a four-handicap golfer and runs a charitable foundation. Alice Cooper'stown, the restaurant/bar, combines his love s of rock 'n' roll and sports. Perhaps most importantly to him, he's also a devoted husband and father of three. Alice cooper is a rock 'n' roll renaissance man.

This week Rhino Records releases The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper — a career-spanning box set. Alongside classic anthems such as School's Out, Elected and No More Mr. Nice Guy, are recording by The Spiders, a precursor to Alice Cooper, and Hands of Death, a '90s collaboration with Rob Zombie.

"I did a very odd thing with (the box set)," cooper says. "I didn't get hands-on with it at all because I wanted it to be an album that the fans put the songs on that they wanted to hear."

The collection's producer was Brian Nelson, Cooper's personal assistant. "I went to him and I said, 'You do it — you're the fan,'" Cooper says. "He found songs that we had done one time in the studio and said, 'This doesn't fit this album,' and that I had totally forgotten about. In the end he showed me this list of songs and some of them I didn't even recognize."

Still, Cooper did contribute. He wrote the liner notes for the project and selected about 10 "pet songs" for inclusion. But the star says there's something a little strange about seeing his career packaged up — especially because he considers his career far from over.

"It's almost like getting a gold watch or a testimonial dinner," Cooper says. "I do not live in the past at all, so it was very hard to be nostalgic. I'm more interested in the next album and I don't think I've made my best album yet, but there are certainly some I'm going to have to go a long way to beat.

As important and long-standing as his music is, it's only part of the equation for Cooper. He is first and foremost a showman; his performances were extravaganzas that included actors, elaborate stage sets and props, and regularly ended with Alice meeting death by hanging or the guillotine.

"We brought theatrics to rock 'n' roll. We did it before Bowie, we did it before Kiss and before anybody," Cooper says. "There was no show biz in rock 'n' roll before Alice Cooper. It was taboo and really looked down upon to call yourself showbiz. So when we came along, we went as far out on a limb as we possibly could. We did everything we could to annoy every parent in America, then backed it up with anthems that got played. We had 25 gold albums and sold 50 million records; it wasn't a fluke."

But Cooper was smart enough to know when that particular jig was up.

"I think it's hard to be more shocking than CNN. When I found that with my show I couldn't shock any more than Headline News, I realized shock was dead," Cooper says. "After Jeffrey Dahmer, my stuff was nothing. When communications got so overdone and everything was right in your face, shock was dead. My job became to entertain the audience."

That still included songs about necrophilia and dead babies, but it was all tongue-in-cheek.

"We did a very dark humor thing, but it was always based in humor even though a lot of people didn't get it," Cooper says. "It was a morality play. At the end of the show Alice got hung or got his head cut off — he got his just desserts.

"But then he came out with his white top hat and tails and it was show biz! Leave the audience wanting to come back and see you again. Give 'em the darkness and the creeps. Scare 'em to death and make them laugh. Give them every emotion there is but, at the end, give 'em show biz. An Alice Cooper show is not a downer, it's an upper."

He contrasts that with his modern-day progeny, Marilyn Manson.

"I think Marilyn Manson is very clever, but he takes it way too seriously. I don't think he has any fun with it," Cooper says. "The big difference between a Marilyn Manson show and an Alice Cooper show — from what everybody tells me — is that at the end of a Marilyn Manson show you feel a little dirty. At the end of an Alice Cooper show you were at the greatest party you were ever at in your life. We leave the audience with a good taste in their mouth."

Cooper is confident his combination of theatrics and music will land him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

"I think it's almost inevitable," he says. "If anybody like Kiss gets elected, I can't imagine them ignoring Alice Cooper who basically broke that door down."

He's not twiddling his thumbs waiting around. His last release was a live album in 1997. "That was a necessary album," Cooper says. "We hadn't done a live album in 20 years and I wanted the audience to know what Alice was not fat, bald and dead."

He's got two albums in the works. "Now I think it's time to do a real hard-rock studio album, then a real good concept album. A real Alice piece and that's already written actually," Cooper says. "The next album is going to be an introduction into the new millennium — Alice 2000."

And don't expect him to slow down.

"I'm from Detroit and rock 'n' roll is in my blood. I'm a rock 'n' roller; it's what I do," Cooper says. "If I'm not on tour, I'll come down (to the restaurant) and if there's a band and they know a couple of songs, I get up and rock 'n' roll with them. I'm 51 and I'm in better shape now than I was 20 years ago."

No one questions Cooper's condition on the golf course, where he is an intimidating force.

"When I play golf, I'm there to win," he says. "I'm a four handicap and I've had three or four rounds under 70."

He's thought seriously about playing on the senior professional golf circuit. "What a thing for Alice cooper to do!" he laughs. "It would be a dream. I've played with some of the guys and they beat me by four or five strokes, but those are strokes I could knock off."

Cooper hosts the MTX Alice Cooper Celebrity Amateur Golf Tournament this weekend, the third year of the event that benefits his Solid Rock Foundation.

"It's a Christian nonprofit foundation and we find teen organizations around the Valley that need assistance," Cooper says. "What we're good at is raising $100,000 to $150,000 a year and giving it to people that need it."

Cooper love of golf and other sports also figured into his restaurant and bar. "Rock 'n' roll and sports go hand in hand to me," he says. "All the rock 'n' roll guys I know are sports guys and the sports guys are rock 'n' roll guys."

But he's serious about making his place family friendly. "The only way I would go in was if there were no wet T-shirt contests. I don't want to make it that kind of place, I want it to be a family restaurant. And I want people to come back for the food, not for what's hanging on the walls. I want them to be addicted to the tuna casserole!" Cooper says.

Alice Cooper was born Vincent Furnier in Detroit, and moved to the Valley as a sickly 10-year-old.

"I had bronchial asthma so bad that every winter I could barely breathe. I moved to Phoenix to get rid of it," he says.

Before becoming a four-year letterman in track and cross country at Cortez High School, young Furnier attended Squaw Peak Elementary and Madison No. 2. He formed his first band at Cortez to perform in a school assembly. They were originally called The Earwigs, then became The Spiders and The Nazz before settling on Alice Cooper and leaving Phoenix for the more fertile musical ground of Los Angeles.

He's still a little amazed that he and his school pals could have caused such an international stir with their music and theatrics.

"We were five guys from Cortez High — all in the letterman's club — that at worst drank beer and people thought we were from Mars. From the worst side of Mars!" Cooper laughs.

And though he changed his name to Alice Cooper more than 25 years ago, he hasn't completely lost touch with his past. "My mom still calls me Vince," he says.

Aside from his rock 'n' roll career, golf skills and business ventures, Cooper is also a devoted family man.

"I'm a bit of a renaissance guy. I take my role as a father and a husband very, very seriously," Cooper says. "I've been married 23 years and I've got a 17-year-old daughter, a 13-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter — and a five-member band who are all my kids!

"When I'm at home, I'm dad everyday. I coach Little League baseball and soccer. When I'm onstage I"m Alice — and I'm Alice all the way."

(Originally published in Get Out, April 22nd - 28th, 1999)