Article Database

The All-American Boy

Is that Anyway to Treat a Legend?

"I met a lot of people back then I don't remember - when I was drinking," apologizes Alice Cooper, as he is gently reminded that he's know this reporter since 1973. We were both different people in those days. Alice was the top-drawing shock-rocker in America, selling out arenas from coast-to-coast as he and his band of "Billion Dollar Babies" traversed the country in their private Electra jet. I was one of the press agents in charge of publicizing all of this mania. It was my job to call up the TV newsrooms and cordially invite some correspondents to meet Alice at an airport press conference. Invariably, the news jockey would (falsely) accuse Alice of biting heads of chickens in one sentence, and hit me up for concert tickets for his kids with the next. Contradictions were a daily diet for us all.

The Alice who sits in his New York hotel room now is a changed man. Oh, he's as skinny and long-haired as ever, but his energy level is unstoppable. He switches from his role of proud father (his and Sheryl's first child, daughter Calico, is three months old) to super-patriotic drill sergeant, in a blink. As the saying goes, he's got his act together.

That applies to the onstage Alice as well. He wasn't playing Madison Square Garden, but the plush, 1,000 seat Savoy Club, where Alice Cooper proved that he's weathered the waves of glitter, Kiss, punk, disco and AOR-rock without losing his own personal magic. The Special Forces LP show was an hour of barely controlled chaos, where General Alice put his guerilla troops through their paces, and threatened them with a sword if they misbehaved. He's trilled to hear that someone watching the show, who's been so familiar with his act for years, could not anticipate what Alice would do from minute to minute.

"I got so tired of people saying, 'Well, Alice can't do it without the gimmicks.' I'm not a daretaker, but if they say I can't accomplish something, I immediately have to try. Defiance gives Alice a lot of his fuel.

"This is the third generation I'm playing to now, and if you're going to stay in it, you might as well be ahead of it. There's always some punk band that thinks they're faster. I watched that whole scene develop and thought, they're good, but in all honesty, Alice is better."

Alice Cooper the individual discusses Alice Cooper the stage personality with the same enthusiasm a child uses to talk about his imaginary playmate. While the offstage Alice enjoys his private life and his family, on tour or in a studio, the man allows the character to flourish. An aide tell me, which Alice confirms, that when he performs, Alice spends his days in his hotel room, doing nothing but watching TV and waiting for dark.

"I'm serious when I say that I wake up if someone turns the TV off. We're all manipulated by Madison Avenue. It's great to be manipulated as long as you know how to manipulate. I certainly manipulate the audience, but it's not or any evil reason. In other words, if I tell a lie to the press, I always make sure it's a creative lie. Couldn't hurt anybody. Who cares about real life stories? I'm for newspapers. I was a journalism student in school and I totally understand why I like the Enquirer so much. Everything that's creative about me is based on sensationalism."

Alice refers to his show as "organized confusion," which is an accurate assessment of the well-integrated blend of shock-theatre and rock he's used to lovingly con us for years.

Detroit-born Cooper started out in the late 1960s as a genuine bizarro, whose first two albums were weird enough to freak-out Frank Zappa, who released them on his label. But by his third album, Love It To Death, Alice had smartened up enough to lock into America's passion for a happy kind of craziness.

"We realized that the audience wanted a handle. With Bob Ezrin as our producer, we built something they could hold on to. When they heard Eighteen, they said, 'OK, now we can like Alice.' And we've developed up to now where it's not punk, not new wave, but it's real hard and devoid of cliches unless i"m making the cliche as a joke. In No More Mr. Nice Guy, that's totally the cliche used as a joke.

"We used to open pillows at the end of the show. We made the audience so tense that, when you think about it, opening the pillows was like covering them with sperm. Everybody went home happy because of the release. If I went out there with the attitude of 'gosh, I hope you like us tonight,' they'd kill me. I go out and take them by the throat. It's like raping them. And I don't let them go. They have no chance. When Alice's character takes over, he's the most arrogant thing in the world."

The Special Forces album makes its presumption clear from the start, by snarling Who Do You Think We are? Coper's voice digs gravel throughout. Its roughness keeps perfect company with his careening band which is led my Mike Pinera's animalistic guitar. If there was every any softening of Alice's mean old soul, on records like the autobiographical From the Inside, the weakness has been exorcized with a rousing kick in the butt.

"This band is all former studio guys who had no experience onstage except with me. And when somebody hires on with me, it's like they go through basic training. If you fall down, make sure you get up and fall down again so it looks rehearsed. That way there can never be any mistakes onstage.

"Mike Pinera's great, 'cause he's always smiling and he's up there playing a killer. So Alice hits him on the knee with a riding crop and screams 'Are you smiling?!' I can't break character onstage. Alice never says thank you, 'cause the audience would hate him. The show is built to not let you rest for a second. We could take this show into a convalescent home and they'd have to be standing at the end. STAND UP FOR THE FLAG!" I practically leap out of my seat as he momentarily becomes a steely-eyes Alice character. Cooper ends his show parading around with an enormous Stars and Strips, whisper-warning the audience, "God Bless America... and me!"

"I'm a true nationalist. Any time I go out of the country, it's inconvenient. The U.S. is very comfortable. Obviously, we couldn't do this show anywhere else. I hate politics worse than anything, but if there are things that personify what I love to do, it's staying up all night watching TV, ordering pizza at 4 a.m. and being able to perform this show. To me that's being all-American, and I totally believe in all-American things. You take the person that designs the Holiday Inn interiors... now that's a dangerous person, much more dangerous than I ever was."

As Cooper continues the lengthiest tour he's undertaken in years, he's not at all bothered by the fact that instead of filling arenas, he's playing in concert halls and even clubs. Alice has outlasted almost all of his contemporaries, and as long as he can still sell 40,000 tickets in his home town, he's satisfied.

"I love the challenge of going out and competing again. Flush the Fashion was a fun tour but it didn't have the spirit this one does. I'm 33 now and I have more energy than during Welcome to My Nightmare or Billion Dollar Babies, because I'm really enjoying the spontaneity.

"I recently realized that when I'd retire would be when I couldn't get them standing up in a frenzy. I'll more or less back-out easy so I won't be forcing myself on people... 'Oh yeah, let's go see Al so he doesn't feel bad. He's old, the snake's got gray hair...' But I fell that Alice is timeless - with his hair pulled up he looks like somebody's aunt, he can be very slick, a swashbuckler one second and clumsy the next.

"I did a TV news interview in San Francisco and they asked me, what really makes a legend? And I said, 'It's when you're a question on Gambit. When you're general knowledge to a 55-year-old housewife,'" Alice Cooper considers the possibilities awaiting him in game show heaven and announces his intention to call his next live album Is That Any Way to Treat a Legend?. He's serious for at least thirty seconds.