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Alice Cooper Wants Your Reaction

The press conference took place at poolside on the top of the Holiday Inn at 26th and Wisconsin. Alice strolled out about a half an hour later, naked to the waist, and followed by the lead guitarist, Neal Smith, the drummer, and Volman and Kaylan from Flo and Eddie. Volman immediately attempted to push Alice into the pool, but the good natured star eluded him, and took his place on the firing line. There were about 25 people asking questions, but throughout the whole ordeal Alice was laughing and good natured: a real nice guy.

Bugle: Would you draw a distinction between your music and your performance?

Alice: No, because there is none. You see, the thing is, theatre is theatre, and music is music, and we do 'em both.

Press: I'll buy that.

Volman: About a million people have.

Alice: If the Grateful Dead were to cut off all their hair and paint themselves green and go onstage, they'd still be able to play music.

Bugle: So the music contains the theatre...

Alice: Yeah, without the music the theatre would just... be there. The music's gotta be the backbone of the whole thing. It's too bad the people think we can't play. Y'know, the sicker the audience gets, the sick we can get, the more theatre we can put into it.

Bugle: What's your attitude toward your audience?

Alice: (Laughter) We have an enormous love affair with the audience. They're sadists for awhile, and then we're sadists for a while, its, its a love affair.

Bugle: Do you consider yourself decadent, or just opulent?

Alice: Well, I consider Mark Volman to be decadent — you should see his underwear.

Bugle: That's more a question of opulence versus corpulence...

Press: What would happen if you just dropped all the trappings and played the music?

Alice: Well, we could do that, but why do it? Y'know that would be like being everybody else, like being the Grateful Dead again. That's been done, so why do it again? We get bored really easy.

Volman: Yeah, I'm bored right now.

Alice: You see, we're sensationalists, we go for the sensation, we went onstage in New York and just played, but the audience didn't like it, they felt cheated. LIke they hadn't gotten their six dollars worth of show.

Volman: But they also paid six dollars for their quaaludes, and they'd rather take six quaaludes than see the show.

Bugle: Do you pick up material for your music on tour?

Volman: We steal it, we steal it from everybody. In fact I wouldn't mind having that necklace right now.

Alice: I'm just the lyricist, these guys write the music. I get my material from Holiday Inn menus, y'know, from the Hollywood Squares, from anyplace. By the way, the Clarks are up to ten thousand dollars on Gambit.

Bugle: Do you do any art other than the performance, the obvious career thing?

Alice: I just don't have any time for anything outside of the job, it takes all my time.

Press: How do you address yourself to your act?

Alice: You mean how do I approach it? I go for reaction. You see, it's a moving thing, you'll see that in the concert tonight, even tho there's no apparent reason for what we do, you have to accept it on some level. It's like the art of chaos. If you leave, that's a reaction. If you throw up, that's a reaction. If you laugh, that's a reaction. I don't care about the reaction as long as there is one. That's entertainment.

Volman: Look at Nixon — he's entertaining.

Alice: Watergate is the best quiz show ever on T.V. They have stickers in New York right now that say: Free the Watergate 500. Everybody's gonna get in trouble with it. I'm probably going to be implicated. Did you see McCord's performance? I loved it. He just sat there and said, "Wow, I'm really in trouble." And everybody else said, "You sure are, Jim." He was cool.

Press: Do you get sexually turned on during your show?

Alice: Oh yes, and we try to get everybody else turned on too. In fact, I never have sex the day of the concert so that I'm more up for the act. The hotter you are the better you are. You see, our audience is a sixteen year old audience, and that's when you're most tuned in to that. Sex never hurt anybody. It never hurt me.

Bugle: I used to watch you back when you were based in Detroit, and your act didn't have all this sexual violence directed at the audience, all the implicit cruelty. Why does it have it now?

Alice: It's part of the love affair that all performers have with their audience. Like when we throw the posters out, there's everybody killing each other for a little piece of paper, but nobody ever gets hurt. It's like a John Wayne movie. And they go home and say Wow, man, lookit, I got this thing here...

Volman: Like the scene from Blow Up where the guy fights to get the guitar, and then throws it away after he leaves.

Alice: Yeah, but everybody is having a good time doing it, they're laughing. We're laughing.

Bugle: That's what I mean. It's like you're above all the chaos down there, and you're like, orchestrating it.

Alice: Rich! That's neat though, that's fun. And if we didn't do it, they'd be mad.

Press: How much of the real Alice Cooper do we see on the stage?

Alice: All of it, that's where you see it all. Offstage, like now, I'm Fred Macmurray. Television man, I love television, I never turn it off, I leave it on all night. The fuzz, man, that's great! It's so great, it's as neurotic, it's life. I hate trees, man. Things like chipmunk, man, I shoot all those things, BANG! Right now I can't wait to get back to New York and all those brick buildings. I just love to wake up and see all the gray. I hate being out in nature.

Bugle: Did you get that sun tan in New York City, Alice?

Alice: Ahhh... I love sports, too. EVerybody always thinks we're in our rooms beating up groupies. We're not, we're watching baseball. Hey man, get a hit!

Bugle: My. Kaylan, what's your relationship with Frank Zappa now, amicable?

Kaylan: It's better than it was.

Bugle: Well, you've got his band...

Kaylan: Nobody took Frank Zappa's band away from him man, be realistic. We haven't got the name or the money to do that. The band just decided that they could get a better deal with us, we didn't steal anything from anybody, and that's it.

Press: What did you get your mother from Mother's Day, Alice?

Alice: I sent her flowers. Roses.

Press: Are you an alcoholic?

Alice: Sure.

Bugle: Do you enjoy your work, Alice?

Alice: I don't like press conferences, my head's about to explode. I like the confusion, it's the greatest artistic medium there is, because you don't have to explain anything. People say "What does that mean?" and I say I dunno. I was talking to Salvador Dali, and he like puts a crutch under a chocolate eclair and says it doesn't mean anything, but it's great, isn't it? and I said sure, it's terrific! Our next album is going to be live, I think we'll call it "A Kiss and a Punch," or "Pelvic Thrust." We're going to market an eyeliner called Whiplash, Sears and Avon will carry it, and we're going to get Herb Score to endorse it. I work best in confusion.

Bugle: What do you think about the media's treatment of you?

Alice: Well. I think TIme Magazine is wrong when they said I was a bad actor. I'm a good actor. I'm a good liar too. That's what an actor is, actually, he plays a role, and that's a lie because it's not himself. In fact, I've been lying to you all afternoon. Isn't that great?