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A Clown Called Alice

SLA-A-A-A-P! The Savoy room door swings open, this maniac anorexic takes two strides inside and skins my middle knuckle with a thick black leather riding crop.

Sla-a-a-a-a-p! A sneering death's head, pore-clogged and filthy from 15 years of cheap mascara and blood ­red rouge, crumples into a "gee-I'm-only-joshin" grin. That's the last I see of Alice Cooper.

It's all I need to see.

He's made his point, fulfilled his function, put on the frighteners, snatched my attention, dictated his terms and established command. With a showman's panache that arrogant lash said "I'm here, you're lucky I'm here, you'll get what I give you, be grateful. Push it too far, I can have you thrown out." Not a word has been spoken. And Alice is gone.

Offstage, Vincent Damon Furnier is as devious and subtle a performer as his multi­million dollar monster is stupidly shocking and cleverly crude. Anything, after that initial attack, is almost bound to seem like some deep revelation or candid confession, a privileged peek and poke behind all the greasepaint. Scant investigation of Alice Cooper interviews — both past and present — tell a different, well worn tale.

Vincent Damon Furnier reveals just what he chooses, yet convincingly play-acts from the soul. He does you a favour calming your nerves, keeping that creature on some psychological leash. It's an uneasy ease, a bad bargain struck with a Jekyll and Hyde. I mean, he could just pounce at any small provocation...

"WE CALL him HIM," Vince informs me mock-meekly. "I'm Alice and then we say HE... with a certain lull before you say it — out of reverence. The guys in the band say, 'Alice, what is... HE gonna do tonight?' and I say 'I won't know 'til later, 'til there's an audience... And it's true! I used to think all that dual personality stuff was corny but THIS Alice is really a person.

"I step on that stage and suddenly my back straightens up and I own the place. It's the adrenalin. I mean, I stabbed myself in the leg with a rapier the other day — it wasn't just a puncture, it went right into the muscle and I had to... u-u-u-u-rgh!... pull it out.

"But there was no pain. The audience saw it and my pants getting red and they thought it was a stunt, but at the end of the show, as soon as I left the stage, it was a totally delayed reaction. I went (whimpers) 'O-o-o-w! I've stabbed myself in the leg.

"Then, another time, I had this guy jump on the stage, a guy about 240 pounds. How dare he touch Alice's stage? It was like a total insult, like a slap with a glove. I'll tell ya, before the roadies got to him to pull him off, I had him and threw him over my shoulder.

"He was totally bewildered — it took six roadies to pull Alice off him. I don't know what the guy was gonna do, but he'd stepped on the Holy place — HIS stage — without, my permission. That guy could have killed me, but at the time Alice was 14 feet tall.

"My psychiatrist always asks me what Alice is so angry about. I dunno. Like if somebody close to me died, I'd be very unemotional, I wouldn't cry, but Alice would probably get very angry and take it out on something on stage.

"Off stage, I'm like Fred McMurray, but I think I could call on Alice if I had to. If I saw somebody beating a dog or beating up somebody who couldn't defend themselves, that would be one thing that — even though HE's no hero — Alice could really get vicious about because it's something that would make me see red. Like the Hulk..."

AND Vince chuckles off into an exhaustive catalogue of physical changes that would turn this mild-mannered, middle-aged, golf-loving, property speculation ex-alcoholic into the new incarnation of his infamous ogre — a cretin far more disturbing than the stack-heeled, child molesting, Texas chainsaw nancy-boy that made him more than a million and a complete nervous wreck.

Kiss came along and took over as tarts, leaving our Vince much relieved and now free to — he claims — take up the critics' challenge and prove he can perform without props or Budweisers.

"This Alice is much more Eighties, much more hawk. He sees everything, reacts to everything."

Vince contemplates his new creation, cobbled together limb by limb, organ by organ, to cruelly complement his patchy "Special Forces " album. "Everything about him suggests war and it demands more respect because it's playing the role of the most arrogant bastard in the world. HE's very patriotic, a nationalist, more all-American than Patton, only looks feminine, only this, only that... all these things collide and that's what makes him interesting."

Obscene's more the word. Alice deceased was so Hammer Horror that only the biggest, most brainless of bigots could have taken HIS (s)exploits more than theatrically seriously. Alice alive is a much more rank matter, touches a nerve and — like it or not, Vince — begs explanation. Gone is the vaguely pinko, commie faggot rock 'n' roll cliche, updated by some futuristic fascist fanatic too close to the bone to be merely a laugh.

"Okay, HE's very loyal. I'm very loyal. I bring the flags on at the end of the show — the American one and the one from the country I'm playing in — and there are certain countries I wouldn't feel happy doing that in.

"Britain's great because we're allies, we're protection, we're tired of waiting for it — let's go get 'em! That's the character — that's not my real feeling... necessarily..."

VINCENT Damon Furnier is a cool, callous, calculated operator, rubbing Reagan's filthy colonial underwear back in his face, delegating all responsibility for perpetrating political propaganda more foul than the National Front... or simply coinint it, again having upstaged and outwitted his audience's expectations? I don't know the true answer and he's not letting on.

"Sensationalism's like slapstick, it's a natural human curiosity. Alice will live forever. HE's timeless because if there's an airplane crash here and a circus over here more people would go to the airplane crash."

Even in Moscow?

"Yeah! We got written up in TASS y'know? It's a great prize in my collection — Alice Cooper is the 'nth degree in decadence. I was reading that and going 'Yeaaaah! That's right!' and I know Russian kids are reading that and going 'WOW!' I wish I could see 'em.

"Y'know, if I went there, I'd do exactly the same show and I'd use their flag too. I'd say 'Salute your flag' because there's an innocence in saluting; a certain loyalty you have to admire. I think that's a bizarre thing for Alice to do because people would expect him to go up there and burn it.

"I really hate all the politics actually, but I do like to watch the logic of what's going on. I mean, the reason punk happened was because disco happened and the last thing a 16-year-old wants to do is go dancing next to this parents. And his parents are the same hippies that were Alice Cooper fans. The thing is they grew up and I didn't."