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Alice's Wonder Land

The sleek black limousine was streaking down the highway and Alice Cooper was running down one of his more macabre recent experiences as a rock 'n' roll star.

"I was on a flight from somewhere to somewhere a couple of weeks back and they sat me next to this old lady. After we took off, the lady went to sleep and I told the hostesses not to bother her when they came 'round with refreshments. At one point I got up to go to the washroom and I carefully climbed over her, so I wouldn't wake her.

"When she didn't wake up when they told us to prepare for landing, one of the girls came over to tell her to fasten her seatbelt. Wow, it was really far out — the old lady was dead. And she'd been sitting there next to me, dead, for the whole flight."

Ah well, just another of the guys of a life-in-motion, the rock star extraordinary on the road, zooming through time and space as though it were nothing more than a black silk curtain.

Super stardom is now part of Alice's life, and it's worth noting that he seems to be handling it extremely well. Alice, the rest of the group (Mike Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, Glen Buxton and Neal Smith) and manager Shep Gordon have not lost the communal sense-of-humor which separates them from most acts on today's scene.

After a lengthy exclusive interview, one was left with the impression that Alice Cooper has his finger right on the pop pulse. It's taken the group eight years to get here, and they intend to take every advantage of their phenomenal popularity in both North America and Europe.

Schools, after all, are a universal sin. Ask any kid.

Q. What role does your music play in the overall projection of Alice Cooper?

A. We are spending a lot more time on the music now. We've found that people are actually liking our music and I'm surprised at that. Before they were just buying our image. Our image is already established but I always wanted people to get into our music. I'm really happy that it's happened.

As much as four years ago, I can recall you saying that you were concerned people were ignoring the music in favor of your stage trip.

Yeah. Unfortunately there always have been acts which people think are great to watch in concert but have crappy albums. In our case, it was pretty much true. Our stuff was very surreal. But then Bob Ezrin arrived on the scene and really pulled us together as far as our musical thing was concerned.

Bob Ezrin has been very important to Alice Cooper then?

Oh yeah. He knows more about music than we do. I mean technically. We have our own rough style about what we want to play and how we want it to come off in the studio. He sort of puts on all the technical stuff and that was what we really needed. It's sort of like he adds the common denominator — technical knowledge. If we say we want this song to sound like this, Bob knows exactly how to do it. And that's really important. It sure worked for the Beatles and George Martin. The group would say we want this song to sound like an old carnival, so he put on the backward organ. So they got Mr. Kite.

I think that if anybody is the sixth member of the Coopers, it is Bob Ezrin, because he really knows what he's doing. He's a very together guy.

I get the impression that you 're spending more time in the studio now.

Really. A lot more thought goes into the concept and a lot more time into the sessions. With School's Out, the last album, we had a real loose concept — the idea of comparing the ultra violence in society with school and prisons, but not the old corny school trip.

I think everyone would like to hear some more about School's Out.

We're getting into a lot of trouble for it in England. Not so much us but the BBC. They've been playing the record and it went to No. 1. There have been all sorts of complaints in the straight newspapers and even in Parliament. They've really been giving the BBC hell. People had written into the papers saying if there's any violence in the British schools this year, it will be because of the BBC's playing our record. It's really great for us.

The kids have threatened that they're going to go on strike from school. It's become such a big number that several people called me from London and asked me to comment on it all.

I just told them that I hated school. The song is just my idea of hating school. I don't care what anybody else thinks... I hated school. It's always been one of my fantasies to want to sing about hating school.

It's not my fault if radio stations played it or people bought it. Obviously a lot of young people in Britain share the same fantasies as I have.

Tell us a little more about the School's Out album.

Well, the over guys write the music and I just sort of do the melody. I don't sing the lyrics when they're putting down the tracks. While they're getting the recording parts together, I discuss the song with Bob Ezrin — what's the idea, what's this whole thing moving towards.

With this album, since we already had a single out called School's Out, we thought the LP should be some sort of surreal picture of school and prison. I really do think that a lot of kids regard school as a prison. I just don't think you learn very much there. You only learn things that are boring — you learn a lot of stuff you don't want to learn.

Is Elected the best single you have ever recorded?

I'd say so myself. But whenever we do something new, it's always my favorite until I play it to death and get tired of it. Last time we had to fight to get airplay in some places. But with Elected, the stations were screaming for it.

What we're into now is topical singles. We're taking a current topic and writing a song about it. A lot of street people are looking to Alice Cooper to sort of talk on their behalf. We don't mind, except that we're really not supporting anybody.

Elected is simply the way we feel about the U.S. elections and elections everywhere. The record goes into a whole big spiel at the end, a sort of "If I'm elected...' There's a punch-line right at the end which you can only barely hear. The track is very hard rock.

Are you going in a political direction now?

Oh no. We're just poking fun at everybody. (Much laughing.) We just like to push everybody.

We're thinking about doing an Easter single. Also a Christmas one — Merry Christmas, It Might Be Your Last.

What sort of albums do you like?

Wow. Laura Nyro's first two albums I listen to a lot. I like every Burt Bacharach album I can get hold of. Anything by John Barry. Like Goldfinger. I really love John Barry's music. He's one of my favorite people as far as music goes. I like film scores. Being a theatrical person, I like that sort of stuff.

I often get up in the morning and put on Goldfinger. I feel like Walter Mitty with all my fantasizing. I go put a suit on and get out a gun. I really do fantasize a lot.

I don't listen to rock 'n' roll very much at all. I get really tired of it... what with playing it and writing it and everything. I like to get away from it occasionally.

I do like Antonio Carlos Jobim. For pure energy, I like Fun House by the Stooges. I think that it's the best pure energy album I've heard in my life.v

What are the Stooges into these days?

I just saw them in England. Iggy has kicked his man-sized habit. He's got a new group together. I think they're going to be doing really well. I hope so because I really admire Iggy's work.

Do you also dig Arthur Brown?

Yeah. We played with them at the Rainbow Theatre in London. He was really freaky. He's shaved all the hair off the right side of his body. He's got long hair but only on one side of his face. Also only half a moustache. He was really theatrical but I didn't get into his music that much. Not as much as I used to anyway.

I just loved his first album. That first LP was really great. Now he seems to have lost some musical energy which is too bad, because he was really good. On his first U.S. tour; I thought he was really amazing. But I thought he was managed poorly. He could have been a long-lasting star in North America I think.

Do you think every emerging new group is going to have to get into theatrics from now on?

Put it this way — you can go to any city in the States or Canada and find a guitarist who's as good as any guitarist in any big-name band. There's just so many good guitarists, so many good drummers now. So that side has been taken care of.

There's so many good musicians now because they've had so much time to learn from all the records. That's how we learned. We listened to the Yardbirds and those people. I mean, that's how everybody learned to play rock 'n' roll.

You can imagine that the kids who were eight years old when I learned to play have learned from us and all sorts of other people. There are just so many good musicians because of it. Nowadays, you've got to have something more than mere musicianship. Granted you have to have the backbone of being able to play, but at the same time, you must have something that will be brand new. You have to have that other trip happening.