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Alice promises a red Valentine

Enthusiasm will overflow at Civic Centre concert, rock star says

A few years ago, it didn't look as though Vincent Furnier was going to be able to revive Alice Cooper. It didn't even look like he would be able to revive Vincent Furnier.

"The alcohol finally got to me," admits Furnier, who plays the Civic Centre Sunday as Alice Cooper. Motorhead is the opening act.

"It was showing up in everything I did — on stage, writing, recording. I had to give it up."

An unwillingness on the part of audiences to accept the distinction between the morose character on stage and Furnier, the person behind the theatre, led to his downward spiral during the late '70s. He started to cancel shows and his records lacked energy.

"The attitude killed nearly all my friends. Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin — all those people who died thought they had to be their image off stage. Personally I think everybody was too animated for the real world. You have to back off and realize your stage persona is one thing and you life persona is another."

Cooper prefers the '80s. He was never a big fan of the '60s and claims it was he who "drove a stake through the heart of the love generation." The '70s, with its disco, was no better. He thinks this generation has a better attitude — one that makes survival easier.

In the '80s, "there's a whole generation of people who understand that you can't go out on tour, party every night, get hung over and have sex with everything that has a heartbeat because we're going to die from all that stuff."

Last year, he returned with more vigor than anyone expected when he released Constrictor, but the turnaround did not come overnight. "When I finally quit drinking, it took three years of writing and organizing everything. I wanted Alice to come back, not mellow, not fat, but lean at 38 pounds — lean and hungry. So that's where I'm at now."

Even though Cooper has been at this for almost 20 years, he acts like a kid who has found a new game. He advises that anyone sitting in the front row of his St. Valentine's Day Massacre concert wear clothes that go well with red. "Let's just say the enthusiasm on the stage overflows into the audience," he explains with demonic laughter.

He assures that the substance is water soluble. "Now we wouldn't do anything destructive," chortles Cooper, who says he gave up golf because it wasn't violent enough.

Cooper never gets tired of this horror camp. He has "executed" himself in fashions ranging from the noose to the guillotine at the end of every show since he created Alice. It's still the part he likes best.

"It's like a morality play. Alice never gets the best of anybody because in the end they hang him. For all his dastardly deeds, he gets his in the end."

If everything that goes around, comes around, then The Washington Wives have gotten theirs in the end too. Freedom from which the title of Cooper's latest album and tour, Raise Your Fist And Yell is taken, is an anthem that lambastes the lobby group for its attempts to censor rock.

Cooper decided to go after them when the movement put him at the top of their hit list. But not only did the group succeed in helping draw him out of retirement, it helped business when he did.

"We'd go around the country and they'd try to stop every third or fourth show. There would always be some splinter group that would get on the front page. It helped our attendance like crazy."