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Alice Cooper

A legendary man with a female's name wrapped New York City up in a media frenzy, promoting his 80-track box set with spots on Late Night With Letterman, Q104-FM, and an in-store appearance at Coconuts Records in Manhattan. On Rhino Records, The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper spans nearly three decades of Alice Cooper's musical career. It is not only a "best of the best" compilation; there are unreleased songs that shocked the alpha of shock rock himself by magically resurfacing from their 1970's studio sessions. Since receiving a lifetime achievement award presented by Rob Zombie, the Marilyn Manson prototype joins Agnostic Front, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden in the theme of repeating history, with the original members taking the stage. Vincent Furnier a.k.a Alice Cooper, explained his recent reunion situation. "We just did a gig together in Phoenix. Yeah, we just went out and jammed together for an hour and let people know that we didn't have knives and guns at each other's throats." With his occult brilliance and majestic wit, he dictated his tantalizing future haunts.

Pit: Are you planning on touring in August 1999?

August, we're going out to build a whole new show around this and I don't know actually how we're going to demise Alice this time. Maybe sleeping pills? It would be great, if this giant sleeping pill comes crashing down.

Will the guillotine be coming back?

I don't know, we did the guillotine. There will be surprise in it. I think the guillotine will be on stage but we won't be using it, we might chop vegetables with it or something like that. I've got an idea for the new demise that might be really good. I can't tell you.

What bands are you taking out with you?

We wouldn't know right now. That's always sort of the last consideration; who's going to go out? The thing is to get the show together, and get the songs together. That's really the hard part, maybe the Backstreet Boys.

What Surprises can be found on the box set?

There's some weird stuff on there, isn't there? When I first opened it up, I went, "Call It Evil"? What is that? I don't remember that one at all. You have to remember, in the '70s you recorded two albums a year. So, if there were twelve songs on an album and you had recorded sixteen, what happened to those other four songs? We would listen to them and go, "Nah, that's not good for this album." It's like where your sock goes. (You know how you can only find one sock?) That's where those tracks went. Someone found some of them. Now I remember "Slick Black Limousine". That whole drum thing at the end, that was really cool, but "Call It Evil"? Yeah, well it's true. They were in a vault or somebody had it on tape, a bunch of things that we totally forgot about.

Are the rare tracks going to be played live?

I don't know. When I start putting the show together, I will have to go through all 80 tracks and see which ones we might do. We might throw some real surprises in there. I'm thinking about "Don't Blow Your Mind," if that were done big, with a big sound that could really be good. You know, rearrange it a little.

Can we expect a new Alice Cooper record?

We are working on two new albums right now. One is already written and one is to be about to be written. One is a rock 'n' roll album. The other is rock album, but it's also a conceptual piece. I wrote it with Allen Minken, who wrote all the Disney stuff, so it's even weirder than Baccarat and Costello. Alice Cooper and Allen Minken! But, it's very cool, a very cool production.

What label did you chose to sign with?

The new album will be on an independent label, a smaller label, which is great. I'm kind of avoiding the big companies, I think you get more attention with a smaller label.

What is your greatest personal achievement?

This interview is probably the finest moment of my life. Other than this, all the gold albums. But it never compared to this moment, right now.

(Originally appeared in Pit Magazine Issue No. 31, Spring 2000)