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Alice Cooper

"Ooh, isn't it fabulous that Alice Cooper is ringing you up today?" an excitable friend exclaimed when she heard the news. Granted, it would have been exciting if he wanted his ball back after his mates had kicked it over my fence or if he wished to borrow a toaster. Instead, he was in fact 'phoning about the relatively small matter of his new album, "Dirty Diamonds".

Actually Alice/Vincent Furnier thinks the album is a more straight-to-the-point beast than some of his other albums. "It was a continuance from the last album, 'The Eyes Of Alice Cooper', in terms of what we were trying to do," his clear voice intones down the phone line. Which is to say, more of the same hard rock he and his band have been making of late. "Plus I didn't want to get caught up with using production technology. We just went in and recorded it and got straight to the point. We were trying to make each song a gem, or a single, on its own." Which the band has, to a point, with at least four songs on there that really ought to be added to the Cooper Canon.

But if being immediate had its cons, they were far outweighed by the pros. "Once we'd finished, it turned out that each song needed a little bit of minor surgery, but we didn't have to make too many changes. I also wanted the drums, the bass and the guitars to all be playing at the same time so it would have a live feel. I think you really can just cook out all the good stuff from an album. I mean, if you're making something like [the Beach Boys'] 'Good Vibrations' then you are going to take a month or so — that's fine. But when you're writing songs like 'Woman Of Mass Distraction' then you really do need that vibrancy to it. I really wanted the audience to hear it like it was a live experience."

One song though, the title track, had an altogether jazzier theme... "The only real exception was 'Dirty Diamonds" which had all these horns and trumpets on it. Since the song had a heist/chase movie theme, I thought we may as well give it that feel. But onstage we're not going to have the horns because I really want the song to work live with just guitars." Besides, jazz trumpeters are high maintenance, what with all the heroin and VD drugs they need.

One theme the album seems to have, though, is women. Such as dangerous women ('Woman Of Mass Distraction' and 'Sunset Babies'), flawed but loveable women ('Perfect'), women who stab you in the back ('Dirty Diamonds', again) and even women who are in fact men in dresses ('The Ballad Of Jesse Jane'). Please don't tell us that you have 'ishoos' with the ladies, Alice ... "Oh, we love women. It's just that we write songs from a guy's point of view, so that's why a lot of the songs are like that. But, y'know, we also needed one really romantic song on the album, which is 'Six Hours'. Women just love that one, they fall in love with it, and that's why it's there." And surely a good slushy number is, of course, the most direct way to a woman's heart. Unless you've got gin.

"...'Jesse Jane' meanwhile, is not in fact Alice's attempt to reach out to the tranny community. As anyone who's listened to it will tell you, the song's more about a hairy trucker in a wedding dress going on a shooting spree in McDonald's. "It is just out-and-out comedy. We were just fooling around and it came out, so I decided to sing it like Johnny Cash would..." For a brief moment his voice morphs into the country and western croon he uses on the song. "... We also had all the Mexican-style music on the song too, so we managed to get this really nice feel to the song. Besides, all the albums need to have at least one comedy song on them, like with 'The Song That Didn't Rhyme' on 'The Eyes Of Alice Cooper' and this one works really well. We're thinking of releasing it to all the country and western radio stations under an assumed name!" Well, Cash did once write 'A Boy Named Sue' — and it didn't do him much harm. Not that Alice wanted to take a walk on the wild side, so to speak. "In a sense, it wrote itself, like all comedy does. You start with one idea and then just let it happen. One thing leads to another and then you end up with something substantial." Or at least, funny.

So really, Alice sees 'Dirty Diamonds' as more of a selection box than the concept album two of his most recent records — 'Brutal Planet' and 'Dragontown' — were. "Overall though I think this album is very eclectic. All the songs have got their character and theme. Like 'Perfect' for example — that has a Lennon and McCartney-esque feel to it. And in a way, that's a boyhood dream come true. I mean, when I was a kid if someone said to me 'do you want to write a song in the Lennon-McCartney style?' I'd have said yes!"

Speaking of longevity, Alice's voice, as can be plainly heard on the 'phone, is remarkably young sounding. And on the album, it's as if the last four or so decades haven't happened. "Well, that's the thing about my voice. I don't do anything to look after it! It helps that I don't smoke or drink though. And I'm really happy to say that despite 35 years of touring, I've never lost my voice once. Mind you, I've heard how Ozzy had to get surgery to remove nodes on his throat and so's Steve Tyler from Aerosmith. I guess I've got really good vocals but I do try to stay within my range. One time I did a duet with Steve and at the end I hit my absolute peak for the first time ever. But he was still one octave above me! I've got a very 'road worthy' set of vocal cords and I don't over­use them."

The trick, though, is to make sure the backing band is up to scratch too. "I think the best part of it is being surrounded by so many talented musicians. They've all got the same background as I have, so I can mention something to them and they'll get it straight away. You do that with a new writer and they'll stare at you wondering what you meant! The thing is, I think I've been very influenced by British rock. I mean, if you listen to it, you'd think it was glam or something Bowie did at times. The guy who writes for me now, Ryan Roxie, is like really steeped in Mott The Hoople and bands like that, so that really shows through."

But Alice still has the last say. As in, not Vincent Furnier but the mad gonzo creature that lurks in his head and is sometimes let loose onstage: the Alice Cooper, rather than the mortal man who seems to channel him. On that note, Vincent quite casually runs past the process that goes on in his head like a board meeting with the guv'nor. "If he doesn't like the song, then we don't do it or we rewrite the song so Alice does like it. He tells me if the song works or not, so I really have to write music for him, and he has the final say on what does and doesn't get played. I spend all day listening to about 50 riffs and I can pick out the one that Alice would like, so that's useful." Sharing a brain with the chairman must be handy too.

And it is Alice, not Vincent, who is responsible for one of the album's most unusual moments &mdah; a wistful cover of The Bluetone[Left Banke]'s 'Pretty Ballerina'. "It's the only cover, but we're really happy with how that turned out." Or at least Alice was. "In fact, that's why we chose to do a cover of 'Ballerina'. I was wanting to do a really ironic cover, but it was Alice who came up with doing a cover of that song. It was certainly bizarre enough! I think the song gets a whole new meaning when Alice sings it as you're left wondering what exactly he and the ballerina are doing together. In fact she's going to be Alice's new enemy in the stage show &mdah; the ballerina will come on, do a dance and then suddenly turn on Alice — she'll have steel teeth or something — so he's got to kill her. We've then gotta work out how we move on from that to dragging Alice to the guillotine — and we've improved that too because we've redesigned the stage show." One does have to keep the show fresh after all. There's only so many times you can have your head cut off before it gets dull.

Psycho ballerinas and Guillotines aside, Alice/Vincent knows what a gig really needs. "The important thing though is the songs. It wouldn't matter how important the stage show would be if the songs weren't good enough. They are 'the cake' if you will, and we need to be able to have fifteen to twenty songs in the set to make the show work. The rehearsals actually start this Sunday for about a week, as we have a very fast schedule since the tour starts in June, in Australia. Once that's done, we'll move the show into a coliseum so we can rehearse all the lights and effects and make sure it all works. It really is a lot of work, but it's also a lot of fun too. The important thing though is that it has to be between 10-30% spontaneous. If you have an 'incredible mistake' like when Alice trips over something and the crowd really loves it then that's actually very important."

All this talk of touring makes my memory recall a time in 1998 when Alice said he would keep touring for as long as he could. That still stands. "I still have no reason at all not to tour — I feel great! When Mick Jagger retires, I'll quit six years later. People say how old and decrepit the Stones are but they're still such an amazing live band. So yeah, I'll retire when he does. He's really in good condition for his age but when I met Keith Richards and his father, it turned out that the father looked younger, even though he was about 80 or so! Makes you wonder who's had the easier life, but if I had the choice, and Keith Richards wanted to join the band, I'd still say yes straight away."

Actually the only bands that Alice wouldn't tour with are the ones that do much the same thing he does. "In fact, I wouldn't be afraid to tour with anyone. The only real problem is compatibility. Kiss and Alice wouldn't go together well simply because there would be too much spectacle going on at once. Mind you, Twisted Sister would be great to tour with because the band gets the audience going and focuses on the music. Dee Snider's the only real stage performer there, but he's a really good lead singer too."

Plus, you really need to keep the audience alive 'til the end... "The other problem is that some bands tire out the fans if they're on stage first. We really used to hate going on after Iggy and the Stooges 'cos we were all Detroit boys and Iggy would have burnt the fans out already. So we had real problems trying to get them going after that. And when we'd open for The Doors, they'd start worrying that we were getting the audience worn out before they could play, and Jim Morrison had his own kind of theatrics onstage too so that was a problem."

The key it seems is to have two bands on the bill who flick different switches in the audience's group-head rather than all prodding the same bit of its mass-mind at once. "We have played with some good opening acts though, like Guns N' Roses when they were still in essence a bar band, Megadeth and so on. All real good rock bands. In fact, if I had the choice I would like to have bands like Jet or The Vines or The Kaiser Chiefs open for us when we tour the UK 'cos they wouldn't clash with Alice and he's really partial to these rough, snotty garage bands. I'm so glad they're back in fashion."

A bit of envy does play a part too though. "We all want to [be] good at something we're not actually. I'm sure there are guitarists out there who would love to be a frontman like me, in the same way that I'd want to be a guitarist like them. But I found out I was surrounded by all these great musicians who could play guitar really well so I decided I couldn't really match that. But if I'd had got into guitar playing, I'd have tried to be the Alice Cooper of guitar playing, and I'd have tried to do really bizarre things with it. But as I said, the guitarists I've worked with were too good so I stayed being a frontman instead. I'd never play bass, drums or keyboards though, as they just don't interest me."

Nor does Alice have any intention of learning to play. "The other problem is that if you take lessons, you get caught up in the theory and you won't be able to do anything radical. Self-taught is much more interesting as you can write music without having to worry about whether it ties in with the theory. One time we played a song to Frank Zappa and he couldn't quite work out what we were doing because it didn't sound like anything he had heard before. He said it was bizarre, and from him that was a compliment!"

Instead, Alice continues to spend his spare time with the birdies, so to speak. "I play golf the same way other people go jogging. I get up at six in the morning, go to the tee and have finished by 9am so I'll have got the golf over and done with for the rest of the day. I'm a person of extremes so when I took up golf, I really got into it and that's why I play every day — my handicap is four now. I think, if I was playing golf in England, I'd definitely go to the Sunningdale [in Berkshire] course, as that's a really good one."

And while the caddie/press man on the other line coughs that it's almost time to get off the course, Alice has a warning for any punters who want to get too close... "All I'm going to say is if you go to one of the shows and you're in the first 20 rows, you'd better not be wearing your best clothes. Let's say that the show has a habit of moving offstage and into the audience ... and if you're in the first 20 rows, we think you want to take part!" And with that dire threat, the interview ends.

Alas I wasn't able to ask if any of his Pythons were found dead in bed with two underage grass snakes or if he really did want the toaster, but in the end it didn't matter. I'd just been rung up... by Alice Cooper. Which was nice, in a roundabout sort of way.