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Meaning Of Life

He loves sweat-splattered Mexican food, he's married with children but still a virgin and he's still legally drunk 10 years after drying out! He's Alice Cooper and he's telling Paul Rees about...

Food

You know, the nice thing about Arizona is that you can get the best Mexican food here. The Mexicans actually take the tortillas, and they're sweating, and they slap it on their sweat and that's how they salt it. I know, it sounds disgusting but that's how they do it in Mexico, and you get all that natural salt. I think that all those years on the road gave me a real appetite for pizza and pasta. I have cut down on red meat, I only eat it now about once a week. I eat a lot of chicken and fish, and I eat a lot of high protein things. That's how I keep my youthful figure.

Drink

Now you're talking my language. I have been sober for 10 years now and I'll bet if they took a blood test right now I'd still be legally drunk. I used to drink two bottles of whiskey a day. It got to a point where I didn't even like to drink, I just drank because it was a habit. There's a startling statistic that you find out: seven percent of heroin addicts die of heroin whereas 65 percent of alcoholics die of alcohol.

I went to a hospital and stayed there for six weeks. Alcohol just drains you and drags you down to the point where you pretty much lose you interest in everything. So, I think there were a lot of people praying for me. I came out of hospital 10 years ago and I never missed it. I haven't had to go to AA or do any of these things. I just stopped.

As soon as I got out of hospital I went to a bar and I sat down and had a Diet Coke, because I realised that for the rest of my life I was going to be around people that were drinking and I had to draw the line.

Drugs

Drugs was never a problem with me, my drug was whisky. I always felt that doing drugs was the common sort of thing to do and I never wanted to be common. So I ended up drinking. At the time alcohol was considered the old-fashioned buzz, but I guess I never wanted to get in trouble. I think that the new generation pretty much knows that hard drugs is gonna kill 'em. Every generation kinda acts as a guinea pig for the next generation, and from our generation I would say that 60 percent of my friends are dead now. From Jimi Hendrix to Keith Moon to Jim Morrison, all those guys died from over-indulgence. I'd rather be an alive Rocker than a dead one.

Sex

Now that's something that just eludes me since I'm a virgin. My Wife and I can't figure out where our children came from. We would really like to know that. We've been going through the medical books and there's a big controversy on that. I think it has something to do with aliens, being abducted and not remembering it.

Music

I always find that the bands I like the best are the ones who sound like they're fresh out of the garage. Bands that don't sound like they've been produced. One of the albums that I've always loved was the very first Rolling Stones record, because it sounded like they had just been pulled out of a garage and put in front of a microphone. The same with The Yardbirds 'Rave Up' album. Nirvana doesn't sound produced to me, and I like Guns N' Roses a lot and I like Jane's Addiction. I really just like basic hard Rock'n'Roll, I try to avoid bands that are cliche riddled.

Love

Makes the world go round. I'm a total believer in romance, and I think that the next generation is gonna be much more involved in romance than just sex. There's something sexier about romance, where you actually hold off, because it makes it more important when it happens. I've been married 16 years and someday, if we ever do have sex, it will be great.

Hate

Well, I think it's easier to hate something than to love it. The last thing I can remember hating was, when we were watching the riots in LA, seeing that police beating on the video. I can't watch that video anymore, there's something about cruelty that I hate more than anything else. I make fun of that onstage. Everything that Alice does onstage is a satire and sometimes I touch on things that really bother me. You could come up and smack me in the face and I probably wouldn't do anything about it, but if I were walking down the street and I saw somebody hitting their child I'd jump in and I'd be in jail.

Rock'n'Roll

I've always been the biggest Rock'n'Roll fan. When I was six years old my Uncle came around and played me a Chuck Berry record, and it was the greatest sound I'd ever heard. I still think Chuck Berry is the greatest lyricist of all-time. When I get together with my band to write we don't go to the most palatial place, we go into a garage somewhere or one little room with a couple of amps. Same with when I was writing with Bon Jovi and Aerosmith, we always ended up in one little room with a tiny amp and a piece of paper and a pen. Once you get into a big place and start pampering yourself, you get away from the roots of what Rock'n'Roll really is.

Work

I've found that when I'm on tour I can't imagine a harder job. I'm up at 7am, I do five or six interviews, go down to the radio station, get back to the hotel and prepare to do it all over again. That goes on for over a year. I'm not saying that it's not glamorous and it's not fun, if you're in New York or Paris or London it is, but what happens when you're in Idaho or some place outside Birmingham? Next week I start writing with Zodiac Mindwarp in LA and then I'll be writing with a couple of guys from Detroit. It's all getting scheduled again, so I can see the storm on the horizon is already starting.