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Alice Had Weird Parents

IN minced Alice with his boa constrictor coiled around his shoulders, black-spider eye make-up and his jump suit zipped uninvitingly down to his navel to confront the Press which Kinney Records shanghaied down to London Airport for the reception.

The assembled photographers rose as one man to the apparition and clicked like a cloud of locusts for some fifteen minutes around Alice and his snake; "She loves publicity!" "Can you put the snake in your mouth?" "Ask the snake to look this way Alice." "Can you make the snake go down your trousers Alice?"

Alice took it all rather well although the assembled journalists were a little backwards in coming forwards to ask questions "Super-PRO" full of concern and trepidation whispered about the room in search of someone to start off the confrontation with a question which would not precipitate his star to order his reptile to "kill".

He need not have worried for Alice, although she (Freudian slip) grew "curiouser and curiouser" as the conference proceeded, dealt with the inane as considerately as the insane and the informed. In fact the most impressive thing about Alice as fellow journalist Charlie Gillett observed was his complete lack of pretension.

"Why were you called Alice?" asked a gent with a battered cassette recorder brandished aloft like the Statue of Liberty.

"I had really weird parents", answered Alice politely as the avant garde journaless waited for Cooper to administer some verbal coup de grace.

"How do your parents feel about you?"

"My father is a preacher in the Church of 'Jesus Christ'" said Alice. "Perhaps I confuse them, I'm not sure but most people are just frightened of us — particularly when we are all together.

"I think a lot of people are bored by what they read in the papers today — who really wants to read about 'Prices Freezes?' I think things like 'Woman born with dog's head' are far more interesting headlines.

"People are bored in the same way with a lot of the groups who are playing the same old blues riffs over and over again. I think the whole thing should be showmanship. Sensationalism is entertaining and that's what I give.

"I want to bring back rock and roll riots — they're sexual. What I do is sexually aggressive because I think that is the way good rock and roll should be. Can you imagine Pete Townshend coming on stage and playing his guitar like this (he managed a passable imitation of something like a cross between Tiny Tim and John Sebastian)... no he comes on like this (an even more passable imitation of the Who's amazing human catherine wheel).

"Red-necked cops come home at night and discover their kids have been to see Alice Cooper on stage with 'all that eye-make-up' and it disturbs them. It scares them more than being hit on the head by a brick at an anti-war demo." Alice looked pleased and obviously was.

Alice appears with our own Arthur Brown on November 7 at the Rainbow in London which should be the most interesting confrontation since Godzilla and King Kong although Alice recollects their appearing before on the same bill in America.

"It was in Michigan", recalls Alice "and the Hell's Angels were out to get us. They built this huge bonfire in front of the stage but Arthur came on and frightened them to death with his face mask.

"Apparently they figured on still getting 'the faggots' but we tossed them a blown-up elephant and they killed that — stabbed it to death with their knives. Finally we were too slick for them and they ran off — we have very small road managers", he added apologetically.

The stories of Alice and his on stage outrages are now almost a legend — including the infamous 'eating a raw chicken alive' which he denies ever took place although a chicken certainly figured accidentally or otherwise in one of their happenings.

"People attributed all kinds of things to us", said Alice. "I even heard one story where we were supposed to have floated balloons filled with earthworms over the audience and shot them down with B.B. guns on top of their heads... mind you it's a good idea!"

Descriptions of Alice and his gang are probably futile — seeing is believing and whether you find it 'fascinating' or 'gruesome' it is almost impossible not to react positively to what he does. If you are confused you may at least rest safe in the assurance that you are not alone as Frank Zappa who produced their second album admitted to Alice "I really don't understand a thing you're doing!"

"My personal hero is Burt Bacharach," he says and no one believed him but me.

Looking through some of the reactions to his stage act it seems possible that Albert Goldman of 'Life' maybe have got the closest to just what Cooper's appeal is:

"...he knocks out the young boys with the daring act and the rebelliousness of his image. After all the ultimate rebellion of our time is the simple refusal to be a man."

ALICE COOPER: Under My Wheels (Warner Bros K 16127). That bizarre young man, who is about to do goodness knows what at the Rainbow North, lashes about with some punchy and noisy Rock on this.