Article Database

Alice — Killer Off the Cuff

"YEAH," SAYS Alice lounging in the back seat of a limo cruising towards Connecticut, "it's coming. We've always considered Alice Cooper to be the 1970's new thing. Suddenly we're coming in and drawing 10,000 people, mostly 16-year-olds who wear eye-makeup, girls and boys, which is a pretty new culture idea."

Well, what exactly is the 1970's "new thing?" The group comes out: Neal Smith with his flowing Mary Travers hair, a defiant looking Michael Bruce, Glen Buxton who immediately hides behind an amp, Dennis Dunnaway looking at the audience as if they were the show.

Very strange vibrations are emitted from the stage. Trepidation, apprehension and giggles of fear go in waves through the audience.

"We're not normal looking when we come on stage. We don't want to be. It's important to get the first reaction, having an audience look at us and think, 'Wait a minute. I don't know if I like this or not already!'"

They plug in and play. No on-stage tune-up necessary, this is a professional production. The music begins. Blaring, hard, rhythmic, menacing. "We have to come on strong and powerful so they know there's something behind it. It's not just a goof."

SHREWD

Suddenly Alice. Resplendent in a black studded leotard "Far from being a freaky aberrant," writes Albert Goldman to the middle American readers of venerable Life magazine, no less, "Alice was a shrewd operator intent on translating to the fagged-out rock stage some perverse excitement of the Andy Warhol, Sado-Masochist, Low-Camp Drama and Cinema."

That aptly sums it up. Snake, electric chair, straight jacket, nurse, axe, sword, dummy, lights-action-camera.

"I think the best word is psychodrama," explains Alice. Nightmare almost, but at the same time it's got comic relief.

"We're the only ones doing the type of theatre we do. Others do another type, like Iggy and the Stooges. I really enjoy Iggy's work. He's a good actor. We enjoy each other's work for different reasons. We play more emotionally than they do. They play more physically, they're really very physical about what they do.

SENSUAL

"I don't think I could ever beat myself with a drumstick or make myself bleed. Our thing is taken a lot more sensually. A lot moves slower, catty.

"There are a lot of good actors in rock. Jim Morrison was a great actor. He'd go into a song and everybody would just explode. Total control of the audience.

"He was just as theatrical off stage as he was on. And he was a great poet. A lot of people thought that after that thing in Miami he was a goof. But Jim Morrison was never a goof, unless he wanted to be.

"He once said, 'You never know when it's going to be your last performance,' and that's really true. So you have to put out for every performance like it's going to be your last one.

"If you're going to be Alice Cooper, the depraved animal almost, you have to assume that thought space. I really have to be very involved when I'm performing. I can't perform unless I'm in a psychodramatic trance. I have to totally think about what I'm doing and put myself into that position. Like when I'm in the straight jacket.

"Of course that's an easy role because a maniac isn't hard to portray. You just have to facially show what it's like having a really tortured mind. Mouth and eyes, especially eyes. You see what's going on in the guy's brain. He's living in torment.

"Our Insanity is almost electric. We keep pounding at the audience with music and theatrics to a point at the end where that insanity spreads through the audience and soon they're doing crazy things.

RELEASE

"People see a lot of themselves in the act, in Alice. They see a lot of what they're worried about with their own insecurities. Everybody's got a lot of Mr. Hyde in them.

"When people get really uptight they throw things because they don't know what else to do. They're down to their bones biting their fingernails because they can't take it, so they pick up something and throw it.

"It's a great release being another person and getting all of the hostilities out of your system."

Another person, indeed. The off-stage Alice is just that. A soft spoken, polite, beer-drinking minister's son from Arizona. He kept swilling beer from the two six-packs he brought with him all during our interview which was taking place in the backseat of a liveried limousine bound for Connecticut in search of a mansion/band house.

Alice explained that since most of the group's gigs are now in the east it will be more convenient to live here. Throughout the imposition of having a total stranger along on a very personal mission Alice was gracious, willingly articulate and surprisingly intelligent. Next to Alice was his old lady, Cindy.

DIFFERENT

"I don't care if people know that I've got a lady. I'm a different person on stage. They're coming to see Alice. They're coming to see my alter ego."

I countered with the fact that his name is Alice both on stage and off, not "John" offstage and "Alice" onstage. His reply was, "Yeah I was thinking about changing my name — to Mary."

He says of himself that he's immature and irresponsible. "I'm not maturing at all, except musically and lyrically. As far as myself, I'm so immature. I lost my passport last week, and I lost an autographed picture of Burt Bacharach and I lost my birth certificate and I lost $40.00 and I lost my wallet... really, I could go on for hours with what I lost. I lost a studded belt and I lost my black scarf. If I had a child I'd probably lost it somewhere in a supermarket!"

Finally after driving for ages we pull into the town. "Oh, God," cries Cindy, "We're moving to Peyton Place."

Picture postcard buildings, manicured green lawns, American Legion posts, smiling happy short-haired All­American folks dominate the scene. We pull up to the realtor's office. He appears, a fiftyish man with white hair, an American Flag lapel pin and a copper arthritis bracelet. He's impressed by the car and we know he thinks that Alice Cooper is a chick.

He pops his head in to say hello and turns rather a whiter shade of pale. But Alice is gracious, not surly, and the man though bewildered, smiled.

Wealth gushes from the elaborately decorated ceilings and parquet floors of the house they inspect. The bathroom facilities are made out of turquoise paisley porcelain. It's quite a house. Alice is really excited. "Oh wow's," "Goshes," and "Cindy, look at this!" punctuate the air as the boy from Arizona shows himself.

SPARRING

We're on the way back to the city and a new air is in the car. Perhaps because Alice is so happy or maybe just because he's getting used to me as a person, the sparring has ceased.

"The next show is going to be frightening, even to me. I want it to be a complete new thing. It's going to be really frightening because it's going to be totally real." And of course it will include all new material.

Musically, the albums are getting better and better. The first two, Alice confesses, left a bit to be desired. "We were trying to put the stage act on record," and it just didn't work, but their third album, "Love It To Death" was produced by Jack Richardson and Bob Ezrin of Nimbus 9 in Toronto.

All of the members of the group take part in putting the act together. But Alice is quick to stress that "It's not intentionally choreographed. A lot of times we do things on the spur of the moment. It's very spontaneous in a lot of places. That's what you really need to grow.

"A lot of mistakes come out beautifully. People like to see mistakes. It gives them a relief. Audiences need to get out of the dramatic state every once in a while. That's why I've started smiling recently during the show."

We began to talk about the types of people that go to an Alice Cooper concert. Alice said, "We attract the same type of crowd as say, Mountain does. Maybe we attract a certain percentage more of people who are in craziness.

"Audiences always liked us, even at the beginning. They knew that they were having fun with us and we were having fun with them. We never got hassled. Nobody ever threatened me. I was thinking, 'well, I'm setting myself up as a target in this whole thing and I better know what's going to happen,' but nothing ever happened.

By this time we were on the West Side Highway, heading back to Greenwich Village and Alice's manager's place. Alice Cooper stretched, squirmed and yawned, signifying he'd talked enough from one day.

Then, almost as an afterthought, he said, "We love to lie. We're all pathological liars. We don't want to hurt anybody, we just lie about ourselves. Anything that would make a situation more interesting. You can't believe a thing I've said so far."