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Alice Cooper's Nightmare Lives On

Shock rock legend remains genre's leading man

If Alice Cooper was one of the first true shock rockers, he is now one of the last remaining few.

Speaking to a crowd of recording arts students at the Vancity Theatre last year, Cooper and longtime friend and producer Bob Ezrin decried the lack of danger in today's rock landscape — a tirade Cooper would later repeat in an online interview where he bemoaned the Mumford-ification rock.

"There's no shock left really," Cooper said in a recent phone interview. "If we honestly think we're shocked by Miley Cyrus? I mean, come on. You go to any dance place and you'll see people dancing like that.

"Did we forget (Lady Gaga's) meat dress? Did we forget 'the kiss' (between Britney Spears and Madonna)?" he asked, referring to Cyrus's infamous MTV Video Music Awards Performance earlier this year.

"Every year somebody tries to steal the spotlight. And she did a good job: She stole it and she became an A-lister now. She hosted Saturday Night Live and followed up on it, and really kinda nailed it."

Cooper recently toured with Marilyn Manson, another act whose career has involved raising a few eyebrows and drawing the ire of more conservative types.

He said he and Manson had a conversation or two about the difference between "shock value" — a commodity as old as showbiz itself — and truly shocking an audience.

"You can't out-shock CNN," Cooper said. "We're entertaining (our audience). The 'danger' part of it is that, at 27 years old, most of our great rockers died. That's pretty shocking when you think that Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix (as well as more recent examples like Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain) all died at 27. They were truly living the lifestyle.

"Now, I'm not saying it was smart, but they lived this lifestyle and I was with them. I was their little brother. When I saw they were all dying at 27, I decided I had to separate Alice from me."

Cooper (born Vincent Furnier) could have easily become another victim of rock 'n' roll excess. By the age of 25, his band had become one of the biggest acts in the world.

With an act drawing from vaudeville and horror stories and featuring a number of stunts and props like guillotines and electric chairs (all which will once again be on display on this tour), Alice Cooper — along with The Who and Led Zeppelin — helped define the concept of modern-day arena touring.

In 1973, Billion Dollar Babies (produced by Ezrin) was jostling with Houses of the Holy and Quadrophenia for the title of biggest grossing studio and touring product the music business had ever seen.

It left the man — who would later take his band name as his own — a wreck, with broken limbs, a back shot to hell and organs rotting in alcohol.

"We were totally living the lifestyle," Cooper said. "We were the biggest band in the world. We had broken everybody's records. We were these kids from Phoenix that probably spent more time rehearsing than anybody because it was harder for us to get where we were going than other bands. So we partied harder than anybody else too."

At age 27, after splitting with the rest of the group (though Cooper said they are now still best of friends), Alice Cooper released his first "solo" record: Welcome To My Nightmare, a conceptual masterwork that explored the fears of a kid named Steven.

If Cooper survived, it wasn't without a few serious scares. One morning, after throwing up blood, Cooper got the wake­up call from his doctor.

"He said, 'You can join your buddies in the Hollywood Vampires, your drinking club, or you can stop, get help, and go on and do 30 more albums.' I didn't have to think about that one. I just went into the hospital and got it done."

In 1986, Cooper quit drugs and alcohol for good. He has since become a mentor, helping other hard-livin' rockers get away from their demons.

But Alice Cooper — the character — lives on, and the nightmare is far from over.

In 2011, the same year Cooper and his bandmates were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Alice Cooper released a long-awaited sequel to his 1975 opus entitled Welcome 2 My Nightmare.

Ezrin was once again at the reins, and the album received plenty of praise upon its release, smartly picking up where the original had left off and feeling very much like a classic record.

"Bob is my patron saint," Cooper said. "Even if I'm not working with him, I'll send him a tape and he'll send back notes: 'These five songs are great songs; these five or six here are pieces of songs. Did you forget to write a chorus here?' He straight up tells me what's wrong. He's always been my song doctor.

"What would be a nightmare for Alice 35 years later? Hip­hop, technology — Alice is old­school. I never had so much fun writing an album. I wanted some of the tentacles to reach over the 35 years and into this album. Every once in a while we would pull a little something in between songs from the previous album. It is Alice's nightmare, so he is going to have certain little reminiscences, and we allowed that to happen."