“Cold Ethyl had the greatest sense of humour to it,” he laughs, adding, “In the show Ethyl gets thrown around the stage – she’s a life-sized dummy – then we do the switch [which] the audience doesn’t see, the dummy comes alive and dances. My wife, she teaches ballet, and my two daughters are both full scholarship ballerinas, so they’ve all played that Cold Ethyl.”
Cooper’s 26th studio release (“I’ve lost count,” he laughs) – titled Welcome 2 My Nightmare – is a revival of sorts: it explores the world “Alice Cooper”, the narrator of Welcome To My Nightmare, finds himself in today. Certainly, it wasn’t something the real life Alice Cooper conceived when the original …Nightmare was dreamt up. The latter, says the affable icon with a warm laugh, “was almost an accidental record. We [Alice and original …Nightmare producer Bob Ezrin] said, ‘What would Alice’s nightmare be 35 years later?’ We started writing and we couldn’t stop.”
For those in the slow seats, let’s take a minute to define “Alice Cooper” the name. When Vincent Furnier’s band Alice Cooper dissolved – having released classic songs I’m Eighteen [1971] and School’s Out from their 1973 smash hit album Billion Dollar Babies – the enigmatic frontman adopted the band name as a personal moniker; a character through which to live his macabre musical stories and theatrical-horror heavy metal.
“It is very convoluted, but [becoming Alice] was very natural,” says Alice. “[When Alice Cooper meant the band,] people who saw me on the street would say, ‘Hey, Alice,’ ’cause they think the lead singer always takes on that character. And I looked like I should be Alice Cooper. So I changed my name – if you look at my drivers license: Alice Cooper.”
But Alice Cooper, the now legendary character, was too much to be contained by one man. Even if that man’s name was, actually, Alice Cooper.
“At that point, I was probably the most functional alcoholic on the planet. Nobody knew – I never missed a show, a line, a performance – until much later when [alcoholism] took over. Then, I was getting sick, throwing up blood… When I got sober, I had to separate myself from Alice; not try tobe Alice. That’s what killed Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse – trying to be their character off stage. If you try and be a character that isn’t real, it’s going to put you in the asylum, you’re going to die, or you’re going to jail.”
Offstage Alice Cooper is now certainly a different being from ‘onstage’ Alice Cooper – the maniacal, violent precursor to Marilyn Manson. “I love golf, Alice hates golf. Playing golf early in the morning I never think about Alice, and when I’m on stage as Alice I never think about golf. If you put golf clubs on the stage while I was Alice I’d think they were weapons.”
It is hard to determine which Alice, then, has racked up Grammy nominations and icon awards – the original band, however, was recently inducted into the Rock and Rock Hall Of Fame and joined Alice in the recording of Welcome 2 My Nightmare, which, perhaps curiously to longtime fans, also includes a collaboration with popstar Ke$ha. Working with young people is something Alice clearly enjoys, and being in a position to offer advice to those starting out in the industry is a privilege, though he does despair – Ke$ha not withstanding – the state of modern music sometimes. While, Cooper says, he sees “that they have the image, they’ve got the attitude; I listen and I go, ‘Where is the song?’ Unfortunately, they have a lot of disposable music writers out there right now. The reason kids are listening to classic rock,” he surmises, “is they’re not really getting a lot from their bands. There isn’t much competition out there. I hate to sound like one of those old fogies that says, ‘They just don’t write ’em like we used to.’ That’s not what I’m saying. I think Jack White is brilliant, Lady Gaga does what she does really well, Foo Fighters are great; Jet are really authentic. It’s just that they’re few and far between.”
Casting his mind back to the commencement of his own career, Alice muses, “”I was lucky enough to start in the golden age when rock and roll was about the music and the music was more important than anything.” However, he readily admits that he and the original Alice Cooper band could not have done it without guidance from an outside source. “We had Bob Ezrin, who was our George Martin. Without Bob, we wouldn’t of had a captain – he took the good ideas and put them into song form – …Eighteen, School’s Out, Billion Dollar Babies – he really looked out for the musical side of us. And at the time,” he reminds, “you were up against The Supremes, The Four Tops, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Simon And Garfunkel. You couldn’t just slip into the top forty – you had to write a song that was as good as [theirs]. It was really all about the music and the songwriting.”
Imagine Alice’s surprise, then, when none other than Bob Dylan remarked that Cooper – the vaudeville heavy metal shock rocker – was a “really overlooked song writer.”
“I didn’t even think Bob Dylan knew I was alive,” exclaims Alice. “He must have picked up an album, really listened to it and went, ‘Oh, this guy can write lyrics’. That was such a great compliment – coming from the poet laureate – because he’s not a friend. I mean, I don’t know him personally. I bet that got people’s attention.” He marvels in the memory. “John Lennon’s favourite [Alice Cooper] song was Elected. Groucho Marx and Salvador Dali became Alice Cooper fans. It was just the weirdest combination of people.”
Now, through his eight-years-running radio DJ gig Nights With Alice Cooper – broadcast to over 100 American stations and in over nine other countries, including Australia – he gets to reach an even broader audience, albeit with the music of his own contemporaries.
In accepting the presenter’s role he had a single stipulation. “My deal was, ‘Look, there are a million bands from the sixties and seventies that got forgotten and I am going to champion those bands. I am going to play AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, but I’m also going to play Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Yardbirds. How can you be a Led Zeppelin fan without being a Yardbirds fan? They were the original Led Zeppelin.”
As an early Alice Cooper fan, having been raised on blues rock, I point out that basic ‘boogie woogie’ groove-based rock is still attractive to all ages and, really, timeless in it’s simplicity.
“Sure,” enthuses Alice. “Thin Lizzy, the original Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green, The Beatles, The Stones – they were all blues/rock bands. [The later two, specifically,] were based on Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and all these other bands. It’s, honestly, the only music that still stands up. All the bands that are still here from the sixties, every single one of them is a blues-based rock band.”
Case in point, Van Halen – who until recently were slated to headline the ill-fated Soundwave Revolution; a tour Alice was looking forward to bringing out his new songs for. But when you’ve been in the industry as long as Cooper has, pragmatism wins out over unexpected cancellations. The heavy rock pioneer has seen a thing or two and, despite his onstage propensity for dark arts, guillotines and fake blood, knows a silver lining when he sees one.
“With this Van Halen thing, I don’t know why or how, nobody tells us, but we were coming down anyway. We just added shows; we didn’t subtract ’em. Australia is always the highpoint when the band looks at the itinerary. Every American wants to go to Australia. Nobody has ever come back from Australia or New Zealand and said, ‘I didn’t have a good time.’ They always come back and say, ‘Oh, you gotta go to Australia.'”
