A Conversation with Alice Cooper – HuffPost 4.30.14

Mike Ragogna: Dude! We’re not worthy for Super Duper Alice Cooper! But if we were, Alice, please would you tell us about that film of yours of which we are not worthy?

Alice Cooper: I’ll tell you, the guys came to us with the idea–we didn’t go to them and say, “Hey, let’s make a documentary about us”–they had already done Rush and Iron Maiden and they did such a great job on those that we said, “Yeah, we’d like to do it,” and then they said two things that made a lot of sense, they said, “We’re going to avoid all of the stereotypical documentary stuff, no talking heads or any of that, and at the same time we’re going to use this Jekyll & Hyde device,” which is sort of like myself and Alice. I said, “That’s really good. If you can make it so that it’s really enjoyable to watch, even the more painful parts, I think that i’ll be really good.” They did a great job.

MR: Rumor has it you studied theatrical arts.

AC: It’s in my DNA!

MR: Are you surprised about how the project came together?

AC: No, actually, I was surprised that they were as great as they were at catching it. There’s a sense of humor to it, there’s a darkness to it, there’s an all-American thing to it, there’s sort of the Rocky story, the band that never should have made it but were just stubborn enough, and then it was just a pure success story after that. Then you watch this all-American band just kind of go crazy and not really be able to handle it. I had no idea I had an addictive personality, I really didn’t. I didn’t know that a beer was going to mean twenty beers. When you’re a kid and you’re out on the road with the guys, you drink beer all day. That’s just part of it. Until it becomes medicine. That’s when you become the alcoholic. That’s when all of a sudden the beer is not because it tastes good and it’s social, but because now it’s medicine. “In order to get this done I have to have this.” That’s any alcoholic. When any thing that you’re doing becomes medicine you know that you’re addicted.

MR: Did you feel it spinning out?

AC: No, I kept putting it in the back of my mind saying, “I could live without this if I had to, but why? Why would I even want to? I’m fine.” You’re indestructable at that age. You’re indestructable. You’re on tour for six years without a break and you feel great. You’re lucky to be out there. So nobody was complaining, I was never sick, I never had hangovers, I never missed a show, there was never a time when I couldn’t do The Johnny Carson Show and talk and be funny and not slur a word or stumble, if I was doing a movie I knew all my lines. There were no signs that there was a problem. Internally there were all kinds of things going on. You can’t drink that much alcohol without your liver and your pancreas at a certain point starting to go, “Okay, this morning we’re not going to throw up beer, we’re going to throw up blood.” That’s when you know the party’s over.

MR: Alice, one of the most interesting elements of the film is Dennis Dunaway’s reflections.

AC: I felt that the most uncomfortable moments were the best moments. I was sitting with Neal [Smith] and Dennis at Tribeca and I made sure that I hadn’t seen the whole thing yet, just parts of it. So when Dennis was talking about the Dali thing, when he was telling his version of how the band broke up and Neal was telling his version of how the band broke up and I told my version, I wasn’t going to edit their version. I wanted their version to be in there, even though it’s uncomfortable and we’re sitting there and watching it and squirming in our seats because nobody wants to be the jerk, but at the same time, that’s what happened, so we had to leave it in. We were all laughing and going, “Welp,” because we all remembered it totally different.

MR: And then, of course, there were the groundbreaking stage theatrics.

AC: Yeah, and there was never an agenda. There was never any kind of satanic or political agenda. Our thing was pure hellzapoppin’. We organized it, it was going to be funny, it was going to be scary, it was going to be flashy, it was going to be sick but you were going to be laughing about it, and at the same time it was going to be backed by all these great songs. To me, there was nothing in that except entertainment.

MR: Please Mr. Cooper, would you elaborate on the “chicken” incident?

AC: [laughs] Yeah, yeah, you know, some things you don’t have to embellish on. There were two or three stories that you never had to embellish on, and that was one. We couldn’t have asked for a better thing to happen because that was a definitive moment that I realized that rock was looking for a villain. Rock was looking for a guy that would kill the chicken, because everybody loved it. That’s all they talked about. Nobody was saying, “Oh, the poor chicken,” everybody was saying, “How cool, he killed a chicken.” I didn’t kill the chicken! The audience killed the chicken! But the funny thing was that opened my eyes to one thing: that Alice that we were seeing there was some kind of psychadelic, sci-fi, victimized Alice. Later on I took that idea and turned that into the fact that we needed a villain and Alice was going to be that villain. Rock needed a Moriarty. Rock needed a Captain Hook.

MR: Nicely said! And look who you influenced. You can see your mark on so many rock bands that came after you, even if some of them don’t cop to it.

AC: And in all honesty, they’re all friends of mine now. There was a time when Mariliyn Manson and I jousted in the press, especially the fact that I was Christian and he was tearing up the bible in the audience every night. Then when we met we actually had some pretty interesting conversations. I wasn’t angry with him. I asked him, “You must’ve had a horrible experience with church when you were a kid,” and yeah, he did. So there was a reason that he did what he did, an intelligent reason. He was always a smart guy, I always knew that, but now we’re friends. We’re still on opposite ends of the spiritual world, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t sit and talk with him and luahg with him. I’ll hold my grounds on what I believe and he will too but at least we’re talking about it.

MR: My favorite period of your career is your Welcome To My Nightmare years. It seemed like that was the culmination of everything you did before, and it really peaked with that project.

AC: Yeah, and it really was the primo show. It was the show that I wished the original band could have done, but you have to remember we had toured six years in a row without stopping andwe had put all the money back into the show evvery single year. I think when Billion Dollar Baby was over we had broken all of the Rolling Stones’ records, we were a number one album, biggest band in the world and I think everybody was ready for a rest and they were ready to divvy up some money and buy a house and buy a car and do whatever they were going to do, whereas I came in with, “Guys, I’ve got this idea. Welcome To My Nightmare. Of course, we’re going to have to take all of the money and put it into this show and it’s going to be a two-year tour and the rehearsal’s going to be four months because there’s going to be real dancers, a director from Broadway,” I had massive, grand ideas for this show, and I think that’s where I lost them.

MR: The television special was beautiful, too. That was almost like a video clip compilation in a lot of ways.

AC: And it really was! When we did the thing with Vincent Price in Toronto the guy was using this new thing called “video” and we were like, “What’s that?” They said, “Well it’s like film, only it’s easier to use, it’s more pliable, we can do more with it and this and this and this,” and we’re going, “Okay.” At the end of a seven or eight day shoot with Vincent Price with props in the studio we said, “How much is this going to cost us?” and the guy says, “I don’t know, twenty thousand dollars?” Imagine what a video like that would cost now. It’d be more like ten million dollars. And there was no place to play it; there was no MTV. We did this video pre-MTV so there was really no place to put it, but we had it in the can. I guess we kind of realized that video was going to come in and there would be a market for it someday.

MR: It was wonderful. Going back to how I was talking about your influence earlier, I wanted to say in a weird way you’ve been a mentor to a lot of people, even goth music owes something to you.

AC: After …Nightmare, when we did it in London the next day on the street there were kids walking around with top hats and white makeup and dark under their eyes, all Addams Family kind of stuff. Goth was born right then. It was a fashion statement and the British were the first to pick up on it. All of a sudden there was this really dark look, the kids were not hippies anymore, they had this style and it all came back to Alice Cooper’s Welcome To My Nightmare show. It did kind of create that goth look, and at the same time punk was kind of born there, too.

MR: Alice, what advice do you have for new artists?

AC: Wow. First of all, if you have an accordion in your band or a banjo you’re not a rock band. Okay? There’s a band called The Stripes coming out of England right now that may be the next hope for rock ‘n’ roll. They’re a real Small Faces type of rock band. They’re young guys that really caught on to that seventies style of snotty rock ‘n’ roll and I hope that’s what’s going on, because right now rock is so anemic. It’s just amazing how anemic it is. The bands that are going up this summer that are going to really burn up the summer are bands like Aerosmith and Slash and Mötley Crüe and Alice Cooper and KISS and Def Leppard. Those are going to be the shows that bring it every night, whereas if I were going to go see a couple of young bands I’d be so bored out of my mind, because these young bands are just afraid to be rockers. They want to be all acoustic, and they want to sing about how oil is bad and “I’m going to be a vegan now, don’t let any burnt flesh come near me,” and I’m going, “Come on! What is this? Have a cheeseburger and shut up!”

Transcribed By Galen Hawthorne