Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper
Photo by Gary Johnston

Alice Cooper was once dubbed the most evil rock singer in the world. But with the rise of 'Australian Idol' and Britney Spears Incorporated, it's a title he's had to relinquish. Only he's got something these pre-fab pop stars will never have - a long career. Lock up your children, lock up your cosmetics, lock up your poultry, and welcome the perennial Mr Alice Cooper.

(APPLAUSE)

ANDREW DENTON: An audible wave of adoration there.

ALICE COOPER: I know all these people.

ANDREW DENTON: How do you know these people?

ALICE COOPER: I've played golf with that guy, he owes me money, that guy was in my band for a while.

ANDREW DENTON: And could yet be again. You basically invented shock rock, and your stage show is legendary for its success. What's the most over the top thing you've done on stage?

ALICE COOPER: When you do my kind of show, there's a lot of spinal tap moments, things that are supposed to do this but don't do that. I had a giant cannon. They decided they would shoot Alice across the stage in a cannon. The cannon was massive. It was from there to here. In rehearsal, it worked great. They'd put me in, I would get out, they'd put the dummy in and of course they'd shoot the dummy across, then I would come out. Well, it looked great. We got in front of about 20,000 people, I get in, the cannon goes off, and the dummy comes out about that far and just lays there. It's an obvious dummy. We sold the cannon the next day to the Stones, and they used it for something entirely inappropriate.

ANDREW DENTON: A backstage party with Keith Richards. So, when something like that happens, when the dummy is just hanging there, how do you cover a moment like that?

ALICE COOPER: That's when you just have to kind of make that your 'Clouseau' moment, you know.

ANDREW DENTON: Is that right?

ALICE COOPER: You just kind of come out and kick the dummy across and "That was supposed to happen."

ANDREW DENTON: Of course.

ALICE COOPER: Out of all the things that are supposed to happen, a lot of times your mistakes end up being the best things in the show. I've always told the band, "There's no such thing as a mistake. If you fall over your amp, wait five minutes and then fall over it again and they think it's part of the show."

ANDREW DENTON: I assume you've lost a lot of band members that way.

ALICE COOPER: Yeah, I'm down to about four now.

ANDREW DENTON: Actually, has it ever got dangerous for you? Because you have been electrocuted, hung and beheaded.

ALICE COOPER: The guillotine is actually not that safe, to be honest with you. The one I'm using now...

ANDREW DENTON: They said that in France all those years ago.

ALICE COOPER: Yeah. It's not safe. Don't try this at home, if you have a guillotine at home. It really only misses me by that much, and it's about a 40 pound blade and it's razor sharp. So it's all a matter of timing on how it works. But the closer it gets, the better it looks, so I always like to add that moment of... If you've ever gone to the circus and seen the guy on the tight wire and there's no net, and you go, "He could fall," well, that's the same thing with the show, there's always that little added element of adventure there.

ANDREW DENTON: The thing is, over the years, particularly in the '70s, people reacted with outrage to you. In England they banned your stuff, members of parliament were up in arms.

ALICE COOPER: It was so easy to shock an audience in the '70s. If your name was Alice and you wore a snake around your neck and you looked like something that crawled up out of hell somewhere and you were singing 'School's Out' or 'I love the Dead' or all this stuff and you were cutting your head off, the British didn't quite get that. I don't know why, call me old-fashioned, I don't know what it is.

Now, on a serious note, CNN is pretty hard to beat on a shock level. If I watch CNN and there's a guy really getting his head cut off, then the guillotine loses its impact as shock and now it's for entertainment. Now, when you see the show, my show, it's much more you go there because it's some kind of odd, bizarre, burlesque, Cirque du Soleil rock and roll show that's so weird but it's fun. Really, I don't think shock rock really exists anymore. I don't really think you can shock an audience.

ANDREW DENTON: We've got a photo of you actually in your pre-Alice Cooper days, and I'm just wondering how you got from there to being...

ALICE COOPER: Nice little beetle band.

ANDREW DENTON: ...The most evil rock singer in the world. What was that journey?

ALICE COOPER: You know, everybody at that point was Peter Pan and I said, "Where's Captain Hook?" and I said, "Why shouldn't I be Captain Hook? I'm a great Captain Hook," and I created the Alice character.

ANDREW DENTON: How did you know you were a great Captain?

ALICE COOPER: I just knew I was the villain. For every McCartney and Herman's Hermits and all that, there was just no villain, and I said, "I can create this Alice character to be the greatest rock villain of all time." You have to remember, I talk about Alice in the third person because the Alice that's talking to you now is not the same one you're going to see on stage. That Alice I don't even talk to. He's on another level at all. He's a character I created, but of course, when I was an alcoholic, there was a very blurred line there. I didn't know where Alice began and where I stopped.

ANDREW DENTON: Because you, by your own admission, I think you drank a bottle of whisky a day for way too long.

ALICE COOPER: Yeah. You have to remember when I went to LA, I was this kid from Phoenix, and the first person I met was Jim Morrison, okay.

ANDREW DENTON: Yeah.

ALICE COOPER: So I've got Jim Morrison as a big brother, I've got Janis Joplin as a big sister, I've got Keith Moon as best buddies. Everybody I knew was like, you know, the worst of the worst.

ANDREW DENTON: Where were you living in LA - in a vat of alcohol?

ALICE COOPER: Yeah. These people were actually... It was the one thing that taught me how to be Alice, though. I learned that every single one of them died by the way at 27 years old. That's some very odd things. About 10 rock stars had all died at 27. I said, "Well, if my image is even going to be more intense than Jim Morrison's and it's going to be more intense than Janis Joplin and Keith Moon and all these people, then I can't let him leave the stage. There's got to be a separation between the two." I live a full life. I've been married 29 years to the same girl, never cheated on her once. I've got three kids, who've never been in trouble. I live a real different life. But when I become Alice I get to be that guy, I get to be him. It's like Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lechter - you get to be Hannibal Lechter, and all of a sudden it's a different character and it's fun.

ANDREW DENTON: So it's almost like a therapy for you to be Alice because that's where all your demons go. So at that time...

ALICE COOPER: You should see the other Andrew. Unbelievable.

ANDREW DENTON: Tall, blonde, sexy.

ALICE COOPER: Teeth that go like that, huge teeth.

ANDREW DENTON: How did you know? So when you were hitting the bottle, which was for a long time, if being Alice on stage was therapy, how come you were hitting the bottle as well?

ALICE COOPER: Yeah, well, it was funny. If was like, you know... When I did take the cure for alcohol, which by the way was not a cure, it was a healing. I came out of the hospital never, ever being tempted by a drink, never, ever being like in the least bit, under the worst stress, ever thinking about taking a drink, never went to AA. Everybody's sitting there going, "Wow, what great willpower." I have no willpower. I came out and it was a total... It was a healing. My dad was a pastor, my grandad was a pastor, my wife's father is a pastor, and I'm Christian now. It was a... people say, "There are no miracles," and I go, "Oh, yes there are." I'm a walking miracle because I was the worst alcoholic you could imagine, and 24 years I haven't had, not a drop.

ANDREW DENTON: I want to come back to that, but you just skipped over something there. Why was it that you were drinking so heavily? Because I know you went to shrinks to deal with those sorts of demons. What was driving that?

ALICE COOPER: You know you're a kid and you see The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and you're 16 and you're going, "Oh, man. I want to have a great big giant house and I want to have a model girlfriend and a Rolls Royce and I want to be an alcoholic and I want to..." Hang on, let's reel that back. You never see the alcohol coming and you never see the drugs coming. You're going in this upward direction, upward direction, upward direction, and all of a sudden, bam, you get hit by this thing that was just sort of like casual. Pretty soon that beer that was just for fun is now medicine.

ANDREW DENTON: And when did you realise "This has gone too far"?

ALICE COOPER: It was at a point way... I was in the middle of the 'Welcome to My Nightmare' tour. There were still eight months to go on the tour. I'd already been out for a year on this tour and I knew I was really deep. I was throwing up blood in the morning, which is okay on stage but when it's just the Holiday Inn maid seeing it, it loses its impact.

ANDREW DENTON: And she never asks for an encore.

ALICE COOPER: No, she just went, "Oh, he's throwing up blood again." That's when you realise there's something really wrong going on inside, and you can't stop. You're in the middle of a tour so you have to keep doing it.

ANDREW DENTON: So you could have easily gone down the path that Jim Morrison and Keith Moon and those guys did?

ALICE COOPER: Absolutely. I think the doctor said I had about six months. When he finally checked me out, he said, "You are..." The thing about it was I was a totally functional alcoholic. I could go drink a bottle a day, never slur a word, never stumble, never miss an interview, never miss a show, and nobody knew I was drinking that much.

ANDREW DENTON: How did you feel?

ALICE COOPER: I felt pretty good, actually, but inside I was... Internally, I knew there was something wrong. There's always that inward knowing that you're dying. It may look good on the outside, but something's really going on wrong in there, and yet you have eight more months to go and you can't stop this tour, it's too big of a train rolling.

ANDREW DENTON: So were you drinking just out of habit?

ALICE COOPER: I was drinking to survive. I was drinking to get to the next day.

ANDREW DENTON: You mentioned your father was an ordained preacher and you saw him... as a teenager, you saw his whole life transform through God. What happened?

ALICE COOPER: Yeah. My dad was this strangest of creatures. My dad was an honest used car salesman, couldn't make a penny because he would sell a car and then he would run out and he'd go, "Wait, wait, we turned the odometer back. These tyres are painted and this thing is a bucket," and the guy would give the money back and he'd go back in, and the guy he was working for was a total criminal and he'd say, "Mick, this is not your business at all. You need to be a pastor or something because you're too honest to be a car salesman." Actually, that was his calling. He worked on the Apache reservation for 25 years as a missionary and I was with him. I'd go every weekend up there with him.

ANDREW DENTON: Were your parents proud of you?

ALICE COOPER: Yeah, absolutely.

ANDREW DENTON: Did they come to gigs?

ALICE COOPER: Yeah, they came to every gig.

ANDREW DENTON: Did they shout "chop his head off" before everyone else?

ALICE COOPER: Yeah, they'd say, "Kill him. Put gas in the car first." They totally got it. I would have to bring my whole family, especially my kids, to see how the guillotine worked. Because a three-year-old daughter looking at the guillotine, seeing dad's head get cut off, and she would look at it and go, "Okay, so it's a trick." "Yeah, it's a trick."

ANDREW DENTON: It must be tough for kids though to grow up with a dad who is unshockable, because that's what you want to do.

ALICE COOPER: What can they do?

ANDREW DENTON: Yeah.

ALICE COOPER: They can't come home with blue hair. They come home with black lipstick and blue hair and I'd go, "Yeah, I invented that," you know. So the way they get me is they come home, and my daughter will go, "Hey, dad. Listen to this new Garth Brooks album."

ANDREW DENTON: That must test your faith.

ALICE COOPER: Yeah. She'll come and say, "I want you to meet my new boyfriend Bubba." Oh, jeez.

ANDREW DENTON: Because your youngest, Sonora, is 13. Are you into, like, parental advisory stickers on CDs?

ALICE COOPER: Absolutely.

ANDREW DENTON: Yeah?

ALICE COOPER: Absolutely. My daughter's 12. My wife teaches ballet, she was with Joffrey Ballet. She's been in the business 35 years, I've been in the business - there she is right there, great looking girl - I've been in the business that long, so there was no way that our kids weren't going to be in show business. My daughter, Calico, is in the show now. She just finished four movies in LA and when I said, "I'm going out on tour," she said, "Well, I have to play Paris Hilton in this, right?" I go, "Yeah, okay, if you want to." She was Britney last year.

ANDREW DENTON: It's not a pretty ending.

ALICE COOPER: It's not a pretty ending to Britney at all. But we left Britney alone this year.

ANDREW DENTON: Because she's pregnant.

ALICE COOPER: My son's got a band, who pretends not to listen to me, but he does.

ANDREW DENTON: But you must be disappointed. The whole business of being a teenager is to rebel against your parents.

ALICE COOPER: I know. It's really true though. I think we all watch everybody else's kids rebel and then my kids go, "Ah, I'm not into that." My daughter comes home and she says, "You know what the problem is, dad? You're cooler than my friends." She says, "I wish I could say you weren't but you are. You're cooler than my friends."

ANDREW DENTON: So when somebody wants to date her, it's just horrible when they come back to your place.

ALICE COOPER: You know, they come home and I answer the door in full Alice, with a machete: "Come in, let's talk," and then there's like fake heads on there, 'Skippy', 'Bob', 'Tommy'.

ANDREW DENTON: I want to take a left tack here. In reading about you, I discovered that you had a couple of friends who were basically giants of culture in their own way - Groucho Marx and Salvador Dali.

ALICE COOPER: Yeah.

ANDREW DENTON: Fascinating men. What were they like? Let's start with Groucho.

ALICE COOPER: Groucho was Groucho. Groucho was just like... He was 86 years old and could still rip you to pieces at the drop of a hat. He was so quick, so fast. He would invite me over at night... Well, first of all, he'd come to the shows...

ANDREW DENTON: Is that how you met?

ALICE COOPER: ... Because he saw us as vaudeville.

ANDREW DENTON: Really?

ALICE COOPER: Yeah, he saw Alice Cooper as vaudeville, and that's what he came up in - burlesque and vaudeville. So he came to one of the shows and saw it and totally took it as, "Well, it's vaudeville." So he brought George Burns, Jack Benny the next time. The next time he brings Mae West and Fred Astaire. Now my kids up there are going, "What is this?" because every time I look around there's a legend watching the show and they all took it the same way: "It's vaudeville."

But Groucho was great. He'd wake me up... He'd call my house at two in the morning and he'd go, "Alice, I can't sleep. Come over." So I'd come over there, there'd be a chair like this, there'd be a six pack of Budweiser and a television. He'd be in bed with his beret on and a cigar, and we'd watch movies all night because he was an insomniac. He'd say, "See that guy there?" It'd be an old cowboy movie, and I'd go, "Yeah." "He's gay." "What? But that guy's a great hero." He'd go, "No, he's gay," because he knew all these guys. He'd say, "See that girl there? Chico and Harpo nailed her." He'd be telling all these bag stories and pretty soon after about four or five hours, I'd look over and he'd be asleep. I'd take his cigar, put it out, turn off the TV, and go home. Next night, "Alice, come on over." So he was great. I had a great time with him.

ANDREW DENTON: What about Salvador Dali, the mad Spaniard?

ALICE COOPER: Salvador Dali was... He saw our show totally different. He saw our show as surrealistic. He saw the show as like one of his paintings. He saw crutches, he saw garbage cans, he saw snakes. He saw all the stuff that was in his paintings. He related it to a surrealistic painting of his, which wasn't that far wrong because we were all art students and we worshipped Salvador Dali. So, yeah, a lot of Salvador Dali ended up in our show.

ANDREW DENTON: A lot of people in rock and roll, it's very fashionable to despise George W. Bush. That's not a view you subscribe to, is it?

ALICE COOPER: Well, I think if you're in a war, you don't want a poodle in there, you want a pit bull. I don't think that you want a guy in there going, "Gee, I don't know. Maybe. Could be." I think you want a guy in there who's either going to win it or lose it.

ANDREW DENTON: Are you referring to Iraq or the broader war against al-Qaeda?

ALICE COOPER: I just think that that war's going to go on for a long time, whoever is the President. If it would have been Kerry, he would have been just as knee deep in it. I don't think Bush got us into that war. I think that started 9/11 and I think somebody had to take it from there.

ANDREW DENTON: It doesn't worry you, the false connection that was made between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, all that stuff that's been shown?

ALICE COOPER: No. It doesn't bother me because I honestly think it's all connected.

ANDREW DENTON: The one thing we do know about 9/11 is that nobody involved in it actually came from Iraq. That's probably the one thing we absolutely know.

ALICE COOPER: Well, it's probably true, but I can't see them going, "Oh, gosh." The guys in Iraq going, "Gee, how horrible for America." I think there's a general feeling in that world that if America falls they'll be in a much better state, so we have to view those people in the same boat. I don't see much difference between the al-Qaeda and Iraq - not the people, I'm talking about the governments. The people, the poor people, are the victims.

ANDREW DENTON: Saddam and Osama bin Laden actually hated each other.

ALICE COOPER: Hated each other a lot, I'll bet. They traded Rolls Royces. You don't think there was a cigar going around when that happened at 9/11. I'll bet you there was.

ANDREW DENTON: I think a lot of people are surprised to learn that you're a Christian, they're surprised to learn you vote George W. Bush, but they're absolutely shocked to discover you're a keen golfer.

ALICE COOPER: That's the biggest shocker, I think. And that I'm a pretty good cook.

ANDREW DENTON: Is it true you've had three holes in one in your career?

ALICE COOPER: Three hole in ones, two double eagles, shot 67, 68 probably 10 or 15 times.

ANDREW DENTON: Pays off believing in God, doesn't it?

ALICE COOPER: He has nothing to do, trust me. I go, "Come on," and he goes, "No. That's not going in."

ANDREW DENTON: Have you considered for your stage show actually coming on in plus fours, chipping from a bunker, saying "Vote George W. Bush"? Wouldn't that be a shock show?

ALICE COOPER: You know what, it would be. And it would be a comedy. It would definitely be a comedy, because I don't see rock and roll and politics being in the same bed together. I just don't see it. When my parents started talking about politics, I'd run in the other room and put the Rolling Stones on at full blast. I didn't want to hear about tax forms, I didn't want to hear about who's doing who to what. I just didn't want to care about it. And to this day, rock and roll should be the escape from politics, not the answer to politics.

ANDREW DENTON: You mentioned before that CNN has sort of outstripped anything you could do on stage, but if you were a new band coming through wanting to do what you've done - which was shock people, attract attention through the performance, the sheer performance - what would you do?

ALICE COOPER: I would say songs. It's always got to be the best songs. The only reason I'm still here is because of 14 top 40 songs. If there was no show, they would still come because they want to hear those songs. Would they still come if it was just the guillotine, if it was just this and that? I don't think so. I think they come for the music.

ANDREW DENTON: Speaking of songs, I've always been curious about this. We have a clip here of one of your songs 'Only Women Bleed', if we can just show a bit of that.

ALICE COOPER:
# He smokes and drinks and don't come home at all
# Only women bleed
# Only women bleed
# Only women bleed

ANDREW DENTON: I've always been curious. Here you were, Mr Hard Rock Alice Cooper. How did you write a wussy song like that?

ALICE COOPER: I know. At the time, it was part of the nightmare. It was in my 'Welcome to My Nightmare' show and I had all these nightmares going on all over the place, and I said, "You can't just have all nightmare, you have to have that moment, to play it against a really soft romantic touching moment." How do you do that? Well, you have to write a song, and I include this in every album to this day. They always have a ballad that women are going to just love. I have a talent for writing that really touching little ballad. 'Only Women Bleed' was not talking about a menstrual cycle at all. It was talking about women bleed emotionally, whereas men don't.

ANDREW DENTON: Do you test these on Sheryl?

ALICE COOPER: Sheryl did the ballet in that show, right there. If that would have kept going on, you would have seen that ballet going on. That was my wife.

ANDREW DENTON: But you say you have a talent for writing these ballads that women love.

ALICE COOPER: Yeah, I write all my ballads for my wife.

ANDREW DENTON: Does it work?

ALICE COOPER: Oh, yeah, I'm very romantic, I'm extremely romantic. I date my wife.

ANDREW DENTON: Yeah?

ALICE COOPER: Yeah.

ANDREW DENTON: What's a date?

ALICE COOPER: I call her up and I'll say, "Listen, what are you doing Friday night?"

ANDREW DENTON: She says, "Who is this?"

ALICE COOPER: I date her. We have date nights. We go out and get a hotel. I'm very romantic.

ANDREW DENTON: Do you get a whole hotel?

ALICE COOPER: Buy the hotel, kick everybody out.

ANDREW DENTON: I love your lifestyle.

ALICE COOPER: That's one thing guys don't understand. This is something that you would be very surprised that I understand, is that men are microwaves and women are pressure cookers. Men want sex, bang; women like romance. Guys, learn how to romance.

ANDREW DENTON: You've said that when you're on the golf course, that people still expect you to be satanic and evil.

ALICE COOPER: Yes, and I am to some people that are paying me. I say, "Come on."

ANDREW DENTON: "Play through or die." So what's it like to be caught in a time warp of other people's expectations?

ALICE COOPER: I think by now people understand that there's the two entities. I think Alice now is woven so much into the fabric of rock and roll. I mean, Alice is a bit of an American treasure when it comes... I'm like a Vincent Price character now - the character, I mean. Since I just would not go away - you know, I had staying power - and now I think they know there's two - there's the Alice that they're going to see on stage and then there's me.

ANDREW DENTON: It must be fantastic to have. If something goes wrong, it's "Alice did it".

ALICE COOPER: Yeah, "I didn't do it." I can blame everything on Alice. It's great. "Did you wreck the car?" "No, Alice did that. I didn't do that"

ANDREW DENTON: It's an act which is more than 30 years old now. You've got a committed fan base, you've got time out for serious golf. It's a really nice arrangement for you.

ALICE COOPER: It's a great life.

ANDREW DENTON: What stretches you?

ALICE COOPER: Every time you go out on the road... I feel every time I go out on the road, I still have to prove myself. I think people are thinking, "Alice Cooper. Let me see. He's got to be really old and he's got to be really tired and this show is just going to be him walking through the sets somehow." I'm the first guy that turns around to the guitar player and goes, "Turn that up." I refuse to ever mellow out the show.

ANDREW DENTON: So you're 57 now, you look fantastically fit, but you're going to reach a point where, if you turn that up, your bones are going to break.

ALICE COOPER: I kept saying that, which would be good on stage. It would be good if I could figure out...

ANDREW DENTON: Always the showman.

ALICE COOPER: If the whole face comes off, that would be great. "Okay, that's too loud." I look at Mick Jagger and they're on an 18-month tour and he's six years older than me so I figure, when he retires, I have six more years. I will not let him beat me when it comes to longevity.

ANDREW DENTON: And nor shall he. May the day never come.

ALICE COOPER: No, he will not beat me.

ANDREW DENTON: Alice Cooper, thank you so much.

ALICE COOPER: Thank you.