Alice Cooper
16 July 2000
At his satanic majesty’s request
Alice Cooper is preparing for a night on the
town. The godfather of shock rock has just completed a sold-out British tour and
before he takes his lurid roadshow to mainland Europe, he has one night off. So
what has he got planned? A cannibalistic banquet in a medieval torture chamber,
finishing off with a nightcap of fresh virgin’s blood? A ringside seat at the
world poisonous snake-wrestling championships (loser’s head paraded round on a
platter)? No, actually he’s going to the theatre to see The Lion King.
"I’m always interested in theatrical productions," he says.
"Not necessarily the story, but I look at the technical end of it to see
how they’re doing certain things. You always tend to pick up something for the
show." The Show made it to Scotland a couple of weeks ago. By day,
mild-mannered Vincent Furnier played a round of golf at Gleneagles. At night,
possessed by his legendary Rock'n'Roll alter ego, Alice Cooper, he and his band
presented the greatest gothic vaudeville show Barrowland has witnessed in a long
time.
To summarise: body parts, chains, mutant babies, evil-but-sexy nurses, insanity,
fetish wear, decapitation and fake blood. Then the band moved onto the next
song. Somebody could get hurt.
"Oh sure. It’s a very physical show," says Cooper. "I don’t
think there’s a night that goes by when somebody doesn’t get a bloody nose
or a bruise or cut. All the effects I do on stage I had to learn from
stuntmen."
No kidding. A decade ago, there nearly was no more Mr Nice Guy, when Cooper
almost hanged himself on stage. "The guillotine is a lot more dangerous
than the hanging," he states, as if he is comparing golf clubs rather than
methods of execution. "The hanging has got a device that catches me to make
sure I don’t actually hit the rope. The guillotine only misses me by six
inches. It all has to be timed and that’s why it looks so good and gives the
audience a thrill."
Ever since Screamin’ Jay Hawkins made his stage entrance by climbing out of a
coffin, s(c)h(l)ock rock has tickled the bored adolescent’s fancy with its
twin incentives of entertainment and rebellion. Recently, Marilyn Manson and
Slipknot have got the kids excited and the parents appalled with their
inflammatory personae.
But, as one concerned mum discovered when she met her son’s favourite band
Cradle Of Filth on BBC2’s Living With The Enemy, they turned out to be
"very nice boys". She was placated. Cradle Of Filth, meanwhile,
couldn’t show their faces in Hades again.
Alice Cooper, the original multi-million-selling shock rocker, does not have to
worry about being unmasked. He is unashamedly a mask. "I write for him and
then I play him," says Cooper. "He is a fictional character." He
is also an institution, as highlighted by Wayne’s World when incorrigible
geeks Wayne and Garth genuflected in his presence and memorably declared:
"We’re not worthy."
His commercial heyday remains right back at the start of his career in the early
1970s but, as symbolised during his act, there have been numerous resurrections
for Alice Cooper. Even now, naughty schoolgirl duo Daphne & Celeste are
paying tribute with their cover version of School’s Out. "They’re such
cute little girls," approves Cooper. "Certainly I never expected
School’s Out to have that light a touch to it, but at the same time I totally
understand how it could be a pop song."
The current Cooper renaissance probably has more to do with nostalgia than any
appetite for fresh fake blood but for the man himself the millennial timing is
right. Brutal Planet, his current concept album is a fire-and-brimstone sermon
on the state of society, targeting the perennial evils of domestic violence,
hate, crime, capitalism, global poverty, war ... and there’s a sequel ready to
be recorded when Cooper finishes touring next year.
"Brutal Planet is like my Dante’s Inferno. It’s saying, if we keep
going like this, 50 years from now Columbine, Kosovo, Rwanda is going to be an
everyday event. Life will be so cheap that genocide is the norm.
"The hard part is taking an album with the subject matter of Brutal Planet
and making it entertaining. When it comes to doing songs like Wicked Young Man
and Pick Up The Bones, I play those dead serious. I want the audience to feel a
certain revulsion for Wicked Young Man because I do. I don’t like the
character - I’m not there to praise him, I’m there to expose him."
Wicked Young Man is a diatribe against the likes of the Columbine High School
killers but with a chorus which runs: "It’s not the games that I play,the
movies I see, the music I dig/I’m just a wicked young man." Cooper is
also condemning the need to find cultural scapegoats for such tragedies. "Rock’n’roll
is always the easiest target," he says. "I’m not blamed for as much
now as I used to be. Others are taking that blame, but in the early days I was
responsible for Vietnam, everything. I’m an entertainer.
"I’m just trying to make the world a little more fun. The thing that
pisses these guys off is I’m just doing a reflection of them. I do a lot of
social satire and people don’t like looking at themselves in the mirror. I got
to the point of saying: ‘C’mon guys, take some responsibility.’
"How could a parent not know that his kid’s got a sawn-off shotgun, an
automatic pistol and 50 bombs in the garage? I’ve got a 15-year-old son, a
seven-year-old daughter. I’ve got a 19-year-old and I know if my son’s got a
firecracker. So the parents have got to take some responsibility for this."
What does Cooper think of rock’s current black sheep, such as Marilyn Manson
who, in the wake of the Columbine massacre, has been forced to keep a low
profile? "It’s happy Halloween," he says. "We need our
villains. I applaud the theatrics but I do not agree with his theology. I am
pro-Christian and anti-Satanic whereas he seems to profess the opposite. I think
he knows how to press buttons and in order to get every parent in America pissed
at him he had to go there. I understand that. That’s what I did in the 1970s
but I used mascara and snakes and guillotines where he’s using the Bible and
Satanic stuff."
Alice Cooper may not have toned down his stage show but it sounds like there are
only so many cages he will rattle in his middle age. Rock'n'Roll is still his
first love, but having recently lent his name and patronage to the Cooper’s
town restaurant in Phoenix (where he has lived for the last 40 years), it seems
opportune to ask him, as in the Arlo Guthrie song, can you get anything you want
at Alice’s restaurant?
"Yeah, as long as it’s barbecued."
Alice Cooper’s new single Gimme is released on 31 July on Eagle Records.
This
review by Fiona Shepherd
was originally featured on
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