What was England like in the days when you first came over here?
I mean, they tried to ban us in England.” At that point I probably represented the most rebellious band that he’d ever seen. But I know Johnny well and I can understand that. I thought that was a funny scene when I pictured it in my head. “I heard that, and I heard that he and Sid Vicious would busk in the subway playing songs such as I Love The Dead and all these other dark Alice Cooper songs. I will never, ever outgrow rock’n’roll, and I will never, ever tell my band to turn the volume down.”Īre you aware that John Lydon – otherwise known as Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols – once said that his entire career stemmed from him standing in front of a mirror miming along to your song I’m Eighteen? He could tell you a story in three minutes, and it would be this ridiculously funny thing. But you can take it all the way back to Chuck Berry – nobody was a better lyricist than Chuck.
To me that’s the most important sound in the world. You will never wash away the sound of a Pete Townshend power chord. You seem to fall neatly into this category. There are certain performers – Lemmy would be one, Slash another – for whom the sense of wonder of rock’n’roll has never dimmed. And when I saw them and saw what kind of a reaction everybody’s parents had to them, I immediately became a Beatles fan.” I knew that sound was really different and really cool. I heard, like, five Beatles songs in one day, and I just went, ‘What is this?!’ Not even knowing what they looked like or who they were. Then all of a sudden I heard this thing that I’d never heard before She Loves You, I Want To Hold Your Hand, and then I heard Please Please Me. I was listening to The Beach Boys, The Four Seasons and Motown, everything that was on Top 40 radio. Before that I was listening to chart music. I was also the perfect age when The Beatles came out. My uncle also bought me a Chuck Berry record, and that changed everything. First off it was Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show. “I’ve listened to music, especially rock’n’roll, since I was eight years old. What was the power that rock’n’roll held over you as a young man? But as he enters his eighth decade in rock’n’roll, it would surely be unwise to present Alice Cooper with a pair of slippers as a Christmas gift anytime soon. Today the 73-year-old is a member of Hollywood Vampires, the good-natured supergroup that also features Joe Perry from Aerosmith and Johnny Depp, and is gearing up to release his 21 st album Detroit Stories on February 26. This not at all subtle take on the subject of AIDS once again secured its singer prime real estate in rock’s mainstream.įrom here, the stroll to the status of a legend has been short. For years a dedicated drunk, in 1989 a now sober Alice re-emerged with the ubiquitous smash hit single Poison. There is a credible case to be made that his act drew up the blueprints for punk in a way that was just as profound as those designed by his friend Iggy Pop.
During a golden period of albums released in the ‘ 70s – records such as School’s Out and Billion Dollar Babies – the character’s constant rebelliousness and, in a live setting, macabre theatrics would prove influential across a wide musical spectrum. Alice is the creation and the alter-ego of Vincent Damon Furnier, a name today used by no-one.
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