Alice Cooper: be my Frankenstein! What an absolutely delightful man! Currently in Australia supporting his upcoming album Dirty Diamonds, Alice talks about the new album soon to be released here, the death of shock rock and Paris Hilton. Go and see the show, I hear it is going to be a scream…

After nervously chatting the ear off Alice’s lovely label representative I am lead into a hotel room to be greeted warmly by the Prince of Shock himself, perfectly attired for the beautiful winters day radiating through the picture window of his hotel room, in black leather pants and a black t-shirt.  We arrange ourselves on the couches while FasterLouder is introduced to Alice. I tell him FasterLouder is a contributor based site, explain my suit and that I’m a little nervous but excited about the opportunity to talk to him, he replies, “Don’t worry, I’m easy.” I retort, “You probably shouldn’t spread that around.” To which Alice replies ”I know my wife says all the time, “Whatever you do, don’t spread that around, you’re easy!”

Just as I am starting to relax, Alice makes me blush and gives me the sound bite for my answering machine! ”You look great sitting there with that sun coming in on you, very pretty.” 

As I blush and say thank you, I quickly recount the story of my last visit to a church for a wedding while I regain my composure, where the sun just happened to shine through the red stained glass window and bath me in red light, as a scarlet woman. Alice continues, ”Tell me you caught the bouquet after that. It would have been the next Julia Roberts movie!”

By this point we are laughing and I’m feeling much more comfortable, he is easy! But down to the business at hand. I ask Alice,  about his latest album, Dirty Diamonds which has been released in the states but isn’t being released here until after the tour.

He explains, “Yeah. I think it comes out July fourth. It was a little disheartening to me that we weren’t going to get it out before the tour here, because we are doing two or three songs from the album in the show, there’s just no way we can’t do them, we have to do them. But they’ll be a preview, that’s how I look at it and we’ve had a couple played on the radio here so people have heard it a little. Usually you want to get your album out first and then… but we had to do it this way. We needed to do Australia and the only timeslot we had was first stop so that’s why we had to forgo the fact of the album coming out, you know. But everyone loves coming here. When you look at the itinerary and it says Australia it is always the high point and I’m not just saying that to blow smoke, everybody just loves Australia. When I mention, you know “Where you going on tour. Paris, Rome da da da da, Sydney, Australia” “Ahhh you’re going to Australia, Ahhhh I wanna go there so bad!” so you’ve got an awfully good rep out there in the world.”

I thank him and comment on our wonderful winter weather. He replies, ”I know, it’s just like Phoenix, Arizona. This would be our winter in Phoenix. When I left it was about 107 [42 degrees celsius] so it was our summer. Coming here and I thought “Man its going to be really cold” and it’s like this.”

After checking that I was still comfortable sitting in the sun and asking if I wanted to shut the curtains I am amazed again about how lovely and considerate this man is, you could just talk to him for hours and you feel like he would be very happy chatting to you!

Alice has said elsewhere that Dirty Diamonds is a return to early Alice Cooper, the Alice of the ‘70’s? I ask him what prompted him to do that and how is it different?

“Well the last album, The Eyes of Alice Cooper album. I’ll give you the whole story, it’s kind of interesting. I did three albums in a row that were very, very apocalyptic, heavy, big story brutal albums, Brutal Planet, Last Temptation, Dragontown, they were kind of a trilogy, you know very end-of-time kind of albums with a message that was a good message… try and avoid hell. You know… Hell’s not going to be smoking grass with Jim Morrison, it’s a real thing and I was giving that message very much in reality and I was kind of saying how the world was turning that way. Right after Brutal Planet came out 9/11 happened, I mean it was almost prophecy, it was scary and I started thinking now people are going to think that the album came out after the tragedy and I was capitalising on 9/11.”
 
“No it was before, talking about something like that happening and it was weird, when it happened. I thought something like this would happen but I didn’t think it would be two weeks later. But anyways, those albums were big and heavy and they were timely. When those albums were done and we were finished touring with them we always think what’s next? And to me, I never try to force that. I heard The White Stripes; I heard The Hives, The Strokes, The Vines, and Jet... I love these albums. Why do I love these albums so much? Well because they were Detroit garage rock 1968. I mean we used to play with The Stooges and MC5 every week and we sounded just like that and I said that would be fun to go revisit that part of my life, let’s go back to that era - no story - just 12 great rock songs and really put the emphasis not on the production but on the playing and on the songs. How good are the songs? Can the songs stand up on their own? And that’s what we did for Eyes of Alice Cooper and we did the album in 14 days!”

Leaving no moments for interjection, Alice continues “I told the band, no overdubs. I said we’re going to play it all. I said “We’re going to write the song, go in the next room record the song, I’m going to put the vocal on it, we’re all going to listen to it and say ‘That sounds great’, put it to bed. That’s it”. Boom. “I gotta fix that guitar”. No. A band doesn’t get a chance to fix their guitar in a live show. If you make a little mistake, that’s what a band sounds like. What’s wrong with that? Why does it have to be Def Leppard? Why do they have to be Queen, like perfect? I don’t want a perfect album. I want a band that plays great and plays these songs great and they make me believe them. Okay, if their bass is a little slow, if it pushes on the drums: good that’s what a band should sound like. So basically, what it was like, it was funny, it was bands copying early Alice Cooper that inspired me to go back and do that myself. So I developed Dirty Diamonds to force that kind of thing.”

So, on the same sort of topic, the Alice Cooper persona, the shock rock angle. How does he feel about the others that have followed doing the same kind of thing? Marilyn Manson, Slipknot? How does he think they are doing and how is it different?

“What’s different is my approach to it. I don’t think you can shock an audience anymore. I think audiences pretend to be shocked. You can’t out-shock CNN. When I’m sitting here watching a real guy getting his head chopped off and I’m going “Well that’s certainly more shocking than me doing my head getting cut off on stage.” Shock rock’s dead at that point. You know Marilyn Manson, Slipknot cannot be more devastating than CNN. So we’ve been eclipsed by reality here. Shock rock was easy in the ‘70’s as there was nothing like it. You could wear make up and put a snake around you, get your head cut off and call yourself Alice Cooper and everyone was just “Ahhh! How could they!”  And it was great because we could, you there was nothing really in the show that was… it was vaudeville. Now I do it to entertain the audience. Now when people see the guillotine, [in a whisper] ” ohhh… the guillotine, the guillotine” and we make it as real as you can make it, and it really looks real and the blood goes in the audience and the people love getting covered in the blood and for that moment Yes, it is shocking but it is always accompanied by a little laugh.  You kind of go “Ha” and that to me is what it really is. 

“The difference between Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson is I don’t think Marilyn Manson has a punch line. I don’t think Slipknot has a punch line. They go out, they’re aggressive, they’re over the top, blasphemous on every level, without a punch line and that’s the difference. To me, I like to give the audience walking away a “That was the best party I’ve ever been too” not “I feel a little sick to my stomach”. That was never my object to make the audience a little sick to their stomach, you know, it was always to make the audience say “I can’t wait to see them again”.  The other difference is songs, I have the luxury of going back to 14 or 15 radio hits whereas these guys don’t and I’ve always emphasised… you know I’ve never talked to Marilyn Manson one-on-one but that would be an interesting conversation because I think he is really good at what he does, I don’t believe in what he does, certainly on a theological level, being Christian, you know. I understand it, I get it, he does what he does as well as I do what I do, but I don’t agree as to what his product is. But he’s very good at it… it would be an interesting conversation.

I suggest it would be a much more interesting and a much longer conversation than I had with him as he is very soft spoken and comes across as a Brian with make-up on, very different to his persona, not unlike yourself.

“Interesting, really? I think I would talk to him on a level of “Where does the shock end, where does the art end, where do you begin?” How much of it is what you really believe? How much of it is what you want them to be affected by? He’s an artist you know. Its not like I don’t get what he’s doing. We would probably argue on a level of end product. I understand ripping the pages out of the bible in your case, because that shocks the audience, that pisses off the audience, that pisses ME off being a Christian but in all reality this God you hate so much is probably not the same God I’m talking about. So your vision of this God or how God was presented to you is probably not the same one I’m talking about. You know that would be the interesting conversation not the art part, the theological part would be.”

I laugh and mention how amazing it would be to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

He laughs and replies, ”Yeah I know! I wouldn’t argue with him, I would just want to know what kind of background, what kind of childhood, was he force-fed religion, was he beaten? If he is going to say that Christianity is full of hypocrisy… agreed [putting his hand up]. Christianity is made up of Christians, made up of people. Luckily the church is not based on Christian Christians, it’s based on Christ, he didn’t do that. We’re fallible, he isn’t. That would be my argument to him, I’d say “I agree with you. Those guys you see on TV are totally fallible”.

So how do you reconcile your stage persona with your belief system and your religious feelings?

“Well I don’t really think that they oppose each other at this stage because if anything, I have always in my life, with the last four or five albums I have totally preached against the whole satanic movement.  Not preached but warned against it. I’ve certainly warned against apathy in your spiritual life. I think you do need to find the thing you believe in and you better find it pretty quick. For me to say that, for Alice… Alice is just a comic book. Alice is like Phantom of The Opera, I don’t see any difference between the violence in my show and the violence in Macbeth. I mean when you were at school you had to read Macbeth, that’s much bloodier than I do and that’s a classic. So I don’t really find the opposition there. I’m not telling people to sleep with anybody, I used to but not anymore. I don’t believe that anymore. I believe in the sanctity of marriage, I believe that sex is better, best when you’re married so I oppose a lot of things that you would never think that I would oppose but I’m not one of these [wagging his finger at me], I’m not a finger wagger, I’m sitting there going ‘This is what I believe’ and Alice Cooper is going to give it to you in the face.

“Most of my songs are about people, the hypocrisy of people and that makes it fun for me because people are the greatest subjects. They are the greatest source of sex, religion, comedy, tragedy, everything I write about in my songs are about the ironies of being human. I mean I’m not sitting out there on a soapbox but if you ask me, I’ll tell ya what I believe.  So I don’t really find anything wrong with playing Alice Cooper. I think its just culture, it’s an art form. If I were preaching:  “Go ahead and screw every girl you can” I think it would be a different thing but Alice, he just doesn’t do that. “

I curious because he refers to Alice in the third person and ask him whether he has performed without the stage show?

“I’ve acted without being Alice, I’ve played different characters but when you play Alice, you have to play Alice. He’s Alice. I created Alice to be a character that fifty years from now some kid can pick up the garb, put the make-up on, do the songs and be Alice. He’s as much of an animated character as Zorro or Dracula or Jack the Ripper or Captain Hook and Alice Cooper. He’s not a real character, he’s Hannibal Lecter.

Do you think you could you sing the songs without the make-up?

“Oh sure, absolutely, no problem. BUT I know when I’m on stage, the audience, I’m kind of Barnum and Bailey, I give the audience what they want.  In rehearsal I sing the songs without the makeup, I don’t sing them with the intensity that Alice does, I go through the songs with the band. When I become Alice on stage, I… never back off with Alice, I let Alice be Alice. And he doesn’t walk the same way I do, he doesn’t talk the same way I do, he’s totally arrogant, total sadist [laughing]. I mean, but I know his limitations also, I know where he won’t go, I know what he fears, what he doesn’t fear, you know.  So I’m probably the only one who can play Alice correctly.

I then ask him about his acting roles, such as Wayne’s World. “That was fun.” How did it feel to be written as an idol role and to be worshipped? ”You know I meet those guys all the time, every day. Wayne and Garth are basically your average kid, that wants to be a rock star, wants to be around rock, want to rock and everything like that. If AC/DC were standing there they’d be “Ahhhh AC/DC Ahhhh”. But in this case, Michael [Myers] and Dana [Carvey] came to me because they knew I had the acting experience and I had the credentials to be that legendary character so they knew I could handle the script and everything like that. The funny thing was there was no script when I got there it was like “where’s the song, what’s the song, okay that’s the song. Cool.” and then you guys come backstage and say hi. When I got there, they handed me about five pages of dialogue and they said it’d be really funny if you were really intellectual and your band was really smart, you know like Jeopardy smart,  and I said “That’s fine. When are we going to shoot it?” and they said “Ohhh in about half an hour.”  “Ah! Ah!” “I gotta go learn this now?” So I go in the other room and I go “OK.”  Start pounding through the lines and when it came time for the bit I remembered about 20% of it and the rest I just started winging it. I’d just start inventing these things and every time I’d do it, it would be different, so Mike and Dana are on either side of the camera, you don’t see them going [mouthed silently]:   ”What are you doing?” and they are trying to get me to laugh. I’m trying to find a spot right there [dead ahead] and they are there and there [indicates either side of the centre spot] and they are doing everything to get me to laugh. It was very funny, I had a great time.”

So do you learn all about the city you are visiting just like in the Wayne’s World movie? What have you learned about Sydney?

“You know how I learn about a city. I get to a city like Sydney, as soon as I hit the ground I check in and I take off and I walk, all the way along George Street, I go down to Paddington Market or I go to Paddy’s market. I go to Chinatown. Yesterday I probably walked eight hours. My daughter and I went everywhere, we went to the movies.

How old is your daughter? “She’s 24. She’s actually in the show. Last time she played Britney and this year she is going to be Paris Hilton.”

So she’s the beheading? ”Well we let the chihuahua take care of the bad stuff this time. Its very funny, very funny. I always pick on… the ongoing war between pop and rock will always be there.  And so Britney, you know, I’m not saying she’s over, she’s pregnant, she’s out of the picture and  who walks in, this perfect target. Paris Hilton walks in, walks in with this little chihuahua and she’s in everything I pick up and I’m going “OK you’re asking for it!” [Laughing] So she was the perfect foil for all this. I was saying in rehearsals, I’ve got this song called I Wish I Was Born In Beverly Hills from an album way back and its just perfect. So you get Paris to walk on, do this bit with the paparazzi during the song and have her dog attack her. Rip her throat out. That would be hysterical wouldn’t it? So we worked it out and Calico [Cooper] does it perfect. She’s a great physical comedian so she really gets it down and the audience is dying laughing.

And its just enough at the end of the show to be the final one of these [fake elbowing the person next to you] . It sort of that last little shot, the rest of the show is pretty hard and heavy but Calico kind of provides the comic relief of the show.”

A pause occurs and I realise… I haven’t looked at my questions for ages! OK. You record a lot in Gilby Clarke’s studios, is he a sounding board? Is there a possible collaboration?

“Well, we did the Eyes of Alice Cooper album over there at Gilby’s and see Gilby is part of… see Ryan Roxy was with Slash, played with Slash, Chuck Garric played with those guys. My old guitar player Eric Dover was in that band so my whole band came out of that Guns n’ Roses school of rock and roll and Guns n’ Roses would say that THEY came out of the Alice Cooper sound of rock n’ roll so its kind of like picking my own flowers there. But that’s the kind… when I want guitar players, I’m not looking for Yngwie Malmstein, I’m not looking for Eddie Van Halen. I’m looking for Slash and Joe Perry, I’m looking for the real rock n’ roll players and that’s what these guys are and that’s what their real sensibility is playing. Keith Richards kind of rock n’ roll and that’s where I kind of came from. So, it just so happened that all of my guys came from the same school . Eric Singer is like one of the top five drummers and he’s been with me for quite a while now. I kind of share him with Kiss. When Kiss tours he’s with them and then with me, we trade off.

But Gilby of course, played with Guns n’ Roses and it’s the same thing. In fact, Gilby was so close to being in the band. Gilby would have been in the band… you see I made Eric Dover quit. He had been working on his album for five years and we were getting ready to go out for five months and I said “Eric, finish your album, you don’t need to go out with me anymore and if you weren’t going to be out with me anymore who would you pick?” and he said “Damon Johnson”.  I said “I know who he is, I’m familiar with him but why him?”. He said “Because he plays just like me”. They went to high school together so you see… I called Damon and he just walked right in and was there. Absolutely perfect for the band.

You’ve said that you don’t believe that rock and politics aren’t linked?

“They are linked, they shouldn’t be. I think it is an unfair advantage. I think people, not just rock but entertainment too. People put such high emphasis on their stars. What do they drink? What do they smoke? What do they drive? We’re all selling things and then all of a sudden politics comes in and let’s say Tom Cruise and Hugh Jackman have two differing views on politics and you go: “Well whatever he believes in, I believe in” and that’s not what people think. People think “Oh that’s what I have to think because he’s my favourite star” shouldn’t work that way.  That’s what I don’t believe in. So when artist use their celebrity to sell a political idea its unfair and its unfair use of the image and you know I’m guilty of that. I’ll see someone I like a say I believe this and I believe that too. And I’m starting to think that’s not fair. So when I got to the point, in the last election where there are all these people being anti-Bush and anti-this and I just thought it doesn’t matter what I believe and I was sitting there just thinking, I don’t think this is a fair game. It seems like “well that’s fine, be anti-Bush if you want to”  but don’t try to persuade other people to be anti-Bush just because you are.

I mention that I see where he’s coming from and perhaps a lot of people don’t take the time to educate themselves and adopt the views of their idol as a kind of drive-thru political education.

“Absolutely, yeah! At least know what you are talking about. After seeing the whole thing and at the end you may actually be pro-Bush, You may go “I really love your records but I don’t know what you are talking about at all, I don’t see what’s wrong with what’s going on, I think maybe it should be going on”. That doesn’t mean you can’t like his records anymore, I just think it is an unfair advantage. That’s all I was saying.”

Wrapping up I ask Alice what has been his single best career move?

“Bob Ezrin. Bob Ezrin producing made Alice Cooper what it is by far.  We were a good band, a good psychadelic band with no direction  until he came  along and he saw it, formed it and said I’m going to make you guys.. I’m going to do for you what The Beatles had done to them.  Shaped, George Martin took them and shaped them and Bob knew exactly what to do with us to make it, to form out music. So he was the best career move we ever made.”

So we said our goodbyes, took a photo and left with promises of catching up at the show. The best Monday morning of my life!

Alice’s new album Dirty Diamonds is in stores in early July and don’t miss his live Australian shows:

21 June, Civic Theatre, Newcastle
23 June, Enmore Theatre, Sydney
24 June, Enmore Theatre, Sydney
26 June, Evan Theatre, Penrith
27 June, Twin Towns Service Club, Gold Coast
28 June, Brisbane Convention Centre, Brisbane
30 June, Palais Theatre, Melbourne
1 July, Silverdome, Launceston
4 July, Burswood Theatre, Perth
5 July, Burswood Theatre, Perth