Thursday, February 6, 2025

Vaudevillainy

Perhaps no artist has taken rock and roll to the theatrical extremes that Alice Cooper has. The Detroit native's tales of the macabre are sometimes scary and sometimes soulful. Underneath the makeup, Cooper is a brilliant songwriter, author of classics like "I'm Eighteen," and "School's Out." TCP got on the phone with Cooper to discuss his work, and his love of golf, in preparation for his Tuesday, July 9 concert in Sylvania.

Have you left for the tour yet?
We've been out for about Three weeks with [Marilyn] Manson. His show is different from our show, it's more industrial-creepy. Manson's got his own look and attitude that makes it pretty cool. Our show is what it's always been—classic rock Alice. Vaudevillain, not vaudevillian. The two shows work well together.

I saw you last summer opening for Iron Maiden.
We've known them for years. Great guys. Again, two different kinds of shows. That was their tour, they invited us along for a month and we said sure. Us doing seventy minutes is like a vacation. We're used to doing 28 songs, so it was fun to just do a short set.

So in Toledo you're going to have a longer time slot. What should we expect?
the show is in thirds. The first third is very glitzy, very glam rock, playing the hits. Then it will go into the alice horror section, where it becomes classic, creepy Alice, and then after that we're going to do the Raise the Dead section. It's a salute to our fallen brothers, the Hollywood Vampires. We used to have a drinking club called the Hollywood Vampires, which was me, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, and Harry Nilsson. As you can tell, there aren't many of us left, and this is my tribute to them. I've never done covers before on the stage, so it will be fun to do those things. We're going to have gravestones come up, and have Alice in the graveyard. Its fun to do the four covers and finish out with "School's Out" and the big hits.

This is the best band I've ever worked with. I have Orianthi in the band. She's brilliant. If you're talking about lead guitar players, she's right there in the top ten. In this show we let her do "Foxy Lady," and she gets a standing ovation every time.

I have her solo album.
The weird thing is she's Australian but she sings like Bonnie Raitt. Makes sense, she did the album in Tennessee. I want to see her do a straight-up hard rock album.

To me she seems like a reincarnation of Lita Ford.
I'd put her up against Lita, I'd put her up against anybody.

You say you don't do covers, but you covered Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" at Bonnaroo last year.
Going to Bonnaroo is like a scout camp out, everything's green, everyone's concerned about the trash and the air, just the opposite of what we grew up with in the 70's. Some of the bands aren't extremely rock and roll, and then we come on at midnight and we're like ghost stories around the campfire. So I said let's do at least one song that they're going to relate to. By the way, they loved the energy of the show—we didn't think they would. So we did our version of "Born This way" with our frankenstein dressed as Gaga with the blond hair. The papers said we stole the show.  By the way she [Gaga] liked it. She sent us an email. She's a hard rocker anyway. I wish she would do more hard rock and less dance music.

I think that's a common sentiment after she released Born This Way. You know, Monster, the one that blew up, was a heavy pop record.
Absolutely. If you kept her pop sensibility and gave her rock band it would take off. The other person that could do that is Ke$ha. If you gave her a band she could be like Robert Plant. She's a big Nashville girl who can sauce it up, all you need is a sleazy rock band. I told her, everybody eventually hates divas, the diva eventually becomes the butt of the joke, whereas every rock girl is put on a pedestal. Look at Joan Jett, Suzi Quatro. the real rock chicks end up being the most revered.

She did a song with Iggy Pop. You should get on Gaga's next record and one-up her.
Well I had Ke$ha on my last record. She played the devil. I told her, forget "Tik-Tok," you're going to be the devil, but not the scary devil, you're going to be the seductive devil. The sort of thing where… whatever she wants she's going to get. It really worked. Putting her in that situation she said she'd rather do rock. I hope she doesn't wait too long.

So, everyone knows you're an avid golfer. Have you ever golfed Inverness in Toledo?
I have. I golf almost every day, I play six days a week. When you play Inverness, the course has history, it's a great course. Those are the courses you remember, they play PGA Championships and Us Opens, you brag about being on those courses. I want to play Marion when we're near Philadelphia, when I saw the US Open there it looked like the hardest course on the planet.

Do you look for a challenge, or do you just want to enjoy the experience?
I like to play but I am like a three-handicap. I look at the course and just try and see what i can shoot. I can't hit it like the pros do. I hit it straight, but not as long, and i hit greens. When the best players in the world are ten over, I pay attention. That makes me want to play that golf course and let it beat me up.

You've collaborated with Neil Gaiman before on a concept album, Any concept albums in the future.
The last album I did, Welcome 2 My Nightmare, was not a sequel to Welcome to my Nightmare, I was just trying to give Alice a new nightmare. Because first of all, there's no limit to how many nightmares you can have. I wondered what nightmares a character from 1976 would have now.

The next album will be different because it's a covers album. I conceptualized that by confining it to the Hollywood Vampires, and going back to the days when we used to drink every night and concentrating on those guys. So it will be conceptual. Raise the Dead is already three quarters done. It will be done in September. I figured everyone had a covers album except me. We all started as bar bands, you know?

They aren't always magnets for critical acclaim, but I like cover albums.
I think its great when people do versions of my songs. I don't care who, i want to hear their versions. I herds Roger Daltry do "No More Mr. Nice Guy," and Joan Jett do "Be My Lover," and Dio do "Welcome to my Nightmare." Its great to hear what they pull out of it. The Melvins did "Do I Try?" I wondered what would ever possess them to do that. If you're going to do a cover, you never go to a song that is iconic, you never do "21st Century Schizoid man," unless you're going to do something amazingly different with it, but you could take a straight up Chuck Berry or Beatles song. But those really classic records can't be copied. One of the greats I heard was Etta James doing "Only Women Bleed" as a blues song. She pulled things out of that song I could never get. Her version was sung from experience, it was a lot more soulful than mine—same with Tina Turner's version. I even heard Frank Sinatra do "You and Me." But the absolute best version was, I saw McCartney backstage, and the band was warming up to "Under My Wheels." Are you kidding me? A Beatle knows one of my songs? He just said it was a great rock song. That's his kind of song, a Detroit rocker.

That's the magic of Alice Cooper. Under the theatrics it's just good songwriting.
to me that's the cake, if you don't have that cake don't put any icing on it. When we would practice for nine hours, eight of it was the music. We came up doing Yardbird songs, and when you're eighteen, those songs are complicated stuff. It still is, they made the most unique records, but everyone has to go somewhere to start.

That's what I love about Iron Maiden. The theater needs to serve something greater.
Not only that but, this gets my goat, half the bands out there are taped. Not the new bands, not the Mansons, but classic rock bands. I won't name names, but I just think—Where's the honor in that? You should know better. You're cut from a different bolt. A classic rock band using tape is just cheating.there's so many good musicians—you can't find guys to play those songs.

You're one of the last chances Toledo has to see a classic rocker. We'll never see Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin live.
And they were great live! Funny you should mention. Back in 1968 we played with Led Zeppelin at the Whisky A-Go-Go, and nobody had ever heard of either one of us. the next night we played the Cheetah Club with Pink Floyd. They ended up running out of money and moved in with us. We lived together in a house in Venice Beach. Syd Barrett was their lead guitar player at that time. I would get up in the morning and there was Syd at the table. this was ten in the morning. He's got a box of corn flakes in front of him and he's watching the box of cornflakes the way I would watch cartoons. Whatever was going on, the cornflakes were dancing and singing for him. Right then I started realizing—here's the genius us of this group and I don't think he'll be with us very long. Right after that he had his break and couldn't really function onstage.

Alice will play Toledo on Tuesday, July 9. Doors at 6:30pm. $30.50-59.50. Centennial Terrace, 4645 Heatherdowns Blvd. 419-381-8851. alicecooper.com

Perhaps no artist has taken rock and roll to the theatrical extremes that Alice Cooper has. The Detroit native's tales of the macabre are sometimes scary and sometimes soulful. Underneath the makeup, Cooper is a brilliant songwriter, author of classics like "I'm Eighteen," and "School's Out." TCP got on the phone with Cooper to discuss his work, and his love of golf, in preparation for his Tuesday, July 9 concert in Sylvania.

Have you left for the tour yet?
We've been out for about Three weeks with [Marilyn] Manson. His show is different from our show, it's more industrial-creepy. Manson's got his own look and attitude that makes it pretty cool. Our show is what it's always been—classic rock Alice. Vaudevillain, not vaudevillian. The two shows work well together.

I saw you last summer opening for Iron Maiden.
We've known them for years. Great guys. Again, two different kinds of shows. That was their tour, they invited us along for a month and we said sure. Us doing seventy minutes is like a vacation. We're used to doing 28 songs, so it was fun to just do a short set.

So in Toledo you're going to have a longer time slot. What should we expect?
the show is in thirds. The first third is very glitzy, very glam rock, playing the hits. Then it will go into the alice horror section, where it becomes classic, creepy Alice, and then after that we're going to do the Raise the Dead section. It's a salute to our fallen brothers, the Hollywood Vampires. We used to have a drinking club called the Hollywood Vampires, which was me, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, and Harry Nilsson. As you can tell, there aren't many of us left, and this is my tribute to them. I've never done covers before on the stage, so it will be fun to do those things. We're going to have gravestones come up, and have Alice in the graveyard. Its fun to do the four covers and finish out with "School's Out" and the big hits.

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This is the best band I've ever worked with. I have Orianthi in the band. She's brilliant. If you're talking about lead guitar players, she's right there in the top ten. In this show we let her do "Foxy Lady," and she gets a standing ovation every time.

I have her solo album.
The weird thing is she's Australian but she sings like Bonnie Raitt. Makes sense, she did the album in Tennessee. I want to see her do a straight-up hard rock album.

To me she seems like a reincarnation of Lita Ford.
I'd put her up against Lita, I'd put her up against anybody.

You say you don't do covers, but you covered Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" at Bonnaroo last year.
Going to Bonnaroo is like a scout camp out, everything's green, everyone's concerned about the trash and the air, just the opposite of what we grew up with in the 70's. Some of the bands aren't extremely rock and roll, and then we come on at midnight and we're like ghost stories around the campfire. So I said let's do at least one song that they're going to relate to. By the way, they loved the energy of the show—we didn't think they would. So we did our version of "Born This way" with our frankenstein dressed as Gaga with the blond hair. The papers said we stole the show.  By the way she [Gaga] liked it. She sent us an email. She's a hard rocker anyway. I wish she would do more hard rock and less dance music.

I think that's a common sentiment after she released Born This Way. You know, Monster, the one that blew up, was a heavy pop record.
Absolutely. If you kept her pop sensibility and gave her rock band it would take off. The other person that could do that is Ke$ha. If you gave her a band she could be like Robert Plant. She's a big Nashville girl who can sauce it up, all you need is a sleazy rock band. I told her, everybody eventually hates divas, the diva eventually becomes the butt of the joke, whereas every rock girl is put on a pedestal. Look at Joan Jett, Suzi Quatro. the real rock chicks end up being the most revered.

She did a song with Iggy Pop. You should get on Gaga's next record and one-up her.
Well I had Ke$ha on my last record. She played the devil. I told her, forget "Tik-Tok," you're going to be the devil, but not the scary devil, you're going to be the seductive devil. The sort of thing where… whatever she wants she's going to get. It really worked. Putting her in that situation she said she'd rather do rock. I hope she doesn't wait too long.

So, everyone knows you're an avid golfer. Have you ever golfed Inverness in Toledo?
I have. I golf almost every day, I play six days a week. When you play Inverness, the course has history, it's a great course. Those are the courses you remember, they play PGA Championships and Us Opens, you brag about being on those courses. I want to play Marion when we're near Philadelphia, when I saw the US Open there it looked like the hardest course on the planet.

Do you look for a challenge, or do you just want to enjoy the experience?
I like to play but I am like a three-handicap. I look at the course and just try and see what i can shoot. I can't hit it like the pros do. I hit it straight, but not as long, and i hit greens. When the best players in the world are ten over, I pay attention. That makes me want to play that golf course and let it beat me up.

You've collaborated with Neil Gaiman before on a concept album, Any concept albums in the future.
The last album I did, Welcome 2 My Nightmare, was not a sequel to Welcome to my Nightmare, I was just trying to give Alice a new nightmare. Because first of all, there's no limit to how many nightmares you can have. I wondered what nightmares a character from 1976 would have now.

The next album will be different because it's a covers album. I conceptualized that by confining it to the Hollywood Vampires, and going back to the days when we used to drink every night and concentrating on those guys. So it will be conceptual. Raise the Dead is already three quarters done. It will be done in September. I figured everyone had a covers album except me. We all started as bar bands, you know?

They aren't always magnets for critical acclaim, but I like cover albums.
I think its great when people do versions of my songs. I don't care who, i want to hear their versions. I herds Roger Daltry do "No More Mr. Nice Guy," and Joan Jett do "Be My Lover," and Dio do "Welcome to my Nightmare." Its great to hear what they pull out of it. The Melvins did "Do I Try?" I wondered what would ever possess them to do that. If you're going to do a cover, you never go to a song that is iconic, you never do "21st Century Schizoid man," unless you're going to do something amazingly different with it, but you could take a straight up Chuck Berry or Beatles song. But those really classic records can't be copied. One of the greats I heard was Etta James doing "Only Women Bleed" as a blues song. She pulled things out of that song I could never get. Her version was sung from experience, it was a lot more soulful than mine—same with Tina Turner's version. I even heard Frank Sinatra do "You and Me." But the absolute best version was, I saw McCartney backstage, and the band was warming up to "Under My Wheels." Are you kidding me? A Beatle knows one of my songs? He just said it was a great rock song. That's his kind of song, a Detroit rocker.

That's the magic of Alice Cooper. Under the theatrics it's just good songwriting.
to me that's the cake, if you don't have that cake don't put any icing on it. When we would practice for nine hours, eight of it was the music. We came up doing Yardbird songs, and when you're eighteen, those songs are complicated stuff. It still is, they made the most unique records, but everyone has to go somewhere to start.

That's what I love about Iron Maiden. The theater needs to serve something greater.
Not only that but, this gets my goat, half the bands out there are taped. Not the new bands, not the Mansons, but classic rock bands. I won't name names, but I just think—Where's the honor in that? You should know better. You're cut from a different bolt. A classic rock band using tape is just cheating.there's so many good musicians—you can't find guys to play those songs.

You're one of the last chances Toledo has to see a classic rocker. We'll never see Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin live.
And they were great live! Funny you should mention. Back in 1968 we played with Led Zeppelin at the Whisky A-Go-Go, and nobody had ever heard of either one of us. the next night we played the Cheetah Club with Pink Floyd. They ended up running out of money and moved in with us. We lived together in a house in Venice Beach. Syd Barrett was their lead guitar player at that time. I would get up in the morning and there was Syd at the table. this was ten in the morning. He's got a box of corn flakes in front of him and he's watching the box of cornflakes the way I would watch cartoons. Whatever was going on, the cornflakes were dancing and singing for him. Right then I started realizing—here's the genius us of this group and I don't think he'll be with us very long. Right after that he had his break and couldn't really function onstage.

Alice will play Toledo on Tuesday, July 9. Doors at 6:30pm. $30.50-59.50. Centennial Terrace, 4645 Heatherdowns Blvd. 419-381-8851. alicecooper.com

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