Algonquin for "the good land": Alice Cooper, pictured during his Wayne's World cameo, will shock-rock the Turning Stone Resort and Casino this week.
Cooper, a surprisingly spry 60, needs
little introduction. Since 1968, when he was picked up by Frank Zappa’s
Straight Records label, Cooper (real name: Vincent Furnier) has charted
decades of dementia in rock history. Several dozen albums are part of
his discography, accompanied by a long tradition of over-the-top, Grand
Guignol-styled concerts. Cooper has also dabbled in film acting; aside
from his unforgettable cameo in Wayne’s World, he has turned up in cult flicks like John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness and a Freddy Krueger outing.
Having kicked an alcohol habit in the
1980s, Cooper now lives a healthy, happy life with his wife Sheryl,
mother of their three children, in Phoenix, Ariz., as he juggles
fright-night concert tours and fairway freedom on the early-morning
golf links. Additionally, Cooper is now a shock-rock jock, as he shares
witty rock lore on the nationally syndicated Nights with Alice Cooper
radio program that began in 2004. Although WAQX-FM 95.7 (95X) dropped
the program earlier this year, it’s still available on Ithaca’s WIII-FM
99.9 (I100) Mondays through Saturdays, 7 p.m. to midnight.
The eerie icon is currently pushing the CD release of Along Came a Spider
(Steamhammer), a hard-driven concept album that explores the travails
of a serial killer named Spider. Although the tour to accompany that
release won’t kick off until next year, Cooper’s current Psycho Drama
tour will stop at the Turning Stone, just in time to fill your
Halloween dreams with a macabre mix of horrifying humor and
showmanship. Tickets are $50, $55 and $65. For more information, call
361-SHOW.
Can you give fans an update on what you’ve been up to lately?
The Psycho Drama
tour is 200 cities. We did 100 cities last year, and 100 cities this
year, and we’re getting pretty close to the end of this one. Then we
start the Along Came a Spider tour next year. But the Psycho Drama
show is sort of a “best of” Alice, because we do all the hits and a
couple of songs from the new album. This show is as theatrical as
anything we’ve done since Welcome to My Nightmare (1975).
Along Came a Spider is on a new label, Steamhammer.
A
lot of established rockers are going with smaller labels with deeper
pockets. The record business is crazy right now. In the 1970s you
wanted to be with Warner Brothers or Capitol or Epic or Elektra. I was
with Warner for 20 albums or something like that {it’s closer to 15
when adding the initial three albums from Zappa’s Straight label, and
not counting a pair of greatest-hits compilations}, and you get to the
point where you realize you’re getting lost in the shuffle. If there
are 80 bands competing for the same money, I’d rather be on a label
with four bands: Motorhead, Whitesnake, Alice Cooper and a couple other
bands, you know?
Anyway, it’s very hard to get airplay
even if you’re an established, classic-rock band. I always tell people
that it’s not about what’s good, it’s about what’s next. Which is
tragic. If Paul McCartney came out with an album right now, better than
Sgt. Pepper’s, it’d never get played. But some band called the
Purple Giraffes comes out with a crappy song and it gets played every
hour, and you go, “How is this happening?”
We kind of traded gourmet for fast food.
It’s too bad, but I’m not against it. I like young bands, especially
garage bands. They’re going in the right direction, bands that take it
down to basics, and just play great rock’n’roll.
I might be the last of the guys to do
concept albums. I’ve always been a storyteller, from the very
beginning. For 25 albums, I think, there’s always been some sort of
story going on with what I do. So when you’ve got a serial killer named
Spider who wraps his victims in silk and steals a leg, because he needs
eight legs for a spider, I think he’s an interesting guy to write
about. I wrote it in the form of a diary, and then at the end of the
diary he says, “Oh, I couldn’t have done any of that. I’ve been in a
cell for 28 years.” I like to write the album almost like it’s a
Stephen King sort of story.
Will
your daughter Calico be on the tour with you this time {as was the case
during Cooper’s 2005 New York State Fair performance}?
I’ve
got both daughters {Calico and Sonora}, who are both professional
dancers and actresses, and my wife {Sheryl}, who’s a professional
dancer and actress, so I’ve got three extra bodies on stage this time,
which is great. First of all, it fills the show up where I can use more
zombies and Chinese assassins, and it makes the show look a lot bigger.
And I get to travel with my family. They’re all highly trained, so I
don’t have to sit there and say, “Listen, I don’t know what you’re
doing here,” because they’re all choreographers.
In terms of the current show’s production and theatrics, is there anything fans should expect this time around?
I always try
to keep the tradition of the Alice Cooper show, which is that Alice has
been rock’n’roll’s premier villain since day one. We’ve had a lot of
villains since, but I still think Alice is the oldest vampire there.
But you can’t do horror on stage without comedy; the horror by itself
works for a while, but then it gets old. You really do have to play it
against comedy or romance. I mean, Alice might slit your throat, but he
might slip on a banana peel after that. I like the idea of villain
rock, some sort of dark, comic vaudeville.
We’re all big fans of Nights With Alice Cooper at The New Times. How does the show work, and how much planning goes into it?
None! Maybe
that’s the charm of it! When I took that gig, the Dick Clark people
came to me and said, “If you had a radio show, what would it be?” I
said I always loved the free-form FM of the late 1960s and early 1970s,
where you might hear The Beatles, but then you might hear The Yardbirds
right after that, or Paul Butterfield or Love or Them. All these bands
that made unbelievable music that you never, ever hear on FM. You hear
AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen. I can go right down the list, and even
if you play those bands, why not play the deeper cuts? They had all
kinds of great songs on those albums, not just “Immigrant Song.” In
America we just seem to gravitate toward the hits, and that’s it.
I love hearing deep cuts. I get more
e-mails saying, “What was that song you played?” or “I thought it was
Led Zeppelin, but it wasn’t.” I say, “No, that was The Yardbirds,” who
actually were the beginnings of Led Zeppelin. There would have been no
Led Zeppelin without The Yardbirds, and that’s when people start
getting a little bit of an education on 1960s rock’n’roll. There are
Yardbirds songs that nobody has caught up to yet. There are recordings
by Paul Butterfield that I have never heard one live band ever come
close to when it comes to guitar work and harmonica work. And you find
these kids who say, “I’m 15. I listen to your show every night, and
I’ve become a huge Love fan,” or “I’ve become a huge fan of early
Doors.” These kids should be listening to Rage Against the Machine, and
they’re not. They’re now listening to Deep Purple.
Sometimes it sounds like you can hear the tour bus in the background. Are you literally recording the show while you’re touring?
It’s
on the tour bus. One night we might be in Moscow, the next night we’re
in Leningrad, and the night after that we’re in Vienna somewhere. I try
to make the audience understand that wherever I go, you’re going! So
we’re in a tour bus today, and we might do the next show from the
airport if we’ve got a two-hour layover, and you give them the feel of
being on the road. When you hear people in the background, playing
poker or watching Dexter, that’s really what the road is like.
According to the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), you’re going to be in the upcoming
3-D film Horrorween.
Really?
I haven’t heard about that one. They don’t tell me about those things.
Watch: I’ll get a call next week saying “Here’s your script,” and I’ll
go, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I get scripts all the
time, and if it looks like something that might be fun then I’ll
definitely do it.
I’m not much into the torture movies. I don’t really like the Hostel movies. To me, when you skin a girl’s face off, what’s scary about that? Whereas you go and see something like Silent Hill or 30 Days of Night, that’s pretty scary.
Our managing editor and film critic, Bill DeLapp, said he picked up a DVD of director Alan Rudolph’s 1980 rock satire Roadie for $3 at Big Lots. He said, “It was worth every penny.”
That’s a hard one to find. If he found that one, tell him to find Monster Dog
(1985). I just came out of the hospital and I wanted to see if I could
work sober, so I took a splatter movie in Spain. I said, “Look, nobody
will ever see this movie, but I need to see if I can get up at six in
the morning, get into the makeup, learn my lines and work sober.” It
was really intense for me, and they were only going to release this in
the Philippines. And, of course, the movie is now in every Blockbuster,
and I have to explain why somebody overdubbed my voice in broken
English. Everybody in the whole cast was British and American, and all
of our voices were overdubbed. So it makes it even better. I love
movies like that. This is the kind of movie I rent.
What do you think of Arizona Senator {and presidential candidate} John McCain?
I
see him at the Phoenix Suns games all the time, and I go over and say
“Hi” to him and his wife. You know, I’ve never once said one political
thing to him, and he’s never said one political thing to me, and I
don’t think he’s ever said anything about rock’n’roll, and neither have
I. It’s more like, “Do you think Steve Nash will score 20 points
tonight?” It’s all basketball. I am so extremely unpolitical. My job is
to let you escape away from politics, not get you more into it. I’m
going to vote and everything, but at the same time, I really believe
it’s not a rock star’s job to be a politician.
Any chance you’ll be playing at the Turning Stone’s Atunyote golf course?
I’ve
played it and it’s great. If it’s not too cold, I’ll definitely be
there, because I play when I’m at home six days a week. I play every
single morning. At 6:30 or 7 a.m., I’m on the tee. Very few people need
concerts at 8:30 in the morning, so I’m on the course. I get up early.
I don’t drink anymore, and I don’t smoke. I’ll go to bed at 1 a.m. and
get up at 6 a.m. I’m fine. I mean that didn’t happen when I was
drinking.
What are you driving these days?
Distance-wise?
I have never been a long driver, but I am probably the straightest
driver you’ll ever see. I’ll probably hit 10 out of 12 fairways, and
that’s the best part of my game. I can do 245 to 250 {yards}, maybe
catch it at 270 or so, but you’re never looking for my ball. I’ve
really got my swing down now. It’s so simplified that the ball is going
to go dead down the middle. I’m going with a higher-lofted driver and a
lighter shaft, and it really makes for a simpler swing.
Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me.
Tell everybody up there in the first 10 rows not to wear their best clothes!
Say no to droogs: Cooper sports a Clockwork Orange T-shirt for a 1983 promo shot.
No more Mr. Nice Guy: Cooper wowed New Times reviewer Phil D. Rapper during a rainy 2005 State Fair
appearance.
