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Alice v. Coop

(or Welcome To His Nightmare)

"HI COOP, I got good news and bad news."

"OK let's have the good news first."

"You know that skylight you want to put in your room, well it's covered, paid for, everything is great."

"That's terrific, but why are you telling me this at seven o'clock in the morning? What's the bad news?"

"You don't have a bedroom."

Alice Cooper is the kind of star whose $350,000 house burns down before he's even moved in — and it's Elton John who phones the fire brigade.

Coop was planning to live next door to Elton in Beverly Hills, when an electrical fault reduced the house and his collection of paintings by Dali, Warhol and Jonathan Winters, to a pile of ashes.

"It's just gone, black, there's nothing left of it. It's just ashes. I went up there and I said, 'AHHH.'

"I started to be an art collector. I suppose I could have got pretty good at it."

But Coop ain't worried. After all it was insured. He's that sort of person.

"It could happen to anyone," says moustached Alice, relaxing in his Savoy hotel suite, feet up, colour television on and the inevitable bottle of American Michelob beer in his hand.

He explains that you can't get Budweiser in London.

"The house used to belong to the Haldemans. Not the one that was in this Nixon thing but his parents.

"It was such a great house, real Caolifornian ranch style. When I first heard about the first I was watching the news on television and they were playing Welcome To My Nightmare in the background."

Which brings us to why Coop is in London. His $100,000 Nightmare show hits Wembley's Empire Pool on September 11 and 12 and two days later it's at Liverpool Empire Theatre.

The show has already played 66 cities in America, the album is the biggest-seller and by the time the world tour winds up in the Far East, Alice expects to gross something in the region of $600,000.

Coop has become America's biggest star after a radical change of image. Off-stage he talks about Alice Cooper in the third person instead of trying to live with him.

Comfortable with another Michelob, and sporting just white trousers and a tan he picked up on a three-week Hawaiian golfing holiday, Coop explains that Alice is just one of his creations.

"When I'm in Europe I usually travel as Inspector Maurice Escargot." He lapses into a French accent.

"You know, I suddenly realised that Alice was a character. I created that character and I know that part I play on-stage, and I finally realised that I have to leave it on stage, because that's where he belongs.

"My legal name is Alice Cooper but he's really just a character that I play. Sometimes I"m Maurice, I can turn into all these different people," he says.

"The violence on stage was just part of Alice's puberty. We were blowing a lot of things off, but now he knows himself a lot more when he gets on stage.

"In other words he knows how to act now. Before Alice was just a brat, but now he's a little bit more sophisticated about the whole thing.

"I feel so much freer now I understand that I don't have to be Alice all the time. I can be anybody I want."

Coop talking of "Alice" as a reality yet explaining he's just a character can be as eerie as any of the Coop horrors he's renowned for. Yet he dismisses the suggestion of schizophrenia with a wave of his beer bottle.

"I'm so relieved I don't have to be Alice all the time. You know, I was drinking two bottles of whisky a day?"

Now it's down to about 12 bottles of beer a day and Coop reckons at his best he can make one last two hours. But at night he still drinks a little whisky.

"I was playing Alice off stage, because I didn't know that much about him and I didn't know that much about success. Then I got to the point where I was killing myself doing it.

"Now I'm very honest with the audience and I'll tell you the truth, I've noticed that the audience is more relieved that Alice is just on stage.

"Now they realise they're coming to see an act, and I have to psych-up the same way that Richard Burton does to play Hamlet."

Yet Coop maintains he's not just an actor and he's not just a singer. He's an all-round entertainer.

"The whole attitude now is totally showbiz. I don't believe in messages at all. The audience paid to see a show and that's the only thing Alice cares about," continues the million dollar baby.

Alice is not an extension of Coop, it's a reaction. Coop isn't arrogant. Alice is.

Alice is only one of many people Coop can be. When the show is on the road he's Vinny The Boss, which means the road crew come in and kiss his ring.

Even Alice plays a character. In Welcome To My Nightmare he's a young boy Steven.

And Coop's latest character will be Bunny Hoover in a movie version of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. It's an idiot part about a guy who writes songs such as Love Is For The Other Guy. Coop fell in love with the role straightaway.

He reaches for another beer cooling in the ice bucket and restates his belief in showbiz.

"It's sensation, it's the thrill. I'd never go on stage doing anything 'safe'. Look at Evel Knievel, you know what he's doing now? He's going to jump over a vat of 15 sharks. That's good showbiz ‐ especially with "the Movie Jaws" being so popular in the States.

Coop and Alice live in Hollywood. "It's the only place in the world I'd live," he says. "I mean where else can you get a pizza at four o'clock in the morning."

But it's not just that the whole Beverly Hills image appeals to Coop. It's showbiz too.

Now he's waiting for the insurance money and looking for a new home.

(Originally published in Record Mirror & Disc — September 6, 1975)