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Alice Cooper Talkin' Trash

Author: Laura Gross

ALICE COOPER IS TRASH

You're sitting across from one of rock's originals, a true legend, the man who combined Bela Lugosi and Mick Jagger to derive Alice Cooper. Alice was one-of-a-kind: that is, until everybody started copying him. But, that's okay, Alice Cooper is still the original of his genre, and after 25 years of doing it, Alice is still doing it, this time, doing it trashy. Y'see, his new album is called Trash.

"I love this album. This is the album that I've been trying to make for a long time, I finally got all the elements in place. The right people, the right time. This album is a little more sexually orientated. And a lot less blood orientated. It's sexual. I've done enough blood and guts. Absolutely. If I had done another blood and guts album, I would have been Slayer. And, I've done that for years anyway. People know that when they go to see an Alice show, it's going to have a certain amount of melodrama to it, a certain amount of horror to it. And a certain amount of sexuality. This time I am just pushing more towards the other level."

Alice is many things, including smart and savvy about this business of rock 'n' roll. He thinks, rightly, that for his career to get a boost in a big way, he needs a radio hit. So, he hit on the combination that he felt would deliver — writing with Desmond Child.

"Working with Desmond Child was really important. The way I judge a record is if I jump in the Corvette and I turn on the radio, whatever I find myself turning up and listening to has got to be my favorite record. So, I'd be driving along and hear 'Dude Looks Like A Lady,' what is that? Y'know, then I hear some of the Bon Jovi cuts and I never knew who wrote any of these songs. Joan Jett's 'I Hate Myself For Loving You.· I thought that was a great record. 'Heaven's On Fire' by KISS. All of a sudden I put this all together, out of the ten records that I like, eight of them are written by Desmond Child. So I better get in touch with this guy."

At first Desmond was overwhelmed with the persona of Alice — the horrific, the blood-dripping, the guillotine toting monster of your wildest nightmare. But. he soon realized that Alice was nothing more than a fully fleshed out character, and that his creator was a true rock 'n' roller, looking to write some good songs that his Frankenstein could sing.

WHAT EXACTLY IS ALICE'S TRASH?

"The street is trashy, everybody relates to it. Drugs, sex, AIDS. Death. But, trash to me is also a compliment now. I look at a car that drives by, a vintage Cobra, or something. I go, 'That's trash.' Y'know, that means I like it. Or you see somebody that is very good looking that walks by, and you go, 'Trash.' That's just my way of complimenting, a really left-handed way that I'm complimenting the album. But, I didn't want to say, 'Alice Cooper's new glorious album.' I wanted it to be 'Alice Cooper's album, Trash.' And the kids know what that means, coming from me."

Part of what it means, on the LP Trash, is famous faces and voices, singing along. Jon Bon Jovi's just one of Alice's famed collaborators.

"I met him and we decided to write some stuff. I went over to Jon's house with Desmond one time, and we said, 'Let's write something while we're here.' And we wrote 'Hell Is Living Without You.' With Richie Sambora on guitar. And when the song 'Trash' came along, I told Desmond, 'This song is perfect for Jon. Let's call Jon up and see if he wants to sing on this.' And he said, 'Yeah, that would be great.' So, it was really fun to pick out certain people. Like Steven Tyler. Steven and I have had really parallel careers. And on the way up we both were kind of messed up at the same time. So, in 1974, neither one of us could have gotten into the same studio and sung on the same song because we were too out of it. It was hard enough to do our own material. Now since they've cleaned up and I've cleaned up it was really a pleasure to be able to call up Steven and Joe Perry and say, 'I've got this song, you've got to sing on it.'

PAINT ALICE COOPER BLACK, PAINT HIM RED, BUT DON'T PAINT HIM GRAY.

"I think anything gray is awful. Black or white is great. Gray is horrible. If you're gonna be a color be a color. I'd rather be the worst band in the world than the most mediocre band in the world. I think that is the most deadly thing in the world, mediocrity.

PAINT BY THE NUMBERS. PAINT ALICE COOPER 41. NOTICE IT AIN'T 20.

"No, I'm not 20. I'm glad I'm not, too. Because I'm in a lot better shape than I was when I was 20. When we first started this thing, we drank everything in sight. Y'know. we never slept and we did the whole rock 'n' roll binge for ten years. Y'know. the girls, the road. the whole thing. It was really exciting. Quite a way to grow up. But, I'm 41 now, and I'm in much better shape physically than when I was 25 or 30 years old. Because of the fact that I haven't drank for seven years. I haven't taken anything. I'm just physically and mentally in 100% better shape. So, I'm glad that I'm not 20 again."

ALICE TOOK ALICE TO THE EDGE.

"You really have to get to the point of nearly dying. See, I grew up in the school of... I used to drink with Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and I was on my way up and in some ways on my way down with them — let's see who can pass out the most. Y'know. that was a whole clique of friends here in L.A. And when they started dying off. I got to the point where with a couple more drinks I would have been with them. I was like over the edge of the cliff. It was glamorous to throw up blood onstage, in time with the music. Because everyone says 'Great special effect.' But, doing it every morning in a Holiday Inn when there was nobody around to watch, that's not glamorous. I was really dying."

ALICE SOBER COULD BE SCARY, TOO.

"I was scared to come back as Alice. I had this formula, that alcohol, plus the makeup, plus the stage show was successful. And it was. So the formula was all right there. So, I was saying. 'We're taking all of your gasoline. We're taking away this equation.' And I went, 'Oh.'"

ALICE ROCKS ON.

"The Who are reuniting! They're much older than me. Five or six or seven years older than me! If Jagger gets up there and rocks as hard as he does and he still does it to the audience, I don't care if he is 65 years old. If he's do­ing it, he's doing it. Same with the Who. Y'know, the first time they get up there and you can tell it's gone, when you can tell it's gone, then, that's when you stop. It would be a favor for me if somebody said, 'By the way, it's not happening.' But, I would be able to tell. I've never had an au­dience that didn't stand through the whole show, screaming. So, the first time I get out there and they're politely listening to me, I'm going to say 'That's it.'"

AT HOME WITH ALICE

"I just had a slumber party for my eight-year-old daughter. She had 10 eight-year-old girls over. And you know how loud eight-year-olds are. If you can picture this. I can't believe their parents let them bring their daught­ers over to the Addams Family, y'know. I mean we are like the Addams Family family where we live. And I'm like Gomez. So, all the kids were over and they had cake and ice cream. I said, 'Guess what, kids, I rented a movie for you!' And I showed them Halloween. I have an eight-foot screen! And we showed Hallo­ween. And y'know, kids like to be scared. They love to go to bed, oooh, terrified, and they were all in the living room. I have a Michael Myers mask. And about 1:00 in the morning, there is this scraping on the window. And they opened it up and I had the flashlight beam­ing into my face, with a Michael Myers mask on, and it was the loudest scream. And they were laughing because they got it, the second after they saw me, they were laugh­ing and screaming! And it was the best scream I ever heard in my life. That's my idea of a great party. Scaring eight-year-old girls."

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Hot Flashes

Author: Lorena Alexander

Alice Cooper showed up at this year's CBS Records convention here in Boca Raton, Florida with an A-Team no one was about to mistake for Mr. T's former allegiance. To introduce this Trash LP to the label's staff, the Coop enlisted an entourage of young lovelies (wearing sashes with song names from the album) called Thee Dollhouse A-Team, a group of models from the Dollhouses of America nightclub chain. Obviously, the man hasn't lost his knack for getting attention!