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Alice: face of a very hungry ferret

Author: Denny Boyd

I'll try to describe Alice Cooper for you.

The hair. Well, if he ever washed it, you could deep-fry fish in the rinse water. Long fingernails you could punch open beer cans with. The shoulders, well, if he wore suspenders, they'd slip off.

But it's that face. It's... it's ferrety. That's it; it is the face of a very hungry ferret. Pinched. Pointy teeth. None of the oafish eye-fluttering of Tiny Tim or the dull sensuality of Presley; this is mostly a cruel, cunning face with glittering eyes and a knife-slash of a mouth.

Alice is a ravishing wrencher of words, occasional transvestite, axe-hacker of babies (dolls) and a chicken-plucker.

Listen now to the questions and answers during Alice Cooper's press conference Saturday in the Bayshore Tower.

Question — "Did you have a good trip?"

Answer — "Groovy. And the Customs guy freaked out. I had this bad and he said, 'What's in the bag?' and I said, 'My boa constrictor'. So he said, 'Sure. Now do you wanta tell me what's in the bag, fella?' Finally I showed him and it blew his mind."

Q. — "I've heard that you have actually killed little chicks on the stage. Is that true?"

A. — "Chick? You mean girls or little chickens? No. I get all this paranoid publicity, but I really only killed one thing on stage, and that was an accident. Some fan in London, Ont., handed me a live chicken.

"I'm no farm boy so I fiured this thing could fly so, very gallantly, I threw it up in the air to give it it's freedom. It fell down and broke it's neck. I didn't want it on the stage so I threw it to the audience and — are you ready for this — they tore it to pieces. So the next day, there's a big headline in the paper that says Alice Cooper Bites Off Chicken's Head and Drinks Blood. I've even been accused of mashing kittens with a sledge hammers."

Q. — "You do a stage bit where you bring out a realistic looking baby doll, hack it to pieces with a hatchet and imitation blood runs out and then you throw the pieces to the audience. What is the symbolism in that?"

A. — "I think that everyong actually would like to kill a baby with a hatchet."

(Long pause.)

Q. — "What about the gallows scene?"

A. — "We put that in to satisfy the blood lust of the crowd. they've seen Alice kill the baby and they hate Alice and want Alice to die. So Alice get his on the gallows for killing the kid. But then Alice reappears dressed all in white. Alice has been resurrected because Alice must not die."

Q. — "Don't you think the violence and sadism of your show encourages more of the same?"

A. — "No. We don't encourage violence; we relieve it. Our show is like a mass orgasm; it exhausts people. Like, last night in Seattle, we had some fine crazies in the crowd, shaking their fists and wanting to kill me. I'll admit that sometimes my audience scares me because they're like piranha fish. Some of the dudes in the crowd think we're effeminate and they want to hassle us. When it comes to a fight, we can handle ourselves. We aren't effeminate. We drink beer and watch football games. Really our best crowds are 16-year-olds because they are heavy into a sex thing. But their parents, man, they hate us."

Q. — "I read in a rock magazine that even though you dress in drag, you really all man with mucho machismo. True?"

A. — "Young man, my sex life is my own."

Q. — "Getting back to killing chickens."

A. — "What the hell, are these people all from Colonel Sanders?"

The press conference and the Alice Cooper concert are over and they are having a midnight party for the group. The air is crackling with friendly vibes and the smell of Acapulco Gold.

Alice Cooper is the adopted name of the once-obscure rock singer formerly fronted groups called The Spiders, and Nazz, in California, with no significant success. But a few years ago, Alice was discovered by rock manager Shep Gordon and the rest is history. Good old American know-how and a mental sex change brought success and fame in the finest traditions of this great land of ours.

Mike Roswell, youthful road secretary of the Alice Cooper group, talks about Alice.

"Well, I'll tell you, man. Alice is very intelligent, dig it. And he is very deep into theatrics and sightsound and the death thing. And our whole group, we're tight. Like, we all live in this big house in Connecticut and we all have a say in the music and the stage presentation.

"Bit it still comes down to Alice. He makes it all work. Like, the thing we used to do with our Love It To Death music, where we had Alice symbolically executed in an electric chair. Now that was big. And then there was his striptease with the boa constrictor for Is It My Body? Heavy. We topped that one with the nurse and the straight jacket scene for Ballad of Dwight Fry. And it was Alice who thought up bringing out a dead chicken and pretending to wring it's neck then pulling out the feathers and throwing them to the crowd."

"But Mike, there have been some nasty rumours that Alice has been chopping up babies and killing chickens on the stage. Isn't that, uh, a bit much?"

"Bad press, man, just bad press. See, that way Alice works, he doesn't really want the audience to love him, he sort of wants them to hate him. So we get some hassles, you know, crazies coming up on stage. We always try to keep 20 guys in the wings to handle the crazies. I mean, we aren't going to let anyone hurt Alice."

"But tell us, Mike, when and why did Alice change his name and what's his real name?"

"Man, I can't tell you that. Alice would freak out if I did. But I'll give you a scoop. Alice has told me three or four times recently that he's thinking of changing his name again. He want to change it to Mary."

Out at the show in the Garden Auditorium the crowd has really been buzzing about a new gimmick for the concert. Alice and his boa constrictor touched tongues in a long kiss.

After the show, I had a brief few seconds to talk with Alice. He wouldn't tell us his real name, but he said he chose a girl's name because, in his opinion, everybody is biologically male and female.

He was wearing a blue satin jacket and was friendly to everyone.

Now, a few personal impressions.

Alice Cooper is sick and slick. There isn't much of a body there, but there's a shrewd, surging mind that never stops looking for a saleable gimmicks. Alice Cooper is grossing half a million a year, but you wouldn't want your daughter — or son — marrying one.

Alice Cooper should be taken with a grain of phenobarb.