EDITOR’s NOTE: Alice Cooper is making his third trip to Penticton’s South Okanagan Events Centre for a concert Friday, April 15, 2022. The following is a combined two-part interview with James Miller which appeared in September 2016. Tickets for the April 15, 2022 show (which includes opening act Buckcherry) are on sale at the SOEC box office or online at: pentictonherald.ca
—
Fans hoping for a chance meeting with Alice Cooper and his bandmates before or after Sunday’s concert might find him in an unlikely place… the golf course.
But they will have to be early risers.
Whenever Alice Cooper goes on tour, he brings his clubs.
“These days, you don’t want to play me for money,” he quipped when asked about his golf game.
Alice Cooper’s tour managers and sponsors have the task of setting up early-morning golf dates in nearly every city the band visits.
“We play every single morning — my guitar player, my bass player and me, even when we’re on the road. We head out early. Some people do yoga every morning but for us, it’s golf.”
Cooper is a regular on the celebrity golf circuit and his handicap has been as low as two. He has four lifetime holes-in-one but is most proud of the three double-eagles he’s carded.
In a recent phone interview with The Herald he spoke of what’s he’s famous for — rock-and-roll — but with his diverse interests the conversation shifted to sports, his hometown (Detroit), and his friendship with comedian Gene Wilder.
Cooper loves hockey and is a fan of the Phoenix Coyotes. Growing up in Detroit, his hero was Al Kaline, the legendary Detroit Tigers outfielder and broadcaster.
“When I was a kid my bedroom was a shrine to Al Kaline,” he said. “I had an autographed Al Kaline ball, a hat, a jersey, his rookie card.”
As for the greatest athlete to ever represent the Motor City, Cooper was also fond of Gordie Howe.
“Gordie was one of a kind. He was playing as good of hockey at the age of 50 as most younger guys. I have a great picture of him with me at a Comic-Con thing where it was half sports, half comic books. He’s elbowing me in the jaw and at the time he was 80-years-old but solid as a rock.”
Howe died this past year along with several great musicians from Cooper’s era (Prince, David Bowie, Merle Haggard and Glenn Frey of The Eagles).
Reflecting on the musical legends who died this year, Cooper said many rockers are now of the age when they face their own mortality.
“So many of us broke out in the late-60s, early-70s and I’m probably the healthiest guy out there, in better shape than everybody.”
“Bowie was a friend. Lemmy, if you were into rock-and-roll, he was your friend. Prince… nobody knew Prince. As for Merle, I knew of him. He was one of those honky tonk, hell raisers. He had a great reputation. The closest I ever got to country music was Johnny Cash.”
Michigan is renowned for the birthplace of Motown music and later many of the hiphop artists, most notably Eminem. Often forgotten are the rock acts, such as Alice Cooper and Glenn Frey, who were born in Detroit.
“The best hard rock came out of Detroit — The Stooges, MC5, Bob Seger, Ted Nugent, Brownsville Station, the list goes on,” said Cooper, who hosts his own syndicated classic rock radio show.
“There’s a reason for this. Detroit’s an industrial city with an attitude. They love hard rock. New York had its own sound, L.A. had its own sound, Detroit had loud guitar. When you were on tour, when you came to Detroit, you turned it up and you came with attitude.”
Cooper’s career highlights include induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011 with his original band.
“We kind of figured we’d be in there, just not sure when, it is hard to ignore the Alice Cooper Band,” he said. “We probably should have been in 20 years earlier but we were gracious about it. Thank you, it’s a great honour to be in the same club as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.”
The two career highlights that stand out in his own mind are both eclectic and eccentric, much like his music.
He had the opportunity to work with the late Gene Wilder of “Willy Wonka” and “Young Frankenstein” fame.
“Gene had a TV show called ‘Something Wilder’ and I played a next-door neighbour. I was doing one-on-one comedy with Gene Wilder, the equivalent of jamming with The Beatles. It was a proud moment for me. It was back and forth dialogue with a live audience and we could only do one take. Gene was the best, a very quiet guy and an excellent person.”
There was also a guest appearance on “The Muppet Show” — “clearly one of the best things I ever did.”
He famously sang “You and Me,” “Welcome to My Nightmare,” and “School’s Out,” accompanied by Animal on drums and giant puppets in elaborately-staged dance routines.
A day doesn’t go by when Alice doesn’t get, “We are not worthy,” when he meets someone for the first time.
“It’s unbelievable, at airports it averages five times a day,” Cooper said..
“People honestly believe nobody’s ever done that to me before.”
The line was first used in the movie Wayne’s World and Cooper never expected it would become a catch phrase.
“Mike Myers and Dana Carvey are both friends and they called me up to do this movie and I thought I was just doing one song. I get there and there’s eight pages of dialogue and we’re shooting this scene in a half-hour. A lot of the dialogue we used was improvised.”
He describes the experience as fun but other movies, such as Dark Shadows with Johnny Depp and directed by Tim Burton, are hard work.
Less noteworthy was his cameo in the 1978 turkey “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” where The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton created a strange incarnation of The Beatles.
“The only reason I wanted to be in it was because (Beatles’ producer) George Martin was going to be producing the music. They wanted me to do Because, of course a John Lennon song. I did a pretty good John, I thought, but George said, ‘Now do it the way Alice would’ and it turned into a dark, funky, villainous song. George immediately wanted to call John (Lennon) and play it to him and he was unaware he and I were already pretty good friends.”
One song he knew was going to be a hit was School’s Out, released in 1972. He knew it was good but never expected it to remain relevant 45 years later.
“I don’t think The Who realized My Generation was going to be the same thing, a timeless song. (I’m) Eighteen was another one, it applies to every kid that’s 18. Twenty years from now when a kid turns 18 he’ll say, ‘yeah, that’s me.’ School’s Out every kid will hear that on the last day in June each year. It’s the only song I recorded that I was absolutely positive would become a hit, but I didn’t think it was going to become the national anthem.”
When asked to pick songs that he loved that weren’t hits, he chose Might As Well Be on Mars (“It’s the best song I ever wrote”); Love’s a Loaded Gun; and Lost in America.
“Then you have some that you don’t think will be hits like Clones (We’re All) and they surprise you.”
With 30 albums to date, Cooper said 15 of the 25 songs on a standard set-list are ones audiences expect to hear.
“Anytime you go to a Who or McCartney or Alice Cooper concert, it’s a greatest hits show. With Alice Cooper you know it’s going to be a production and it’s going to be bizarre and it’s going to be an event. Our shows have the same attitude, energy and pace that we always have. We have the guillotine and the snake and the toy box, the whole production, but you’ll see some new tricks.”
Cooper said he retires a snake from performing at the end of each tour. Due to challenges with the U.S./Canada border, he uses a snake on loan from a Canadian whenever he tours Canada.
“This guy’s name is Julius Squeezer,” he said.