FEATURES

Robin Askew talks religion, freakshows and, erm, Ronnie Corbett with venerable rockmeister Alice Cooper.

The original shock-rocker, 63-year-old Alice Cooper (he changed his name legally, y'know) outraged public morals in the 70s, then spent the early 80s getting drunk and recording albums he doesn't remember. After that, he sobered up, found god and golf, and became a respected Elder Statesman of Rock. Today, he tours tirelessly, hosts his own syndicated radio show and is a chatshow regular, spinning yarns about his friendships with Old Hollywood (Groucho Marx, Mae West, Peter Sellers), New Hollywood (Johnny Depp), the odd surrealist (Salvador Dali) and, of course, just about everyone in the entire history of rock – from Elvis onwards. Alice's new album, 'Welcome 2 My Nightmare', is out now and he brings his Halloween Night of Fear to the Colston Hall on 26 Oct. This will be our first chance to see his hotshot new guitarist Orianthi, whose previous employer, Michael Jackson, is indisposed. The show is sold out.

What's the idea behind introducing freakshow performers into the show? Well, if it's Halloween, you kind of want to get that sideshow. It gives me the excuse to use local talent. We always have an audition in London for the street acts – you know, people that can put a tube up their nose and blow milk into a balloon or whatever. I find those things infinitely interesting. It's something I can't do, that's for sure. People who can swallow swords and set themselves on fire. I think that fits in perfectly with Halloween. You make it into a great big party – which is the Alice Cooper show anyway.

I saw some photographs of you reacting to the auditions. Was there anything that was just too disgusting to use? Not really as disgusting as I was expecting. I was expecting less burlesque and more freakshow. A lot of the acts that showed up were burlesque, which wasn't really what I was looking for. I was thinking that somebody would come out totally on fire and start telling jokes. There were a few people that did some things that were like, "OK, I've never seen that before." One girl does this whip act where the whips are on fire. That looks really good in the dark. At least that was innovative. It wasn't "Oh look, I'm going to swallow fire." OK, I've seen that seven million times. That's no big deal. Show me something I haven't seen. You know, fart fire! There's something. Ha ha ha.

Are you easily shocked? Not really. I think I've seen just about everything. I get more shocked by CNN than I do by Marilyn Manson or Lady Gaga. Reality is so much more shocking to me. Everything I do on stage is choreographed and rehearsed and done so that it really is a good effect. It looks like it just happens, but it takes a lot of rehearsal to get that.

There aren't many Christians in their sixties who can pull an audience of heavily tattooed and pierced weirdoes. You must be very proud... Well, the thing about it is the Bible says Christians will be "a peculiar people". I know plenty of good strong Christians who are the craziest people. In their faith, they are totally strong. But in their daily life they are just as mad as anybody else out there. They have a stronger moral base, but that's about it. After that they're pretty insane.

People are often surprised to hear that you're a Christian and I suspect that's because, over here at least, the only American Christians we get to hear about are nutters. Would it be fair to describe you as a socially liberal Christian? I am moderate. Not at all liberal. In my show, you'll never hear bad language. You won't ever see nudity. Alice always takes the high road when it comes to that. But I don't have any problem with scaring an audience – as long as there's a good punchline. Alice might slit your throat, but he would never, ever swear at you. That would just not be a gentlemanly thing to do [laughs].

Lemmy always complains that nobody buys the new Motorhead albums, even though they're just as good as the old ones. You've been equally prolific over the last decade. Do you find it frustrating that your albums are often ignored? It's an entirely different world now. It's an entirely different mechanism in how you buy records and listen to them. I'm still from the old school: Elton, Bowie and myself. You go to the store and buy your album. We were in the golden age when we made all of our money. I don't think any of those guys are really in it for the money at this point. We're doing it because that's what we do. If I stay away from it too long, I miss it. That's why I don’t sweat it if the album goes online and somebody steals it. I make records now for my fans. I heard this recently, which was really kind of interesting – young bands going: "We don't make albums. We're only making singles now." And you're going, "Well, it’s because you have no fan base. If you had a fan base that wanted to hear 15 new songs, you'd be making albums." That's why I still make albums. If I've got a story to tell, I can't tell it in one song. I want to be able to tell it in 10 songs.

It's great to hear Alice sticking it to disco again on 'Welcome 2 My Nightmare'... Oh yeah, absolutely. I can't let disco go that easily. Everybody says disco is dead. I said, "It's in disguise. It's called hip-hop now."

I enjoyed reading your autobiography, 'Golf Monster', but I felt you were holding back quite a lot. Given the success of Keith Richards's book, would you ever write a warts and all autobiography? Well, there's that moment of saying: is it a good enough story without going into the morbid details? There were some people that I did protect. I don't believe in tearing up somebody in the public eye just because you know something about them. To me, that's not classy at all. There were certain people that I kind of didn't talk about. I just thought, they're still alive, they've got a family. I don't want them to have to explain this to their kids.

My favourite story was the one about Liberace being secretly macho and nobody recognising him in his Levis and cowboy boots... That was the weirdest night. And to this day, Shep [Alice's manager Shep Gordon] and I are still scratching our heads going, "Wait a minute – was this guy putting this on for us?" Because he certainly wasn't coming on to either one of us. We're sitting there watching the show, and it was so over the top. It was so gay. It was beyond gay. Then we went back in the dressing room. And the dressing room is as gay as could be: poodles everywhere. Then there was a back dressing room with a leather couch. And he says, "Why don’t you guys wait back in here?" He meets the ladies, shows them the jewellery, shows them the puppies. As soon as everybody's gone, he says, "Get these damn dogs out of here!" And it was a different voice! I'm going, "What?" He said, "You guys wanna go get a beer?" And I went, "Is he putting this on now?" Because I honestly didn't know if he was sending us up or not.

Do you think you'll ever solve the mystery of what happened to 'Alice's Brain'? [In 1973, Salvador Dali created a ceramic sculpture of Alice's brain, with a chocolate éclair running down the back and painted ants spelling out 'Dali' and 'Alice'. It hasn't been seen since.]... You know what? That is still my holy grail. I've got feelers out all over the world. Somebody's got it. Somebody's got the Alice Cooper brain. I'm looking at a picture of it right now. A big poster of me sitting there with the diamonds on, Dali holding the brain over my head and pointing to it. Nobody knows where that brain is. If I ever do find it, it's probably going to cost me a lot of money.

Do you ever get fed up with telling the chicken anecdote on chatshows? Every time I get on the Graham Norton show, or somebody like that, it'll be: "Tell the chicken story." And I'll be, "Oh really? Again?" So I almost have to reinvent the story just to make it better. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Elvis and the gun is the other story that people want to hear, just because it's so bizarre. I understand that. But I'd rather have them ask me about Peter Sellers. Peter used to come to every show. He was a big Alice fan. I had a lot of fun with him.

You've toured with Rob Zombie, who shares your love of horror movies. But he's also moved into directing them. Have you ever considered doing that? You know, I always admire anyone who can take on the director's job. Every time I talk to Rob, he goes: "Alice – don't ever wish this on yourself." If it was just directing the movie, it would be great. But you're playing ping-pong and politics with the producers and the studio. And the stuff that you want to put in there to make it really great, they're going, "Ah, I don't know about that. You have to re-shoot that. You're over budget." He says it's those nuts and bolts that drive you crazy.

When you're on stage with your daughter [Calico Cooper has been in the show for years] and she's wearing a skimpy nurse's outfit while watching her father getting put to death each night, don’t you ever think: "There's some freaky Freudian shit going down here!" Yeah, you know my daughter and I have such a funny view of it. Nobody gets it better than us. It's so hard not to laugh. There's a point where I have to come up behind her and grab her hair and put the knife to her throat and smack her down. And the whole time, there's that feeling of, "Please don't make me laugh! I'm in character right now." She's a trained actress. She's got the best acting coach in Hollywood. So she's really good at it. I'm the one that has to bite my lip every once in a while. But here's the funny thing: there's a picture of her and I, and in the paper it'll say: 'Alice Cooper seen with gorgeous 22-year-old girl'. I send it back to my wife and she says, "It's right. She is a gorgeous 22-year-old girl." Very few people understand that she's my daughter.

To a whole generation over here, your great mate Iggy Pop is known as that weird leathery old geezer in the insurance ads. You’ve done a few commercials yourself. Where do you draw the line? I did a couple of adverts with Ronnie Corbett. We did a thing where we were like the odd couple. If it's a clever commercial, I'll do it. Alice where he doesn't belong is always funny. That one was OK because I was a big fan of The Two Ronnies. When they said it was Ronnie Corbett, I said: "Well of course I want to do it."

You're such an Anglophile! I'll tell you what, I've always been very, very impressed with the British, because they were the first ones that understood what we were doing. The Americans didn't get it for quite a while. It was almost the same thing as Jimi Hendrix. Everybody in America thought Jimi Hendrix was British. When they found out he was from Seattle, they still thought he was British! We were doing theatre and comedy and rock at the same time. Our roots were in The Yardbirds and The Who. And the theatrics was very un-American. So everyone just assumed we were British.

The very easy-on-the-eye Orianthi has just joined the band on guitar. Is it easy to break in a new guitarist halfway through a tour? When you're picking guitarists, you always pick people that are road-worthy and are in the top two per cent of what they do. There's a lot of guitar players out there. But when you put in an Orianthi, you know that she already knows half the stuff and the other half she's going to pick up on really quick. I've never done this before; I've never had a girl in the band. And she plays as good as any guitar player I've ever had. I don't really know what it's going to look like yet, because our first show with her is next week.

Are you a hard taskmaster? Did you pick up anything from working with Frank Zappa? No, I'm not that at all. When we go into the show, I let everybody come up with ideas. I'm not one of those guys that has to do it my way. I come in with a skeleton idea for the show, with a set list and suggestions. If someone comes in with a better idea, then we go with it. Pretty soon the show becomes really solid because we take all the good ideas. Frank always had to have things his way. But he was a genius, so you have to give him that.

How does it work with you being teetotal and members of the band drinking. Are you like Aerosmith, where people aren't allowed to booze in your presence? It doesn’t bother me one bit. I can walk into a bar and sit there all night and just have Diet Cokes. It doesn't even occur to me to have a drink. I'm about 30 years sober now. But I was like that the first day I came out of the hospital. There were people sitting round saying, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm drinking." And I went, "That's fine. I don't care." It was a miracle. God just took it away from me. I never went to AA. I never had a sponsor. And I have no willpower at all! It was like I had cancer one day and the next day I didn't.

You got Johnny Depp up on stage with you at the 100 Club in London recently. What are the chances of getting him to join you at the Colston Hall, given that he lives just down the road in Bath these days? Hey, listen – if he's in town. We told him if this whole acting thing doesn’t work out for him he could join the band. He said, "You would be surprised. If I had eight months off, I would be out touring with you guys." I said, "That would be great. You have an open invitation." 'Cos he's a really good guitar player. He could play for Thin Lizzy.

So it might happen? Oh, absolutely. I'll give him a call when we get into London and say, "What are you doing?" I think they finish this 'Dark Shadows' movie in December, so he will be around when we're there.

ALICE COOPER’S HALLOWEEN NIGHT OF FEAR WAS AT COLSTON HALL, BRISTOL ON WED 26 OCT. FOR REVIEW CLICK HERE.

Copyright Robin Askew 2011