Ask Alice
Published Tuesday October 14th, 2008
Music Theatrical rocker brings macabre visions to New Brunswick this weekend
Theatrical rocker Alice Cooper has been raising hell for three decades and shows no signs of slowing down.
The 60-year-old brings his Canadian tour to New Brunswick this weekend, offering up a typically outlandish stage show said to feature zombies, dead Disney princesses, dead babies and a mock execution. Cooper recently released his latest disc, Along Came a Spider, about a serial killer who stalks women so he can fashion a spider from their limbs.
In a recent interview, Cooper talked about his new album, that infamous chicken incident, and rock as art.
CP: Lately, I've seen some media stories refer to you by your original name, Vincent Furnier.
Cooper: Nobody's called me Vince for 35, 40 years... Most people that know me just call me Coop. They just say, 'Coop, what's going on?' And I'll tell you how that name got there - Groucho Marx. He knew Gary Cooper very well and he used to call him Coop. And I was a friend of Groucho's and Groucho just called me Coop.
CP: How did you become friends with Groucho?
Cooper: I lived close to him, he came to the shows all the time and he kind of saw us as some kind of warped vaudeville. I ended up being really good friends with him after a while. What an odd couple we were.
CP: What was it about the two of you that clicked?
Cooper: I don't know. You can't get any more of an icon than Groucho, you know. And I think the absurdity of Alice Cooper appealed to him. He never saw it as scary, he saw it as funny... He was an insomniac and he used to call me up at night and tell me to come over and help him get to sleep. We'd watch movies and finally he'd just fall asleep and I'd leave at about 2 or 3 in the morning.
CP: Tell me about the tour.
Cooper: It's really been funny, the Psycho Drama Tour. This is actually the second year of that tour and we did. . . about 100 shows last year, and then this year we're finishing it up and then next year we do the Along Came a Spider Tour.
CP: You've got a ton of dates set for Canada. Is this the most extensive Canadian tour you've done?
Cooper: I think it really may be the most thorough Canadian tour - I think it's pretty much Vancouver to Halifax. ... We have a long history in Canada. I recorded two or three of my albums up there in Toronto, I did a lot of writing in Vancouver and things like that. Canada, to me, it's just like being at home, really.
CP: And that famous chicken incident happened in Toronto, didn't it?
Cooper: Yes it did. ... And it ended up being sort of one of the first urban legends in rock 'n' roll, you know, because it got so blown out of proportion. To this day I get into town and the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) is going, 'Hey, are you killing any animals today?' And I'm going, 'I never killed an animal.'
CP: But a chicken did die.
Cooper: Yeah, the audience killed it. I picked it up. It was a bird, it had feathers. I'm from Detroit, I don't know if it can fly or not. First of all, who would bring a chicken to a show? I didn't. Somebody apparently brought the chicken to the show, threw it onstage and I went, 'OK.' And I didn't even throw it, I just kind of chucked it into the front row, thinking, 'Well, here's a good souvenir.' You know, 'Alice gave me a chicken.' The audience tore it to pieces. But, the front two, three rows were all in wheelchairs. So that made it even more bizarre.
CP: That sounds far more horrifying than you ripping the head off.
Cooper: Absolutely. The last thing I expected, I figured somebody in a wheelchair would say, 'Oh look, I've got a chicken, it's a pet now.' Instead, they just ripped the head off. And I went, 'OK.' Next day in the papers: 'Alice Cooper rips head off chicken and drinks the blood' and all that. But it was great for my image, I guess.
CP: Your new album, Along Came a Spider, is pretty sick, I've got to say.
Cooper: Yeah, I like it, it's great. We have an oddity as humans. First of all, we appropriately hate serial killers. Anybody that's a serial killer is so off-balance and so sick - the Charles Mansons, the Jeffrey Dahmers, the Ted Bundys of the world, even the Hitlers of the world. We hate them. But we have some kind of love affair with our fictitious serial killers - we like Hannibal Lecter... We don't mind fictitious serial killers because we know they're not real.
So, when you invent a fictitious serial killer you want to make him really interesting. And in this case I said, 'Well, what if this guy fashioned himself after a spider, what would he do?' He would wrap his victims in silk, because that's a nice touch, and he takes one leg, because he needs eight legs for a spider. And I don't try to explain why he does this because who knows why any psycho does anything, but there are different aspects of this guy.
CP: Aside from giving people a few chills, what did you want people to take from the story?
Cooper: It's also funny, too. He's got a sense of humour, (reciting a lyric), 'You look like you'd fit in the trunk of my car.' That's a funny line for any song. What a great opening for any song. And the fact that he stalks the one girl and he says he's so interested in her that he goes into her house when she's at work, tries on her clothes, sleeps in her bed, and then he realizes he really doesn't like her friends. He doesn't like this guy that's been seeing her, so he gets rid of them.
CP: It's so detailed. How do you map out the story?
Cooper: I used to write 10-page short stories all the time when I was in high school and college and even after that. And so I just took one of those stories and I said, 'OK, this guy looks like he would be fun to write about.' Then when you do find a vehicle, you can actually make it come to life. And then the artwork, I think, on the album really brought it to life, and the idea that it was done in the form of a diary... I think we don't have enough of that in rock 'n' roll. We don't explore enough art in rock 'n' roll. We just kind of make our albums and walk away saying, 'Eh, it's rock 'n' roll.' Instead of really going for it.
CP: You should put out a companion diary to go with the album.
Cooper: Yeah, it would be great. There are so many different ideas for merchandising you can do for this. I tried to make the CD package as much like a diary as I could. In fact, we even did movie posters for each song... I tried to make it very cinematic.
I always think that art is something where you make the audience use their imagination. You don't just spell it all out. You let them have the fun of (imagining): 'What does this guy look like? What does he sound like? What does he do?' You make them ask questions to themselves: 'Well, how does he do this? Well, wait a minute, I don't understand this.'
To me, that's what a good novel is, that's what a good play is, that's what a good movie is and certainly that's what an album like this is. Let the audience use their imagination.
Alice Cooper performs Oct. 18 at Harbour Station in Saint John at 8 p.m. Tickets, $53, are available at the box office, online at www.harbourstation.nb.ca or by calling 657-1234. He takes the stage in Moncton on Oct. 19 at 8 p.m. Tickets, $56.50 (taxes included), are available at the box office, online at www.monctoncoliseum.com or by calling 857-4100.
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