There were all these Peter Pans in music, but I was like .... ’There’s no Captain Hook!’
ALICE COOPER TELLS MARION McMULLEN BATTLING COVID WIPED HIM OUT, BUT HE’S NOW READY TO ROCK THE UK AGAIN
WHEN Covid struck Alice Cooper he lost more than a stone in weight and was left completely exhausted. “I had it really bad for a month and so did my wife,” says the 74-year-old American rocker. “I caught it in 2020. My wife had the loss of smell and taste, but I had none of that. I didn’t even have a cough, but I was exhausted to the point that walking to the kitchen and back was a major thing. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t eat. I lost 15lb just like that, but then I started to get a little bit better and then a little better. I’ve only met one other person who had my symptoms. Covid seems to strike you where you are weakest. People who had have diabetes and heart problems have died.”
He vividly remembers the last show he played before the global pandemic closed arenas and music venues around the world.
“It was with Queen in Sydney, Australia, in front of 95,000 people and we had no idea that was going to be the last time we played for 18 months.
“We normally do 150 shows a year and come to the UK three or four times a year and it was almost debilitating when it all stopped. Performing is sort of an addiction, that adrenalin, that’s the whole drug really you get from a show and then that all went away – the audience, the stage, the songs. “For a while it was pretty cool. All the kids were in the house and we had the grandkids here as well, just everyone, so it was OK for a while, but then two or three months into it you think ‘How long is this going to last?’ I didn’t know how long it was going to be this way or if this was going to be the end of my touring. Then the vaccine came out. “I remember getting off the plane in Phoenix and being told everything was closed except the golf courses. I play golf six days a week and I thought ‘Yes, I can get through this. The golf courses are still open.” The preacher’s son born Vincent Furnier has already played two recent tours in the States and is heading back to the UK to headline dates around the country with The Cult. “They are old friends of ours and the shows are just going to be ... sparkling,” he smiles.
Fans are eagerly waiting the concert dates, but it was very different when Alice Cooper first toured the UK in 1972. Then clean-up campaigner Mary Whitehouse and MP Leo Abse called for the band to be banned. “We couldn’t have planned anything better,” laughs Alice, “It was good for us. If you tell British audiences they are not allowed to see something, of course, they want to see it.
“It was the days before the internet, but Mary Whitehouse had all this information, that was all hearsay, about what the show was and decided it wasn’t the thing that was going to happen to the kids in the UK. But the band was good and the shows were amazing. If parents are saying you shouldn’t go then you’d better have a great show and a great band.
“We were sort of a mix of The Yardbirds and The Who but with a cinematic quality to it. There were all these Peter Pans in music, but I was like ‘There’s no Captain Hook’. There were all these rock heroes, but no villains and I thought ‘I’ll be Alice the villain, but he’s got to have a sense of humour behind it’. If we had just been theatrical then it would not have worked, but we had the hit songs as well – School’s Out, I’m Eighteen, Elected.”
A love of the macabre has been a hallmark of Alice Cooper gigs. There have been swords, snakes, skeletons and gore galore and he has even ‘chopped off’ his own head with a guillotine on stage.
“My favourite prop is a sword. Remember all those Errol Flynn films like the Adventures Of Don Juan? Well, I have his sword on stage. It has a 17th century feel to it and looks dangerous.
“I have a big warehouse in Los Angeles that is filled with all the stage props and costumes from a career spanning more than 50 years.” He chuckles: “I tell you I would not want to sleep there at night. I think everyone likes the idea we are the Addams family of rock and roll. It’s fun to play a character that is the complete opposite of me, someone I am not like at all.” The singer and his wife Sheryl have been married for 46 years and he remembers coming home the year they married to find The Who’s drummer Keith Moon dressed in a French maid’s outfit. Alice laughs: “He said in a French accent ‘Allo, I have dusted the whole house and I was hoping I could go out tonight?’ and I said ‘Sure.’
“My wife did not know who Keith Moon was, but I told her ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart he’s harmless.’ It could be exhausting being around him, he just never stopped, but he was such a good friend and we were drinking buddies. He would come and stay in our house for a month at a time. He was like a little brother who was just insane.”
The rock musician also has fond memories of Meat Loaf who passed away earlier this year. They appeared together in the 1980 movie Roadie and also toured together.
“He once said he was thinking of opening a restaurant and I said ‘What a great idea ... Italian meatloaf, Chinese meatloaf, barbecue meatloaf.’ And he said ‘I was actually thinking about a chicken place.’ “I said ‘What’s your name?’ And he said ‘Oh, yes.’
“I said ‘If your name was Billy Poultry then you could open a chicken restaurant.”
I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t eat. I lost 15lb just like that... Alice on Covid-19
Alice Cooper and The Cult are at Resorts World Arena, NEC, on May 30.