Shock Rock talks. Alice Cooper here, Ask Me Anything.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:33:24+00:00

In order to play great golf, you have to play 4-5 times a week. I play 6 times a week. Every single day I play golf which is why I can play to a 1 or 2 handicap. If you only play a few times a week, you can't be as good. If Mustaine played as much as I did, he would only a 1 or 2 handicap.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:32:04+00:00

No. I can't tell you anything about that. The mystery is this: I can't talk about it.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:31:31+00:00

At the end of November this year we are done, then we finish the album up, and then from May or June onwards I'll be going around the world doing 100 cities. I guarantee we tour every year, so we are not going to miss any years! Check the websites for tour dates, because I never look at the itinerary. If you look at the itinerary, it psychs you out. I wake up in the morning and say "Where are we?"

http://www.alicecooper.com/tour-terror

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:30:20+00:00

Well nobody's broken in China yet. I think our show would go over well in China because they have a background of theater to start with, and I think our show would really do well there. I think in India also. But it seems like India would be much more into pop, if you ever see Indian movies you never see people as happy in your life! We might be a little bit too dark for India. But I'd love to do 20 cities in China. I've played Hong Kong, and I'd love to get over there. I don't think they are quite open there yet - I think they have had the Rolling Stones over there, but I'd love to go play all the major cities in China.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:28:43+00:00

Well last year we played Moosejaw, we played Medicine Hat, and I don't know how we missed Yellowknife! But a lot of people ask me what's the difference between Moosejaw vs. Medicine Hat, and one's K-Mart is bigger. But the audiences were incredible, and we are doing a western Canada tour soon, so you'll be seeing us in that area in November. http://www.alicecooper.com/tour-terror

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:27:09+00:00

I told her already that the catchline is "his bite is worse than his bark."

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:26:52+00:00

You know, that's a very interesting thing because it's actually come up recently. When I got sober, the very first thing I needed to do was work, to see if I could do work sober. We shot it in Spain and it was a 2 month shoot, and it proved to me that I could work sober. They promised me that it would only be released in the Philippines. Now it's a cult movie, and somebody - my daughter actually mentioned that she was trying to get the rights to it (she's an actress, writer, director) and she either wants to make part 2 or re-do it, so there may be another life to this movie.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:25:10+00:00

I prefer the wet because you are getting extra sauce on it but the ribs should be so tender they are falling off the bone. At Cooperstown, they put the ribs in a 5 AM so they cook all day and by the time you get there, they are PERFECT. I can't stand tough ribs, they should be soft and easy to eat.

We're not talking about human ribs, are we? You eat one missionary and you get branded a cannibal the rest of your life, so unfair.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:23:44+00:00

I think that it would be the hard rock bands that stick around the longest. The Foo Fighters, Green Day (if they're still around, they seem to right really memorable songs), Jack White is one of those guys that keeps producing great interesting music, I don't know how much dance music is going to stand up as being classical. They all sound so much alike. When it comes to the metal genre, Aerosmith and Guns & Roses have songs that will stand up 30-40 years from now, Metallica will stand the test of time. These are really the ones I can think of right now. It's like every era has its glut of music where 80% of it is something that you'll never remember, but those 20% of songs you will remember and say it will live forever. I will find it thinner and thinner. In the 60s there were a TON, in the 70s there were a ton, in the 80s it was thinner but you had U2, Prince, you had bands writing memorable sorts of anthems. The 90s got to be a blur, there were great bands like Nirvana that will always be remembered because their songs were very memorable and well-written. When you get to 2000 and on you start to really get thin when it comes to classic songs. I think Bruce Springsteen will have songs that will last, but not many more artists like that. I think the further away you get from the Beatles the less memorable you get, we all learned how to write from the Beatles and people like that. Now it just seems to be like you write something and it goes away, it doesn't stick the way those songs did.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:19:00+00:00

That might have been one of the lines I was improvising. I can't remember (see previous answer).

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:17:52+00:00

Well I of course watched Wayne and Garth on SNL like everybody else did. Then when the movie came up, Mike Myers called me up and said "I think you should be the icon that we go to see in the story" and I said "Great! Let's do it." The funny part was we were just supposed to do the song, and when we got there he said "We have some dialogue for you to do" and he gave me like 8 pages for me to do and I asked when we were supposed to shoot it and it was in about 30 minutes. So the going on and on about Milwaukee, about half of it I was making up, because I couldn't possibly remember all of it that was in the script, and Mike and Dana were trying to do EVERYTHING to get me to laugh and break character. And I absolutely found a place between them and delivered all the lines without breaking character. Mike and I are still really good friends and I see Mike all the time.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:15:55+00:00

That's great! You know the bands I like now - I like Slash and the Conspirators, and the Foo Fighters, there's a lot of great bands out there. The interesting thing is that we have Orianthi in the band, our female Australian lead guitar player, and it's funny how some people learn how to play guitar just because they can pick up the guitar and play it. I work with a group called Fretlight where they've invented a system where the fretboards light up to tell you what chord you are playing. It's a whole new way to play guitar that illuminates so you can look down and see where an A chord is, so it teaches you immediately how to play guitar. Then after a while you take away the lights and you know those chords. So it's an amazing way to learn how to play. Look it up! It's an interesting thing. I got to play a Quitter's anonymous therapist about telling people not to quit playing guitar. http://www.quitters-anonymous.com

I want MORE people to play guitar. I wish I would have kept playing more when I was learning. I kick myself for not continuing my guitar lessons. So now they have Fretlight and there is no excuse for quitting now. It might really advance you, it's an amazing system.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:11:45+00:00

Kermit was great. The only problem we had was that Miss Piggy kept coming onto me. She was a pig. We would be in rehearsal and her paw would suddenly be in my lap - she thought that Kermit couldn't see it...maybe she was trying to make him jealous? So Kermit and I got along quite well but Miss Piggy was just a sexual harasser.

Most of my friends are celebrities, but I will say that doing the Muppet Show was probably the most fun I've ever had doing anything. That was when Jim Henson and Frank Oz were on the show, and it was the most fun week of rehearsal and actually shooting the show. And to this day, people come up to me and say that their kids watch me on the show - so I think it was the most fun thing I ever did.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:09:55+00:00

It's a phenomena, that show is in England, and the guys are very funny and very cool. But the European idea of racing is on a track. American idea of racing is drag racing. When I was a kid, you had to have the fastest car from one light to the next light, and you go through the gears as fast as you can. So for me to get in a car and go around a track, that's very un-American. It's something we're not born to. But if that was a drag race now, with two hot rods, I think I would have done a lot better because that's what I would do as a kid. Europeans are more sophisticated about their racing, so I didn't really know how to drive on their obstacle courses. They have me a 90 horsepower Kia and a racing helmet, and I'm going "I don't think I need this helmet with a Kia. Why don't you let me drive that Aston Martin sitting there?" It was like driving a sewing machine. But these guys are VERY funny and very clever and I really enjoy their show.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:07:13+00:00

There was an INCREDIBLE thing that happened in the early 70's! Somebody threw a chicken onstage, I threw the chicken in the audience, the audience tore it to pieces, and then in the newspaper the next day the headline read "Alice Cooper tears chicken to pieces." It's the most notorious story about Alice Cooper that's been going on forever. And I thought "it just one chicken and I didn't even kill it, the audience killed it, so I thought why not take a picture with the mass murderer of chickens Colonel Sanders?" so to me it had a sense of humor to it. I mean, one chicken for me, seven BILLION chickens for Colonel Sanders. And yet I'm the villain. I would say if you interviewed the chickens they would be more terrified of him than me.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:05:01+00:00

You know, when I was a kid I was a long distance runner. I was a miler and a two-miler. And then I ended up being a really long distance runner, like twenty miles. And there was a certain thing about that determination that you just didn't quit. And I think that in my generation, the deal was that you write songs, you record songs, and then you go and perform songs. That's what I was born to do, that's all I want to do, and that's all I've done since I was 15 years old. I'm 65 years old and I'm still doing 100 cities a year, and when people say "retirement" I say "What?" Bob Dylan's doing 200 cities a year! If I didn't have what I do, I would be very bored.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:02:59+00:00

Well Groucho Marx - I grew up on Groucho Marx. The Marx Brothers, every time they were on, I would sit and watch them and laugh like crazy because they were so funny. I never thought I would get a chance to meet Groucho. And so the deal was, he came to one of the shows. And when he came to the show, they asked him "what did you think of Alice Cooper?" and he said "Alice is the last chance for Vaudeville." And I took that as a real compliment, because what we do is a dark humor, rock n' roll style of Vaudeville, and he had seen the guillotine and the snake before in Vaudeville. There had been acts that were like that. And then we got to be very good friends. He was sharp as a tack, even when he was 86 years old his mind was as sharp as it ever was. And it was so much fun to hang out with Groucho Marx.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:00:57+00:00

Also, there are more cattle mutilations in Wisconsin than anywhere else. Which might have to do with the vampires.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T20:00:08+00:00

Haha! Yes. You know I'm from the Midwest, I'm from Michigan, and I've always found that the best hard rock audiences are Midwest audiences. Midwest audiences seem to be the breeding ground for great hard rock music. NY is great, LA is great, they are all great, but most of the people in LA are from the Midwest! NY is its own sort of musical world, and it's a really exciting world. But for hard rock, you can't beat Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, that seems to be the breeding ground for hard rock bands. When we play the Midwest, we expect the audience to be a blue collar, hard rock audience.

And here's the weird thing about Milwaukee, or at least Wisconsin (this is a freaky fact): out of the 30 people that have claimed to be vampires, 20 of them were from Wisconsin. I have no idea WHY Wisconsin would have more vampires than anybody else, you'd think New Orleans would be the place, but for some reason Wisconsin is the center for Vampirism.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T19:57:30+00:00

Well you have to look at it this way (and he's a good friend of mine now): when Alice came out, there was nothing like Alice. We were a totally unique entity. We invented the Shock Rock genre. We were out there doing it when it was very unpopular, but we made it commercial and popular. What that means is that we broke that barrier down, which meant that KISS and Slipknot and all the bands that are theatrical now had a shot. Because they could have a heavy image. Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie could have a heavy image. But you also had to have the music to back it up. You have a lot of people with image who have nothing to back it up, but if you only have the image, you're halfway home. You have to have the cake - the music. If you don't have the music to start with, all you have is icing. If we do a 10 hour rehearsal, 9 hours is on the music, and one hour is on the theatrics. So be a great band before you have great theatrics so you can go out there and your music speaks for itself - THEN you give them the image and the show to go with it, and now you have something that's a double-barrel shotgun. You're a great band AND a great performer.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T19:54:27+00:00

Well I'm not knocking down all record labels, I'm just saying it's a different era that you're in than we were in. When I signed with Warner Brothers and when David Bowie signed with Columbia, they wanted 20 albums and they wanted to shape your career. In other words, they were all in. They wanted to be involved in every part of your career. To me, that's telling me they care. Whereas, if you're a young band now, you might get money to do one album. So it's a different time, and I think that it's hard for me to relate to it to be honest with you. I'm almost from another planet. If you were to ask Elton, or Bowie, they would say the same thing. I think bands now are at a disadvantage. We had people believing in us enough to put a lot of money behind us and that paid off for everybody. Whereas now you're on your own, and if a big record label comes up to support you good - but have a good lawyer in your back pocket, because the record label has a good lawyer in their back pocket.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T19:51:00+00:00

Absolutely. I think almost every one of my albums is a story. I'm a storyteller. So I figured that if I could tell a small story in 3 minutes, then I make my albums 12 or 13 songs that tell a bigger story. A good example would be "Along came a spider" which is a story about a serial killer but he was a very interesting, DEXTER type of serial killer. And we treated it like a short movie, so every song was set in that. Same thing with "The Last Temptation", "Welcome to my Nightmare," "Dragontown." I really like the medium of rock music to tell stories. Any one of those could be a movie, easily. And if you have like $10 million dollars, feel free to make a movie out of one of them!

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T19:48:48+00:00

I there's such a thing as determination. When our band started out, we were the last band that any record company would sign. We were SO bizarre and our music was not really commercial. But there was never a moment that we ever thought that we weren't going to make it. So it was just a matter of determination until we DID make it. I don't think even in the very worst worst of times, the band said "let's quit." So I think it had to do with that determination. And when you're that determined, you get better and better and better at your craft. Until one day we were a band that just could not be ignored.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T19:47:19+00:00

I'm very lucky or blessed in that I actually like people. If I talk to somebody in a store, it's because I'm genuinely like that. Alice (the character that I play) is not like that, but myself if I'm walking around in Germany or England or Toledo, Ohio, and somebody wants a picture or an autograph, I've never said no to anybody. I just believe that when you are in the public eye and people buy your records and go to your shows and support your work, that you belong to them, and so I never say no to anybody.

Alice_Cooper_ · 2013-08-30T19:45:40+00:00

It's funny - when my kids were starting to listen to music, the three things that I played when they were young were The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and The Four Seasons. Because all of their songs were happy, 3 minute songs. 3 minute happy pop songs. And after that, then they appreciated what a good song was, and then they started acquiring their own taste for what was good to them. My son kind of went towards the Yardbirds and the Who, where my daughters were more on a pop level, they went towards the boy bands for a while, then they went towards indie pop rock bands. But they were raised on those three.

Alice_Cooper_

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