Alice Cooper, the King of Shock Rock -- make that the Grandfather -- has forsaken his crown.
In the early 1970s, Cooper concocted a rock 'n' roll stage show in which he chopped up baby dolls, cavorted with a live boa constrictor and portrayed his execution by guillotine.
Never mind that the Grand Guignol theater in Paris beat Cooper to the punch, shocking people with macabre, bloody antics way back during the 1890s. Picket-fence America had seen nothing like Alice. Parents were dutifully outraged by Cooper's grisly shenanigans, while such songs as "School's Out," "Eighteen," "Elected" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy" became Top 40 hits, and the albums "Killer" and "Billion Dollar Babies" sold platinum.
But, Cooper said during a phone interview with The News-Journal, "I don't think you can shock an audience any more."
That doesn't mean Cooper has given up his ghoulish theatrics. His Theatre of Death Tour comes Oct. 5 to Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach. During a recent tour stop in Australia, Cooper took time off from his golf game (no kidding -- he loves the sport) to talk about shock rock, death metal dudes both real and fake, and the hard work behind having your head chopped off each night on tour.
"Along Came a Spider," your latest CD, is a concept album about a serial killer. What was the album's inspiration? A newspaper headline? Are you a fan of the "Dexter" TV show?
I love "Dexter," of course. That's a terrific show. We got addicted to that on the bus.
Most of the time I tell a story in my albums. And I thought, "What about a serial killer who fashions himself after a spider?" All his victims are wrapped in silk, like a spider with a fly. There's one leg missing. You start figuring out, "Oh-oh -- eight victims, eight legs, spider." And then the twist ending.
In the beginning, the girl says, "We found his diary today, describing all the murders." And in the end, he's saying, "They found my diary today." And he's talking to his pet spider, and he's in an institution in a straitjacket somewhere. And he says, "It couldn't have been us, because we've been in here for 28 years." So it leaves the audience with either all of these murders only happen in his diary, or there's another killer. I love that you're leaving the audience on that wire, going "Well, what?"
How prominently does "Spider" figure in the current Theatre of Death Tour?
There's a piece of it. This show is very, very choreographed. It's in four sections -- four different personalities of Alice. And after about five songs of each personality, they put that one to death. They'll cut his head off in that one. He goes to hell. Then he gets a lethal injection. Then they hang him.
If people are enthralled and can't wait to see Alice's demise at the end of the show, which has become a tradition, then let's kill him four times. Let's give them four times what they're waiting for.
You want to give them all the songs they want. I used to think it was the theatrics they were coming for. I realized later that's the icing on the cake. They really want to hear the hits. It's the same thing with everybody, with Ozzy and Aerosmith. As much theatrics as we put into it, it's a byproduct of the hits. They want those songs to sound like on the record.
Did I read that your old buddy the guillotine is back?
Oh, the guillotine, the hanging, the lethal injection, and another one is this box they put me in and run spikes through it. And none of them are comfortable. Every single night, four times a night, I go, "Boy, I hope this works."
And we thought Mick Jagger had to be in shape to go on tour. We always read he works out before the Stones go on the road.
Well, he's five years older than me. And the fact that he does three hours onstage without stopping. We do 95 minutes, and I don't stop. But I keep thinking, "Jagger does three hours, and he does a half-hour on the treadmill before the show." So I have to give him the credit. He's still the prototype king.
But he's not getting his head chopped off.
No, no. You're right about that (laughs).
When you were taking a hatchet to baby dolls, that was pretty shocking to a lot of people. Do you still try to shock your audiences, or are today's audiences more jaded and more tough to shake up?
I don't think you can shock an audience any more. Honestly, with the advent of CNN, there is no such thing as shocking an audience. Think of it -- I used to hang myself onstage in 1970, and people were shocked by that. But now you turn on CNN and there's a guy getting hung -- Hussein hung in front of everybody.
They chop my head off, but you turn on CNN and there are terrorists literally cutting a guy's head off. So when reality turns much more shocking than anything I or Marilyn Manson can do onstage, then you have to leave shock alone and just do theatrics and try to entertain the audience.
I've always tried to design Alice as being a sort of strange, dark vaudevillian character. I think our show is closer to vaudeville than anything else. It's just a modern-day rock vaudeville where anything can happen. But it definitely has a dark sense of humor to it. And horror and comedy do sleep in bed pretty nicely together.
I saw a copy of Metal Hammer magazine this past week and the cover was some Scandinavian death metal or black metal band in ghoul face paint, and in the interview these guys seemed very, very serious. Have those bands, or have any other rock or hip-hop artists that followed in your wake, shocked or disturbed you, either with their music, lyrics or stage show?
I think when you eat your lead singer. One of the bands ate their lead singer. I kind of thought that might have been going too far. Only because the next guy that auditions goes, "What happened to your last lead singer?" "We ate him. Would you like to have lunch with us?"
I mean, the funny thing to me is looking at these death metal magazines, every band wants to be more evil than the last band. And none of them are really evil. I mean, they might talk a big game, but then I meet these guys -- you know, it's Warrockfjord! -- and here's his mother, and she baked cookies for you. It's all role-playing.
I doubt very seriously if any of these guys are into anything satanic. If they were going to be satanic, you know what they would look like? They would be dressed as politicians, or they would be dressed as car salesmen (laughs). Because Satan, trust me, does not have horns and a tail. He is the slickest looking guy you've ever seen, who could sell you a refrigerator in Alaska.
You hit on the point: I don't see any dark humor in these bands.
You're absolutely right. If it is there, it's there unintentionally. Sometimes I look at these bands and I go, "Really? There's a market for Viking rock? Honestly, do you really think that people are going to be way into this whole Viking thing?"
It's play-acting. It's almost like "Star Wars" nerds, where you ask what political party and they say, "We're Jedi."
But didn't some of those Scandinavian metal bands actually freak out?
Oh they did. The guy died, and from what I understand, they literally ate him. And a lot of them go out and burn churches. And they get so carried away. It's almost like the rap artists that started out playing the part of gangstas, and then became gangstas.
And you're sitting there, and here's a guy with a No. 1 record who's shooting people. You're going, "Guys! It's a game. You play this game to be characters, but you don't really shoot people!" I think some of them go so far they say, "Well, if we have any credibility at all, it has to be because we shot somebody." And I go, "What?"
It's taking it to the point of going, "Would you guys please get this together? You're musicians. If you want to write about that, great. I'm never going to really kill the nurse. I'm kidding, OK?" Whereas these guys think they really have to do it. It's the most amazing, weird thing, taking things way too seriously. The idea of rock 'n' roll is fantasy. That's what you want -- fantasy.
If You Go
WHO: Alice Cooper
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 5
WHERE: Peabody Auditorium, 600 Auditorium Blvd., Daytona Beach
TICKETS: $40-$55 plus service charge, available at the auditorium box office and Ticketmaster
INFORMATION: 386-671-3462
In the early 1970s, Cooper concocted a rock 'n' roll stage show in which he chopped up baby dolls, cavorted with a live boa constrictor and portrayed his execution by guillotine.
Never mind that the Grand Guignol theater in Paris beat Cooper to the punch, shocking people with macabre, bloody antics way back during the 1890s. Picket-fence America had seen nothing like Alice. Parents were dutifully outraged by Cooper's grisly shenanigans, while such songs as "School's Out," "Eighteen," "Elected" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy" became Top 40 hits, and the albums "Killer" and "Billion Dollar Babies" sold platinum.
But, Cooper said during a phone interview with The News-Journal, "I don't think you can shock an audience any more."
That doesn't mean Cooper has given up his ghoulish theatrics. His Theatre of Death Tour comes Oct. 5 to Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach. During a recent tour stop in Australia, Cooper took time off from his golf game (no kidding -- he loves the sport) to talk about shock rock, death metal dudes both real and fake, and the hard work behind having your head chopped off each night on tour.
"Along Came a Spider," your latest CD, is a concept album about a serial killer. What was the album's inspiration? A newspaper headline? Are you a fan of the "Dexter" TV show?
I love "Dexter," of course. That's a terrific show. We got addicted to that on the bus.
Most of the time I tell a story in my albums. And I thought, "What about a serial killer who fashions himself after a spider?" All his victims are wrapped in silk, like a spider with a fly. There's one leg missing. You start figuring out, "Oh-oh -- eight victims, eight legs, spider." And then the twist ending.
In the beginning, the girl says, "We found his diary today, describing all the murders." And in the end, he's saying, "They found my diary today." And he's talking to his pet spider, and he's in an institution in a straitjacket somewhere. And he says, "It couldn't have been us, because we've been in here for 28 years." So it leaves the audience with either all of these murders only happen in his diary, or there's another killer. I love that you're leaving the audience on that wire, going "Well, what?"
How prominently does "Spider" figure in the current Theatre of Death Tour?
There's a piece of it. This show is very, very choreographed. It's in four sections -- four different personalities of Alice. And after about five songs of each personality, they put that one to death. They'll cut his head off in that one. He goes to hell. Then he gets a lethal injection. Then they hang him.
If people are enthralled and can't wait to see Alice's demise at the end of the show, which has become a tradition, then let's kill him four times. Let's give them four times what they're waiting for.
You want to give them all the songs they want. I used to think it was the theatrics they were coming for. I realized later that's the icing on the cake. They really want to hear the hits. It's the same thing with everybody, with Ozzy and Aerosmith. As much theatrics as we put into it, it's a byproduct of the hits. They want those songs to sound like on the record.
Did I read that your old buddy the guillotine is back?
Oh, the guillotine, the hanging, the lethal injection, and another one is this box they put me in and run spikes through it. And none of them are comfortable. Every single night, four times a night, I go, "Boy, I hope this works."
And we thought Mick Jagger had to be in shape to go on tour. We always read he works out before the Stones go on the road.
Well, he's five years older than me. And the fact that he does three hours onstage without stopping. We do 95 minutes, and I don't stop. But I keep thinking, "Jagger does three hours, and he does a half-hour on the treadmill before the show." So I have to give him the credit. He's still the prototype king.
But he's not getting his head chopped off.
No, no. You're right about that (laughs).
When you were taking a hatchet to baby dolls, that was pretty shocking to a lot of people. Do you still try to shock your audiences, or are today's audiences more jaded and more tough to shake up?
I don't think you can shock an audience any more. Honestly, with the advent of CNN, there is no such thing as shocking an audience. Think of it -- I used to hang myself onstage in 1970, and people were shocked by that. But now you turn on CNN and there's a guy getting hung -- Hussein hung in front of everybody.
They chop my head off, but you turn on CNN and there are terrorists literally cutting a guy's head off. So when reality turns much more shocking than anything I or Marilyn Manson can do onstage, then you have to leave shock alone and just do theatrics and try to entertain the audience.
I've always tried to design Alice as being a sort of strange, dark vaudevillian character. I think our show is closer to vaudeville than anything else. It's just a modern-day rock vaudeville where anything can happen. But it definitely has a dark sense of humor to it. And horror and comedy do sleep in bed pretty nicely together.
I saw a copy of Metal Hammer magazine this past week and the cover was some Scandinavian death metal or black metal band in ghoul face paint, and in the interview these guys seemed very, very serious. Have those bands, or have any other rock or hip-hop artists that followed in your wake, shocked or disturbed you, either with their music, lyrics or stage show?
I think when you eat your lead singer. One of the bands ate their lead singer. I kind of thought that might have been going too far. Only because the next guy that auditions goes, "What happened to your last lead singer?" "We ate him. Would you like to have lunch with us?"
I mean, the funny thing to me is looking at these death metal magazines, every band wants to be more evil than the last band. And none of them are really evil. I mean, they might talk a big game, but then I meet these guys -- you know, it's Warrockfjord! -- and here's his mother, and she baked cookies for you. It's all role-playing.
I doubt very seriously if any of these guys are into anything satanic. If they were going to be satanic, you know what they would look like? They would be dressed as politicians, or they would be dressed as car salesmen (laughs). Because Satan, trust me, does not have horns and a tail. He is the slickest looking guy you've ever seen, who could sell you a refrigerator in Alaska.
You hit on the point: I don't see any dark humor in these bands.
You're absolutely right. If it is there, it's there unintentionally. Sometimes I look at these bands and I go, "Really? There's a market for Viking rock? Honestly, do you really think that people are going to be way into this whole Viking thing?"
It's play-acting. It's almost like "Star Wars" nerds, where you ask what political party and they say, "We're Jedi."
But didn't some of those Scandinavian metal bands actually freak out?
Oh they did. The guy died, and from what I understand, they literally ate him. And a lot of them go out and burn churches. And they get so carried away. It's almost like the rap artists that started out playing the part of gangstas, and then became gangstas.
And you're sitting there, and here's a guy with a No. 1 record who's shooting people. You're going, "Guys! It's a game. You play this game to be characters, but you don't really shoot people!" I think some of them go so far they say, "Well, if we have any credibility at all, it has to be because we shot somebody." And I go, "What?"
It's taking it to the point of going, "Would you guys please get this together? You're musicians. If you want to write about that, great. I'm never going to really kill the nurse. I'm kidding, OK?" Whereas these guys think they really have to do it. It's the most amazing, weird thing, taking things way too seriously. The idea of rock 'n' roll is fantasy. That's what you want -- fantasy.
If You Go
WHO: Alice Cooper
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 5
WHERE: Peabody Auditorium, 600 Auditorium Blvd., Daytona Beach
TICKETS: $40-$55 plus service charge, available at the auditorium box office and Ticketmaster
INFORMATION: 386-671-3462
