Message #246786

[Paradox]

Because I'm English, I feel like blushing, but it's true that those early hits – “School's Out”, “Eighteen, – had a raw power that wasn't all that far from some of the best hits of some of their best peers. It's also true that Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Bob Dylan loved what they were doing, and so did David Bowie and Elton John. Johnny Rotten (now John Lydon) even called Killer, which came out in 1971, ”the greatest rock'n'roll album of all time“. He said Alice Cooper was the Sex Pistols' biggest inspiration.

It all started with the Beatles. It started, in fact, with a band called The Earwigs, who were, says Cooper, “a parody of the Beatles”. Furnier, and some of his classmates at school in Detroit, formed it, he says, as “a joke”. They entered a talent show, and got “the bug”. They couldn't play instruments, but they learnt. After a short spell as The Earwigs, they called themselves The Spiders, and then The Nazz. When the band which by now was made up of Furnier, Michael Bruce, Glen Buxton, Neal Smith and Dennis Dunaway – found out there was another band called The Nazz, Furnier suggested the name Alice Cooper. He liked, he said, the contrast between the band's image and the wholesome name.

“Eighteen” became a hit in 1971. “School's Out”, which came out the following year, was an American Top 10 single, and a British No 1. Billion Dollar Babies, which came out in 1973, was a No 1 album on both sides of the Atlantic.

Furnier wanted to go bigger, and wilder. He wanted more theatre, more shocks, and more gore. His other bandmates didn't. The band split. Cooper took the name (with their permission and paying royalties) and decided to go it alone. In 1975 he brought out his first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare. The film of the name, which has been called the first rock music video album, was full of giant spiders, dancing skeletons and faceless demons. It also presented Alice Cooper the man as less a rock god, and more a vaudeville villain.

Wasn't there a part of him, I ask, that has actually been parodying Alice Cooper ever since? Cooper smiles his charming smile. “Oh, absolutely,” he says again. “And I treat Alice in the third person, because I can't take him anywhere. He belongs on stage. But there was a grey area for quite a long time when I didn't know where I began and where Alice ended.” Well, yes. He has said that in interviews quite a lot. But my point, I say, is that the heart of rock isn't parody. It is something else. So can he really call this rock?

“Yes,” says Cooper. “If you take the image away. I'm still in a bar band, because I've never grown out of it. I'll be the last guy who ever looks at the band and says, 'turn it down'. But I love the character. I always say Alice Cooper's my favourite rock star.” Oh dear. I feel like blushing again. But isn't it, I try again, like having a puppet between you and the audience? “It is,” says Cooper politely, “but he's a really fun puppet. My fans,” he adds, “don't want him to be human. They want him to be this other-worldly character.”

At this point, Cooper's wife walks in. He met Sheryl Goddard, a dancer and choreographer who performed in his show, when he was dating Raquel Welch. He left Welch and married her. But in 1983, when he was well on his way to drinking himself to death, she filed for divorce. He dried out. They made up. He has, he has often said, “never cheated on her”. Now she travels with him, and watches nearly all his shows. His eldest daughter, Calico, even sometimes performs in them. Alice Cooper, it's clear, is something of a family business. So does he think, I ask, once Sheryl, who looks very young for a woman of 56, has gone to do some shopping, that having this character as a part of his life has done him any harm? Cooper nods.