Alice Cooper

In real life in 1975, I had a knock on my door, I used to live on Blue Jay Way in Los Angeles. I lived in a house Mel Brooks rented to me. I opened the door and there was a little casket there. There were these two little girls that were like witches or something that were in a coven standing next to the casket in the front hard huddled over together, and they wouldn't look at me. The casket was a gift from them. I opened it up (reluctantly) and it was a cat's heart. I immediately literally called the police, because I didn't know if it was a gift, a warning or a threat, and I didn't quite know how to take it. I gave the box to the police and said "I don't know where they got this, but it can't be good." Anybody who goes that far... The things I do onstage are dark but they have a sense of humor. This did not have a sense of humor to it. The two little girls were arrested, and I never heard about them again... they might have gone on to become Heart or that's what should have happened.

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.

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.

Anything to do with needles. I can put my head in a guillotine, I can put a 20 foot boa constrictor around me, but a blood test I will pass right out. It has nothing to do with the pain, it just has to do with the idea of an idea going in you and pulling blood out. I have no tattoos because I am needle phobic.

The other thing that terrifies me is clowns that make balloon animals. I cannot stand the squeaking of balloons. It is the most irritating thing in the world to me.

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.

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.

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

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.

What record labels? There are very few record labels left as I know it. A record label used to be something that would invest in your career and keep the band afloat. It doesn't seem like that anymore. The best thing it seems to be now is to make your own albums in your garage and sell them on your website. If you're lucky enough to be with a really good label like I am, you get distribution all over the world. But generally record labels are not what they used to be. Columbia, A&M, Elektra, those were really great rock labels. Capitol had the Beatles, etc. But now with technology the way it is, you don't go to a record store and buy records anymore. I don't exactly know what a record label does anymore. I would say if you are a young band, be the best live band in the neighborhood and make sure there is nobody around better than you, because that is where you can sign. Anybody can make a great record in a garage, but you can't fake a live performance.

Well, I already told Johnny Depp he is going to have to have his nose broken in order to play me, so he's working on that right now... no, actually, Steve Carell - if you put my hair and the makeup on Steve Carell, it would probably look really close. We have a very similar kind of smile and face structure. It would be a weird choice but we have the same smile and he's probably in some kind of really dark metal band that we don't know about anyways.