Long Live Alice Cooper! The Godfather of Shock Rock Discusses His Legendary Career

It’s official: Alice Cooper is immortal.

For fifty years and counting, the 76-year-old shock-rock godfather somehow always magically manages to cheat death every time he puts his head in a guillotine during a concert, much to the awe of his captive crowds. At this point, he’s lost count of how many beheadings he’s survived. But unlike most sane people, Cooper loves it.

“Putting your head in a guillotine every night — you can’t really get tired of that,” Cooper calmly explains.

“I’ve always wanted the audience’s thought to be, ‘This could be the night the guillotine actually cuts his head off,'" he adds. "It only misses me by eight inches, and it’s a forty-pound blade. It literally keeps me on my toes. We’ve done it so many times, so we know how to do it. So don’t try this at home…if you have a guillotine at home.”

Spoken like a true pro. Of course, it’s all part of the macabre masquerade he’s cultivated, and perfected, since introducing the Cooper character to the rock world in the 1960s. The maniacal crossdresser first shook society to its core after the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival, during which a fan threw a live chicken on stage. Cooper, thinking the farmyard bird would fly away, tossed it back into the crowd, but the doomed fowl suffered a terrible fate. The Chicken Incident, as it’s been dubbed, put Cooper and his band of merry misfits on the map and inadvertently started a new brand the press called “shock rock.”

Cooper, who was born Vincent Furnier in Detroit in 1948, ran with it, curating and creating an over-the-top cabinet of curiosities complete with snakes and straitjackets en route to becoming a rock god. For the uninitiated, it’s all very weird and wild, but it’s quintessential Alice Cooper. Buy a ticket and take in the traveling freak show for yourself on Tuesday, August 13, at Mission Ballroom.

“At 76, I’m doing probably the best shows I’ve ever done in my life right now. If anybody’s expecting Alice to walk through the show, they’re going to be very surprised because it’s all out, it’s everything," he says. "I’ve never felt better in my life."

That is scary in all the right ways. Even scarier is that Cooper is seemingly getting stronger with age and showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
“If I went up there and just phoned it in, I wouldn’t ever want to do it again. I always want to do it full-out,” he explains. “If that day ever comes, well, that would be the time to stop. So far that has not happened.”

Plus, people still want to see the man who wears a literal boa constrictor around his neck each night and hear all the hits, including “School’s Out,” “I’m Eighteen” and “No More Mr. Nice Guy.”

Although there was a time early on when Alice would try to escape the confines of the stage and wreak havoc in his everyday life, Cooper has perfected “the pure villain” character, as he calls it.

“It’s like playing Doctor Doom or Dracula. It’s always fun to play somebody you’re nothing like,” Cooper shares. “I let him live for two hours and forty minutes on stage and just let him go. … There’s no reason to bring Alice off stage.”

That means Cooper will not be campaigning or appearing on ballots this coming election. Even though the long-running Alice for President shtick is still part of the act, Cooper definitely does not want to be elected.

“I basically beg people not to vote for me,” he quips.

“The joke on this one is that right before that is ‘Ballad of Dwight Fry,’ and I’m in a straitjacket and they cut my head off,” he continues. “Then the next thing you know Alice is up on the podium with all the American flags in a straitjacket running for president. It kind of makes sense right now.”

True story: Cooper actually received two official presidential votes from Vermont in 2016 (Ted Nugent, another Michigan-born rocker, received one write-in as well). That’s more surprising nowadays than anything Cooper can conjure up. But the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer views what he’s doing as more of an entertaining escape from the rude realities of modern times.

“I don’t honestly think you can shock an audience anymore,” he admits. “Nothing’s more shocking than the news most of the time.”

Gone are the simpler times when a rock star wearing makeup can make worldwide headlines.

“In the ’70s, it was very easy to shock an audience. Alice Cooper had a snake, his name is Alice and your kids love him. That was shocking,” Cooper recalls.

Sure, there have been numerous impersonators since then, as shock rockers who followed only upped the ante, but there is only one Alice Cooper. And he’s still the best.

“I just decorate it better. People have heard about the guillotine. They’ve heard about the straitjacket. They’ve heard about the show,” he concludes. “But if you say, ‘Welcome to my nightmare,’ don’t just say it — give them the nightmare.”

We’re not worthy!

Alice Cooper, 7 p.m. Tuesday, August 13, Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop Street. Tickets are $83-$152.