At 74, Alice Cooper continues to offer up hard rock with a theatrical twist
Courtesy of Atom Splitter PR
At 74, veteran rocker Alice Cooper continues to tour and will be at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh Sunday.
Courtesy of Atom Splitter PR
Alice Cooper pays tribute to his hometown on his latest album, “Detroit Stories.”
Courtesy of Atom Splitter PR
A Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Alice Cooper has influenced generations of hard rock and heavy metal musicians.
Here’s a heads-up: If you’re walking around a mall and you see a guy in sunglasses and a baseball cap who looks like Alice Cooper, it might very well be Alice Cooper.
And if you want an autograph, don’t hesitate to ask.
“I sign everything,” Cooper said on the phone from Palm Springs, Calif., last month. “I look at it as a compliment. The day they don’t want your autograph, the day they don’t want your picture is when you’re in trouble.”
Strolling around a shopping center with your wife of 46 years and getting in nine holes of golf after breakfast are all pretty standard activities for a 74-year-old man, but Cooper will never be confused with your run-of-the-mill septuagenarian. The man born Vincent Damon Furnier is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, has sold an estimated 50 million records in a career that spans more than 50 years, and is held up as a key influence on generations of hard rock and heavy metal musicians who married crunching power chords with dark theatrical flourishes.
Cooper is also one of the hardest-working classic rockers out there. He plays about 200 shows a year, performing everywhere from Toronto to Toledo, Ohio, and Sunday, March 20, will be at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh. His relentless touring came to a halt from March 2020 to September 2021 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and Cooper admitted that the time away from the road was rough.
“We are all road rats,” Cooper said of he and his band. “You get addicted to the adrenaline. You get addicted to getting up there in front of an audience. And so that’s the high point of your day. So all of a sudden you pull that out from under you and say, ‘No more shows for 18 months,’ and you go, ‘What?!’ It’s like going to jail.”
Cooper didn’t remain idle during the forced layoff. He continued to host a radio show, “Nights With Alice Cooper,” and released his 28th studio album, “Detroit Stories,” which pays tribute to his hometown. Working with longtime producer Bob Ezrin, the album serves up an array of styles that sprang from or were refined in the Motor City, including Motown, hard rock and punk. It peaked at No. 47 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart last year, and hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart that tabulates the physical sale of vinyl albums and compact discs. It also reached No. 1 in Germany.
Cooper’s hit albums from his 1970s heyday, like “Billion Dollar Babies” and “Welcome to My Nightmare” are concept albums and, according to Cooper, “Bob and I always do conceptual albums. They all have storylines. And I said on this one, ‘Let’s just do a solid rock album,’ and it evolved into being a concept album.”
He added, “It’s really nice to still be doing it. And doing it better than I did before.”
Considering that Cooper can now be found participating in celebrity golf tournaments and pounding out beloved old hits like “School’s Out” in casinos, it’s easy to forget how shocking Cooper’s act was a half-century ago. Emerging in the envelope-pushing atmosphere of the late 1960s, the dark makeup that lined Cooper’s eyes and a stage act that included guillotines and fake blood were more than enough to send mothers to fainting couches and fathers into fits of apoplexy. Of course, the opprobrium of adults only helped fuel the success of Cooper and compatriots like Kiss and David Bowie.
“You could shock an audience then,” Cooper explained. “Now, you can’t shock an audience. We still use shock elements in the show, but people know it’s going to be a dark rock and roll vaudeville up there.”
Artifacts from Cooper’s career went on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland last fall, including an electric chair that was once used in concert, and stage outfits. He explained, “We have a place in Los Angeles that is a museum almost. It’s a warehouse of all the props from all the shows over 50 years. I wouldn’t want to sleep in there!”
Whenever Cooper visits Pittsburgh, it’s something of a homecoming for him. He spent a few summers in Uniontown with his grandparents when he was growing up, and briefly attended Smock Elementary School.
“Yeah, Pennsylvania is almost a second home for me,” he said. “When you’re on stage, and honestly, when you’re doing 100 cities, you can’t tell one city from another. If I look out in the audience and I see a bunch of Pirates hats, I know I’m in Pittsburgh.”