Alice Cooper - Me, Alice - The Autobiography of Alice Cooper

We didn’t even know we had bombed at first. We were so excited about being in New York we didn’t know what hit us. All we cared about for the first two days was getting laid and finding Glen’s guitar. Glen had a lead. Two junkies in the lobby of the hotel told him the Puerto Rican elevator operator was clipping and selling it in Harlem. Glen called Shep and Shep decided it was more likely we could get the guitar back if we confronted the guy ourselves instead of calling the police.

The next afternoon Shep, Glen, Billy and I got into the elevator in the lobby and asked for our floor. When we stopped at our landing Billy put his hand over the grating and asked the guy to wait a minute. It was hot and sticky in there as the four of us stared at the man in the corner. We had a prearranged plan, and I didn’t know what I was doing there except maybe to add some moral support. We just stared at the guy. I figured maybe we were psyching him out.

After an uncomfortable minute there was a soft whssst sound and I looked down and saw the elevator operator holding a very pointy switchblade. Shep looked around, pulled on a lock of hair and said, “Isn’t this our floor, gentlemen?”

The elevator operator pulled back the grating yanked down the crossbar and let us into the hallway. We scurried down the hall, looking over our shoulder as the man stepped into the hallway to watch us file into my room, still holding the switchblade by his side.

We checked out of the Allison an hour later and moved into the Hotel Edgar around the corner for safety. But at the Hotel Edgar there were just as perilous dangers: lice and rats. I spent my entire allowance on Pyrinate A-200 that week. I bathed with it two or three times a day, as did we all. At night, when we got sweaty in the clubs, the place reeked of it. I don’t know how humans could bear to come near us let alone those little crabs.

The rats at the Edgar were as big as dogs. I dreamed nightly they were eating me in my sleep. I walked into the room one day and found a rat dragging a half of a cream cheese and bagel sandwich across the room. Jesus, they were strong! There was also the most incredible faggot camped out in front of my room for two days. Whenever I came back to the hotel he would be lying on the floor of the hallway downed out of his mind on pills, “Come on, Alice, you can be guy for one night.”

It was so obnoxious to find him unconscious in front of my door that Neal and I went berserk one night. We dragged him into the room, tossed him in the tub filled with Pyrinate and cockroaches and turned on the shower. He began pulling off his wet clothes which we helped him tear to shreds. He was crying, “Oh, you’re so mean!” the whole time, but he had a tremendous hard-on. We tossed him out the door and poured a bottle of ketchup over him.

The next day Shep hired two limousines to take us to Philadelphia. Two sisters with silicon tits turned out to see Neal and Mike off and I had an entourage of drag queens on the sidewalk which looked like a meeting of the New York Mah-Jongg association. We left our luggage in the lobby of the Edgar, joking about lightning striking twice, and took our fans to the corner for egg creams. When we got back to the hotel, Glen’s suitcase of clothes had been stolen.

Our time in Philadelphia was spent worrying about the Scene. What could we do in New York to get their attention? Should we offend them? Maybe go out there and slap them around a little to bring them to?

The next night in the middle of my first number I broke a glass. I walked out into the audience and knocked it off a table. Most people thought it was an accident, but when a second and third broke a few minutes later they knew it was no joke. I began to smash bottles and glasses all over the room. Table of people burst up all over the place as I attacked their drinks. They called Steve Paul in from the front steps where he sat all night and he stopped the show. He refused to let us go back on until I swore I wouldn’t break any more glasses, but I lied. The second show I turned over an entire table. Steve Paul was furious but that’s why the place was called the Scene. Anybody who had ever been there talked about it, and even Steve Paul couldn’t stop telling his friends.

When we got back to new York from our gig in Philadelphia we moved into the Chelsea hotel, which is just a New York version of the Landmark. The Landmark was Disneyland compared to the Chelsea. I met more leather and strap freaks in four days at the Chelsea than I did in my entire career of wearing black leather. Sex at the Chelsea involved giving enemas and fist fucking. I didn’t care for it much. The rooms at the Chelsea were even guaranteed soundproofed. Now why would anyone want a soundproofed hotel room? Heavy sleeping?

I rode up in the elevator with a Puerto Rican girl in a big white hat. She got off on my floor and watched me go to my room from the other end of the hall. Three minutes later she knocked on the door to my room. She sat down on the bed, unbuttoned her pants, opened her purse and took out a picture of Mick Jagger and a vibrator. Then she pulled her pants down to her knees, laid back and masturbated. I called Mike and Dennis into the room to watch with me.

Glen was never at the Chelsea. He was sick of wearing the clothes he had on his back when his suitcase was stolen and he was determined to find his belongings before we left New York. People separated in waves around him as he strode down the hot streets in his smelly lame outfit, positive he would find some Puerto Rican hanging out in a doorway dressed in Glen’s purple pedal pushers and black beads.

Our last night at the Scene Shep asked Alan Strahl to come see us, and he in turn brought some of his own friends. They all arrived between shows and Shep waved me over to their table. Alan Strahl’s friends were some tough-looking guys from Brooklyn, and when he was introduced to me, his mouth fell open. I could tell he was embarrassed.

“Shep, Shep,” he stammered, “I thought they were a little strange, but….”

Our last night in New York Shep called a meeting. We were leaving the next morning on an early plane for Buffalo, and after the last show was the only time left to talk. By the time we wrapped the equipment it must have been three in the morning. I went straight to the bar and doubled up on my drinks.

When we got outside it was pouring with rain. I stood by the curb throwing up phlegm while Mike and Dennis went to the corner to hail a cab. A few minutes passed, and I was soaked through to the bone. Finally I walked to the corner to look for them and they were gone. I went back to the Scene, but everyone had left and Steve Paul was locking the place. He said Shep had just called looking for me. Mike and Dennis had forgot to tell the cabdriver to go back and pick me up. Steve Paul loaned me two bucks to get downtown to the Chelsea, and I went back out into the rain.

It was impossible to get a cab. It was just before dawn, I was alone, which was rare, and in New York, which was rarer. I did the only sensible thing. I started walking downtown. Ten minutes later I was a shivering wet mess and when I spotted an empty cab I almost fell over myself trying to hail it. When the driver saw how wet I was he made me sit on an opened newspaper. I closed my eyes and sat back when suddenly the cab stopped short.

Just up ahead of us a husky black man was standing in the middle of the street, as wet as I was, waving us down like we were a locomotive.

“Hey, I need a lift, man! You got a lift?” he shouted to us. The driver backed up and started to drive around him when the black guy grabbed one of the driver’s door handles and held fast. We dragged him a good five feet.

“Where the fuck are you going? I said I needed help!” The driver, an old man in a golf cap, spun around an locked all the doors as he began a chant of what I thought were New York cabdriver words.