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

The stage was designed and executed by award-winning set designers Joe Gannon and Jim Newborn at a cost of $250,000. It looked like a giant TV quiz show, with luminous platforms and multileveled areas for me to dance across. Every moment of the show was carefully rehearsed and planned. People were beginning to respect the fact that Alice Cooper was reviving vaudeville, and that “Billion-Dollar Babies” was not just another rock and roll slop show. I began the show with “Hello Hooray,” slithering down the steps like a drunken Dietrich, enticing the audience from the edge of the platform to come join me in the fun. From there we pounded into “Raped and Freezin’,” “Elected,” and “Billion-Dollar Babies.” The lights dimmed for “Unfinished Sweet.” I was strapped onto an operating table and attacked with a giant drill, after which I got chased by a huge dancing tooth which I finally clobbered with a four-foot toothbrush and a five-foot tube of toothpaste. Then into “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and “Sick Things.” During “Sick Things” I raped and chopped apart baby dolls and mannequins, soaring into an anthem, “I Love the Dead,” which the kids sang along with.

For “Billion-Dollar Babies” I gave up the noose and had a guillotine designed by The Amazing Randi, a magician who went on the road with us and played the parts of dentist and executioner. The guillotine had a real forty-pound blade in it. After “I Love the Dead,” Randi led me to the guillotine. As always the audience got quiet, waiting breathlessly for the sound of the falling blade. From my hiding place behind the set I could always tell when the dummy’s head got lopped off and fell into the barrel from the cheering in the audience. The rest of the band retrieved the bloody head from the basket and kicked it around the stage as a football.

In the end of the show I return dressed in white, the good Alice back again. During the finale we had a recording of Kate Smith singing “God Bless America.” I walked around the stage waving an American flag and spitting Budweiser at the audience with an actor named Richard M. Dixon who looked just like the ex-President. When the lights came up in the auditorium we beat the hell out of him. (We knew what we were doing way back then.)

The logistics of moving the set, sound, and people through the country were staggering. The tentative crew included the five members of the band, Shep, Dave Libert as tour director, Mike Rozwell as advance man, Shep’s assistant Gail Rodgers, The Amazing Randi, Richard Dixon, a four-member road crew, three members for stage production, a master electrician, a master carpenter, Charlie Carnal for lights, three technicians from Showco Sound, two truck drivers, and six guys in an opening act.

Then there were incidentals: 400 comic books, 3,000 pounds of crunchy Granola, 5,000 pre-prepared meals, 140 cases of Seagram’s VO, 250,000 cans of Budweiser, 300 deeks of cards, and 1,000 Alice Cooper poker chips. (And Flo and Eddie, who are two of my best friends and kept me going through all of this.)

We took this assortment with us on our own plane, a huge F-27 Electra dubbed the AC-I. We had a snake in the shape of a dollar sign painted on the tail. Most of the seats were torn out and replaced with pillows. We had a blackjack table installed, at which I won $4,700. The walls were papered with nudes and Alice Cooper paraphernalia, and the plane was equipped with everything Alice Cooper, right down to napkins that said “Fly Me, I’m Alice.” The two stewardesses had both been dismissed from commercial airlines on morality charges.

On the ground, in two tractor-trailers, along with the set, traveled forty tons of equipment, including the sound system, the dentist’s giant drill, a surgical table, six whips, six hatchets, 22,000 sparklers, 23,000 program books, 10,000 patches, 3,000 baby dolls, 58 mannequin torsos, 14 bubble machines, 28 gallons of bubble maker, 280 spare light bulbs, 6,000 mirror parts, 250,000 packets of bubble bath, five pounds of gold glitter, a carton of mascara, and 20 mice a week for the snake.

We set off on this venture March 1, 1973, not healthy and strong from rest but worn and with no confidence. I had resumed a drinking schedule for the tour. There was no question that I could remain on the road sober. I had a physical when I got back from Jamaica, and it was decided that the most sensible drinking plan was to hold off on the VO until eight at night.

They woke us at ten every morning. Dave Libert did this himself, bounding through the halls with a room list in his hand, pounding on doors and cursing. Mandi Newall, who we stole from Derek Taylor in London, woke up the heads of each crew and the crew chiefs who in turn woke up their own people. At 10:45 A. M. everybody put their luggage outside their doors and Libert got to the phone to call people, praying not more than a dozen or so had taken their phones off the hooks and gone back to sleep. The band, at least, was always still in bed.

Somebody cheeked with the bus company and limousine service to make sure they were on their way. Libert called the airport to cheek on weather conditions here and in the next town. Rozwell, on advance in the next city for a day already, called his limousine service to make sure the cars are waiting at our destination. He also confirmed interviews and put hotel room keys in separate envelopes that included room lists. Then there was one person to count people. He stood in the lobby or the plane and checked names of a master list to make sure nobody got stranded in a bathroom in Toledo.

You get crazy leading your life like that. That’s why rock and roll groups wreck hotels, because they get crazy being uprooted and transported. Some guys trashed hotel rooms to relieve the tension. I got drunk and watched TV.

The only constant companion in your life when you’re on the road, the only thing you can count on to be there, is the television set. TV was always very important to me. It colored my life, gave me a sterling education and great insights into this country. But on the road it was more. It was an anchor with reality. It was the only thing that was the same everywhere. I was no longer in a strange city while I was with Art Fleming playing Jeopardy. I was home with friends on the Hollywood Squares, where Paul Lynde kept me company through my second can of beer. When I got off the tour I even had the Sony company build a five-foot TV screen for me to watch at home. But on the tour people kidded me about it; while everybody else was scoring chicks and getting laid, I watched TV. Cindy wasn’t on the road much, which we both agreed was best, and I didn’t have anything to do with the groupies, so the tube became my best friend.

My bodyguard, Norm Klein, left me alone in the room one night, and I decided that when he came back, it would be funny if I was making love to the TV set in the middle of the floor. I lugged the thing off its frame and laid it on the floor and turned up the volume. There was a knock and the sound of a key and I dropped my pants and started humping the set with my ass to the door. The door opened and slammed shut. I waited there on the floor for a while, looking around at the empty room. After a few minutes of Love of Life playing into my groin, I heard a key in the door again and started humping. When I didn’t hear Norm laughing I turned around. The maid had come to the door first. She called the house detective who met Norm in the hallway. All three of them were standing there in shock watching me.

The most hideous moment on the tour happened in Evansville, Indiana. I was warming up with Eva Marie Snake in my bedroom, trying to get her used to my body temperature because her cage had been on the floor. Eva Marie Snake was nearly fifty pounds, the largest snake I ever worked with and up until that time a complete sweety.