"My job is to entertain, not to preach."

You wanna find out some facts about his extremely popular own classic rock radio show? Or about his thoughts about politics and sports? Or maybe about his upcoming headlining performance on July 6, 2008 at the Kaliakra Rock Fest 2008 in Kavarna, Bulgaria (alongside Manowar, Slayer and In Flames)? All this and more comes to you from his majesty himself - born 60 years ago in Detroit as Vincent Damon Furnier, but known worldwide as the godfather of shock rock - Alice Cooper!

Vassil Varbanov: Hello, Mr. Cooper! Or should I start with “dear colleague”? How are you? It’s good to have you with us again. Basically, the first time was 8 years ago, before your first concert in Bulgaria. Now you are already working on a radio. You’ve been working for 4 years or something… So, who’s going to take care of your show "Nights with Alice Cooper" while on tour?

Alice Cooper: I take the audience with me. When I go around on tour, I do the show from the road, so the audience will be coming to Bulgaria with me and I will tape the show from there. Then the audience will be literally going to Finland, they will be in Sweden, they will be in Russia, they will be all over the place. Wherever I go, the audience goes.

V. V.: Well, that’s great! Why are you doing the radio thing?

A. C.: The radio thing is easy for me. It’s because, you know, I tape the show and I get to play all the music I want to hear and it’s fun, because I play a lot of music that doesn’t get played on the radio. I play bands like The Yardbirds, Them and Paul Butterfield, Frank Zappa, and most of the time radio plays only AC/DC and Led Zeppelin.

V. V.: And Alice Cooper probably…

A. C.: And Alice Cooper. Yeah, I play a lot of new Alice Cooper, and the old stuff too, so I have a big variety of stuff in my show, but, you know, in the morning I do my radio show and tape it and in the evening I do the regular show, when we are on tour. I can do all of it.

V. V.: That’s great, but when you were starting your band, if there was a DJ like you, Alice Cooper, would he play your stuff according to you?

A. C.: You know, once we had “18” and “School’s Out”, I think that broke us into the ranks of the bands that would get hits. We have had actually 14 Top 40 hits, so it was unusual that a band as much theatrical and controversial as Alice Cooper had so many commercial hits. So yeah, I still hear 10-11 songs that are done on the radio all the time.

V. V.: Which means you wouldn’t play your own stuff, because, as you said, you play stuff that is not familiar to radio, right?

A. C.: I still play “Smoke on the Water”, Cream and Hendrix and all that stuff, but every once in a while I play some stuff you haven’t heard on the radio, things that are really unique, you know, records that make people say, “What was that? You know what song was that?” So sometimes I have a thing called “Deep Cuts”. When I go in there I find really deep Alice Cooper cuts that only the fans would know.

V. V.: Thank you, dear colleague, for explaining this, so please let’s talk about your band's line-up.

A. C.: Alright. Eric Singer has been my drummer for 18 years now, 19 years… He’s been sort of main-stay with me. Chuck Garrick is on bass. Chuck was with Dio and a couple of other bands. Kerry Kelly who played with Slash, and Jason Hook, who’s also been with a lot of LA bands. So I really kind of surround myself with great players. I think once you are in business, myself, Ozzy and people like that always find great guitar players.

V. V.: Eric Singer was here in Sofia only two weeks ago with Kiss…

A. C.: Oh, yes, that’s right. If you have noticed, Kiss and Alice never tour at the same time, because we have the same drummer.

V. V.: I was about to ask you whether this guy is schizophrenic or he has a twin somewhere in the world?

A. C.: He is such a good drummer that he can play any kind of music. The only difference is that in my show he doesn’t have to dress like a kinky cat.

V. V.: Now this new album of yours, "Along Came a Spider",В is scheduled for release viaВ the German label SPV. These guys seem to have all the old bands that appeal to me and the previous generations. Why did it take you so long to join them?

A. C.: Well, actually they came to us and realized I was pretty much a free agent at this point. And I think a lot of the major bands try not to be on big labels, because in big labels you get lost in a shuffle. I mean, when you are on a label with fifty other acts, then the attention has to go in a bunch of different places. I would much rather have to be on a smaller label where everybody in the label is working on your record. To me it’s a much better way to do it. There’s a kind of revolution right now when it comes to record labels. I think independent labels are more effective.

V. V.: Yes, but as I said, you are probably the last big name to join them. They have bands like Whitesnake, Judas Priest used to work with them, so at the end of the day they tend to turn into a big label as well.

A. C.: To us it’s fine, because when we played to them some of our new stuff off our record, they were very, very related by... I mean, when they heard it, they realized it was pure Alice Cooper. It wasn’t something like real dated sounding. It was modern sounding and in the same time it had all the Alice Cooper aspects to it, so I’m very happy with this album. I don’t like living in the past. I don’t really like sort of living off what I did before. I kind of like the idea that my new album should be taken as a new album, I don’t want it to be some retro-Alice again. I want it to be like, “Alice! Wow! Listen to what he’s doing now!”

V. V.: You’re not living in the past, but talking about Alice Cooper, we Bulgarians definitely have a little touch of the past, remembering your first show in Sofia back in 2000.

A. C.: That was great. We still talk about that show. What we didn’t realize was how hot it was there. We were there in August I think, he-he-he… And it was really warm, but the audience was terrific! You know, I think the audience reacts to what you give them and Alice Cooper is going to give them all the hits… When I said living in the past, that doesn’t mean I won’t do all the hits. I mean, I’ll do all the hits and it’s just that I don’t depend on the past. You know, I like the idea of doing the old hits and then new stuff and always kind of making sure that the audience gets a real show, a real full show.

V. V.: This time your show is not going to be in Sofia, but on the Black Sea coast, which is a bit in the east. And this is a big festival - the three-day Kaliakra Rock Fest 2008 - so I’m going to ask you if you play on your show the other bands that are going to headline the other nights? They're all American bands - I’m talking about Manowar and Slayer.

A. C.: Well, these are bands we have met with a million times and we’ve known and everything like that. You know, the funny thing about going to Europe in the summertime is that you’re playing different festivals every night. One night we’re in Bulgaria, the next we’re in Sweden, then in Finland, so what we do is we are bumping into these bands about 6 or seven times, playing different festivals. It’s almost like getting to see your old friends. Last year we did shows and we got bumping into Uriah Heep and Deep Purple and all these bands we have had known for 30 years, so it’s kind of fun for us, because we get to bumping into old friends.

V. V.: Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P. told us the same thing a month ago - that it's like meeting the old class every night.

A. C.: It is. It’s like going to a class reunion. But I think we kind of challenge each other, too. We look at each other and we watch each other’s show and everything and then we go, OK… We are still very competitive, I think.

V. V.: Yeah, but the question actually was, do you play these particular two bands on your show or Manowar can not match together with The Yardbirds, as you said?

A. C.: Well yeah, I would play them. I have different segments of my radio show where I would play them. I would play them in the “Future Classics” where I take newer bands and I think, “This song is going to be a classic at some point,” so I‘ll play The White Stripes and a lot of these bands. Slayer and Manowar have been around for a long time now. I remember when Slayer first came out, and now they are veterans. Manowar have also been around since the early 80’s, I think.

V. V.: Yeah. You know, I now remember an interview in one of those classic rock magazines where you were saying somewhere in the early 80’s that you can’t wait the tour to end so you can grow your moustache, which is a symbol of freedom.

A. C.: I always grow my moustache at Christmas. It’s like two or three weeks before Christmas when I grow my moustache, and then on New Year I cut it off.

V. V.: Two more questions to go. The one naturally is going to concern your big passion playing golf. Isn’t that a sport for too old guys?

A. C.: Yeah, it used to be and you will be surprised now that most heavy metal bands all play golf. I think what it is the fact that when you are on the road for 5 months and you are in a different city every single night, you are having all day to do nothing, because the show starts at 9 o’clock that night. Well, I don’t want to sit around in my hotel room all day, so I found out something where I can get out, do something for 5 hours, get outside, do something other that rock’n’roll, and then I go back to the hotel and get ready for the show.  I think most bands would like to do that. And another thing that I have found is that most musicians were at one time athletes. They either played one sport or another when they were younger. Golf is a kind of sport that you can still play and you can go to any city and play it.

V. V.: Last question: What is this story of making fun of Rush in your radio show?

A. C.: Rush and I have some kind of an ongoing thing… They are friends of mine, and I always make fun of Geddy Lee’s voice, because he always sounds like he’s been inhaling helium. They know about it. We all laugh about it. I make fun of Journey, I make fun of everybody and I’ve never had anybody call me up being angry at me. I’ve only had people kind of laughing like, “I heard what you said about us last night, it was really funny!” I also make fun of myself on the show.

V. V.: Do you use your show for some kind of political thing? Are you optimistic, politically speaking, about America now?

A. C.: Well, yes, I am and at the same time I really avoid politics. I avoid it at all costs, because I really don’t believe politics and rock’n’roll belong together, but that’s just my belief. I know that a lot of people want to use rock’n’roll as a platform for politics and to me rock’n’roll is an escape from politics, so I stay away from politics totally. I mean, I don’t know any more about politics than you do. Or anybody. But for some reason people think that rock’n’rollers know more about politics. Well, we don’t.

V. V.: We actually are doing in a month a show in Sofia of a very politically oriented band from America - Ministry. Do you play their stuff on your show?

A. C.: Ministry? Yeah, I play them once in a while. I play everybody. I play Bruce Springsteen… I kind of stay away from any kind of politics just because it’s not my job. My job is to entertain, not to preach.

V. V.: And you have been around even before most of today's politicians were born.

A. C.: Yeah, and you know, the funny thing is that I know a lot of politicians personally. I just refuse to go and dig and support one of them - to me that’s up to the voters, not me.

Copyright: Tangra Mega Rock