Alice Cooper Quotes

If you confine it, you're confining a whole thing. If you make it spontaneous, so that anything can happen, like we don't want to confine or restrict anything. What we can do, whatever we can let happen, you just let it happen. ... we're taking sex, which is probably another half of American entertainment, sex and violence, and we're projecting it, and we're saying this is the way everything is right now. Biologically, everyone is male and female, so many male genes and so many female. And so what it is is we're saying "OK, what's the big deal. Why is everybody so up tight about sex?" About faggots, queers, things like that. That's the way they are. ... People don't accept that they are both male and female, and people are afraid to break out of their sex thing because that's a big insecurity that's doing that. Consequently, people will make fun of us. We don't mind that, that's making them accept more, making fun that we accept that. The thing is this is the way we are. We think it's a gas. ... We like reactions — a reaction is walking out on us, a reaction is throwing tomatoes at the stage, that's a healthy psychological reaction. Reaction's applauding, passing out or throwing up, and all of that is a reaction, and as much of that we can get, the better. I don't care how they react, as long as they react.

People that haven't seen us yet are shocked because they think that Alice Cooper must be a female folksinger. They don't expect the whole thing. And the whole thing is a direct product of television and movies and America, 'cause that's where America's based. That's where their heart is from the sex and violence of TV and the movies, and that was our influence.

I remember attending a Friars roast for Muhammad Ali when Don Rickles grabbed me and walked me up to Sinatra. “Hey, Frank,” he said to the Chairman of the Board, “tonight I’m sitting with this guy. You know why? Because he fills up baseball stadiums! You play bars.” Frank laughed and waved him off, with me standing there silently.

One of the band’s all-time-favorite movies was What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, starring Bette Davis. In the movie, Bette wears disgusting caked makeup smeared on her face and underneath her eyes, with deep, dark, black eyeliner. She looks horrific and creepy because she put on traditional makeup thickly and badly. Another movie we watched over and over was Barbarella. One character, the Great Tyrant, was played by the gorgeous European actress Anita Pallenberg. She dressed in black leather with a black eye patch and had switchblades coming out of her. Alice Cooper’s look evolved from a composite of those female movie characters, with a little bit of Emma Peel from The Avengers added for good measure.

Iggy and Alice. Alice and Iggy. Iggy was the total street-punk sex god — no shirt, his private parts sticking out of his pants. But he was a great performer. The band was so basic and raw, but it didn’t matter how well they played. In fact, the Stooges made the Ramones sound like a string quartet. The Stooges were relentless, and no matter what happened to Iggy out there in the crowd — somebody in the audience might knock him out cold, whatever — the band would never, ever stop playing. The roadies had to revive Iggy and set him back upon the stage, but meanwhile the band would go right into the next song. The Stooges were serious customers. I hated going on after Iggy! He wore the audience out. Musically maybe we were the better band, and visually we might have been more stunning, but the Stooges rocked.