Sometimes I think that TV evangelism is one of Satan’s greatest weapons. They put these guys on a pedestal and all of a sudden they get caught with a… - Alice Cooper

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.

In the early days when I was drinking ... I had a very blurry line about where those two were... but I mean, that happens when you drink twenty-two hours a day. I would just sit and drink. I didn’t know whether or not I was supposed to be Alice when I went out for dinner and was a little lit. Then there was the question about whether or not I should wear the make up because I didn’t really want to disappoint anyone. Was I supposed to get into trouble? Was I supposed to get arrested that night? All of those questions went through my mind. You have to remember though who my older brothers and sisters were though--guys like Jim Morrison and Keith Moon and all the people who were living that life. After they all died, I just sat there and went, “if one generation is going to learn from the next the truth is going to have to be that you don’t have to die to be your character.” I figured then that I had better be able to separate the two. When I go onstage as Alice to this day, I play Alice to the hilt — I play him for everything he is worth, but when I’m offstage, I never think about Alice Cooper. He never occurs to me. .. I walk off stage though and I turn away from the audience, I go back to being me again. Whenever I see an audience, that’s when I turn into Alice. If there was no audience there, there would be no reason to be Alice. … If I tried to be Alice Cooper all the time — I’d either be in an insane asylum or in jail or dead. Alice is just too intense, and you just can’t be Alice all the time. Jim Morrison couldn’t be Jim Morrison, so he died. Jimi Hendrix couldn’t be Jimi Hendrix, so he died. That’s really what killed Janis Joplin, Keith Moon and all the way down the line. They were all animated characters who couldn’t live up to their lifestyle, so I said that I needed to be able to separate the two — that’s why I’m still here.

From the moment I leave my house or my hotel room, the public owns me. The public made Alice Cooper and I can't imagine ever turning my back on my fans.