For more than 50 years, Alice Cooper has been known as one of rock music’s wildest personalities. But in real life he’s just a grandad who likes to play golf.
Born Vincent Furnier and later nicknamed “The Godfather of Shock Rock,” Cooper, 78, recently revealed that he “invented” the Alice character decades ago to be a true alter ego, nothing like his real self.
Speaking with BBC 6 Music in a new interview while promoting his memoir Devil on My Shoulder, Cooper explained how his real life differs from his stage persona.
“I have five grandchildren,” he said. “I’ve been married 50 years. Go to church on Sunday. Play golf every day. So I’m nothing like the character I play.”
“I invented Alice to be my favorite rock star,” he explained. “That’s really what it was.”
Cooper recalled dreaming up what he wanted his character to look like, taking inspiration from one of the biggest movie stars of the 1930s and ‘40s.
“I want him to be in all black leather,” he said of his ideas for his rock star look. “I want him to be Emma Peel [from the Avengers]. But the makeup has got to be disturbing. It’s got to be What Happened to Baby Jane, you know? . It was Bette Davis, and it was all cracked white makeup and smeared. Trying to look nice but can’t. I want him to be really disturbing, and then I want him to be this arrogant villain …kind of condescending, you know? And it really is fun to play him. Because he’s nothing like me.”
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With his look in place, Cooper blended themes from horror films and vaudeville in his music to become a superstar in the 1970s.
He reiterated to BBC Breakfast that the “Alice” character has always been just a character, but that it was often misconstrued.
“There’s never been anything satanic about Alice Cooper because I come from a Christian home,” he clarified. “I’m Christian now. I would never do anything satanic in my show. But it got interpreted like that because it was theatrical and nobody knew what to do with it.”
He also explained why he picked a “bland” name such as Alice Cooper.
“I said if you’re going to get a band like us, full out theatrical insanity, let’s not call ourselves something heavy,” the rock legend recalled. “Let’s not be Black Sabbath. Let’s be Alice Cooper. And it was more like Baby Jane or it was more like Betty Crocker. I said, ‘They’re going to get that name, but then they’re going to get us.'”
Related: The Song That ‘Invented’ Heavy Metal Just Turned 56—And It Has a Nightmare of a Story
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