Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper

One night in the VIP club I was introduced to a young man I vaguely remember seeing at Cortez — vaguely only because he appearance had changed so much. His name was Charlie Carnal, and although this was only 1966 he had already evolved into a 1970’s glitter freak. His hair was shoulder-length on the right side of his head and cut in a crew-cut on the left, like somebody had hit him down the middle with a cleaver. He had an enormous handlebar moustache — on both sides — a tremendous perpetual grin, and wore costumes — not clothing — that made him look like he had stumbled out of a neighborhood theater production of Alice in Wonderland.

Charlie rustled us up our first black lights. He turned up at the VIP with a ten-foot color wheel, one of those giant hypnotic discs that he turned in the back with a crank. It sounds corny now, but that was how our effects started. I was just as excited by black lights and hypno-wheels as I am with my latest $400,000 gimmick. Charlie Carnal signed on with the group and stayed with us for five years. He was eventually cut in as an equal partner as his lighting effects became more important.

By spring of my freshman year my thoughts turned not to love but west, to Los Angeles. We had done just about everything we could do in Arizona. We played every city, school, and dive with a stage. We were, in fact, famous in Phoenix, which to me was the worst kind of compliment. College was boring, and rock and roll was fun. In order to go one step further we needed a record deal, and we knew that the only way to get one was in LA.

Armed with a few dozen posters of the Spiders (in which we looked like five hungry, hairy orphans) and some “Don’t Blow Your Mind” singles, Dick Christian went off to the glittery city on the sea to get us auditions with record companies.

He never quite made it to the record companies. As soon as he got to LA he stopped into a bar on Sunset Boulevard to have a beer. A tall, blond woman shuffled up next to him. Dick swore she was as exact ringer for Kim Novak. Dick had been a Novak freak ever since he saw her in Bell, Book and Candle. He fantasized when he was fifteen about being a warlock to Novak’s witch while he jerked off.

She took Dick home with her. There was a lot of heavy tongues and feels, with “Kim Novak” keeping Dick’s hands away from the secret thatch. After forty minutes of trying, Dick got her dress off and found that his cock wasn’t the only hard one in the room.

“Kim Novak” explained that she (he) often picked up young guys in bars, took them home and made out with them for a while, and when the guys were hot enough so it didn’t matter, she (he) let them in on the joke. She (he) insisted that all of the guys were horny enough at that point to fuck her (him) anyway, and that Dick should go right ahead with what he was doing. But Dick didn’t have the heart, or the hard-on, and thanked her and left.

It was the craziest thing I had ever heard! And I thought I was weird! LA sounded so crazy, so otherworldly. I couldn’t wait to go! It wasn’t that I wanted to meet a drag queen — it was that I wanted to live in a society where one could exist.

CHAPTER 4

The year 1967 was the year of the follicle. Hair. Hippies.

Boy, what a strange movement that was. I never understood the hippies at all. Communes? Drugs? Sharing everything? How dumb. I thought the American Way was to want to be rich and famous. I never understood people who dedicated their lives to causes, like politics. The only politics I knew about was Mr. Buckley and the draft board. What did I know from free love? I still got excited if Mimi Hicki let me feel her up!

But that’s all there was in Los Angeles in 1967 — hippies — and you had to learn to deal with it. The first time the band ever went there was on Easter Sunday to play at a hippie free concert in Griffith Park. We drove straight to Sunset Boulevard and couldn’t believe our eyes. There must have been 10,000 hairy, barefoot, stoned flower children, listlessly gliding along Sunset Strip. And all the girls had hair under their arms. They lived up to ever cliche I had ever heard about them in Phoenix. They threw flowers in the open windows of the car and waved Easter Sunday palm branches at us. We hung out of the car and shook hands with them and kissed the girls. One girl ran alongside the car and fed me half and egg roll in little bites. Somebody in the backseat dropped down his pants and stuck his cock out the rear window of the station wagon which the girl managed to kiss as the car picked up speed. It was astounding that all this energy existed in Los Angeles when Phoenix was so low key. And it was even more shocking to me that I had little in common with all those kids, even though our hair was the same length.