Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper

“Hi. Hi. Hi. Oh, who have we here? Mom and Dad Cooper! Just in time for a snack? And whose mommy is this bleached blonde?”

My parents sat there paralyzed! Mortified! jack kept right on chatting and chirping and cooked us all lunch. We all sat around the table, all the parents and the band and Jack, and discussed signing contracts.

The parents decided they wanted to meet with Shep and Joey, these twenty-two-year-old wunderkinds whose brainstorm it was to put us in that massive house to live like pop stars on twenty dollars a week. We arranged for the meeting the next morning, and stayed up all night trying to figure out an angle to ensure the signing. The next morning we were all lined up in the unfurnished living room waiting for Shep and Joey. As soon as Shep walked in I felt like I was making a Jewish sacrifice. The moment I got through making introductions, Shep said, “All right. I’m a Jew. What should you care? We know how to make the money.” There was terrible silence.

In the dining room Jack was lolling about pretending to dry-mop the floor. He said, “If I was going to hitch my wagon to a rock star… .”

Everybody laughed. They signed.

CHAPTER 7

Life in Los Angeles seemed to change overnight for us. With a recording contract and sudden legitimacy, we moved into a whole new circuit of people. The rock world exploded for us. We got to meet everybody on the LA scene. We moved up a few rungs on the social ladder to boot; we were invited to parties given by rich people instead of dope dealers and hippies, and when we passed out at night we slept on Beverly Hills carpeting instead of dirty wooden floors.

Without exception I think everybody I met in rock and roll was a groupie on one level or another. The rock music business was built on idol worship, and it was filled to brimming with insecure, sexually maladjusted, lonely people who wanted to live also in the limelight. You know, you don’t have to fuck anybody to be a groupie. To some people, just breathing the same electric air was enough to get them off. Groupies come in all ages, sex, and professions. I never met a record company president who wasn’t somebody’s fan, and I never met a musician who didn’t think he was a star.

Everybody knows about the kind of groupies you run into backstage or hanging around hotel lobbies. These are common C-level groupies; dirty, emotionally crippled, tragic girls and boys who burn themselves out using drugs as fuel and fuck anybody who ever set foot on the stage, down to the last roadie. These kids are there for sex. They want to incorporate you, take part of your stardom away with them, even if it’s only a fee drops of semen. These kids hardly ever worked or went to school. These were drug dealers mostly, and lived in a twilight world of dingy dressing rooms and third-rate musicians. They needed to be abused. They begged for it on many levels, and these were the kind of kids the chambermaid found in the morning, tied to hotel beds with dead fish inserted in their vaginas, or half conscious from bad drugs or too much booze.

C-level groupies are often nymphomaniacs, and when you tell them to get out or leave you alone, it starts a lot of trouble. Somehow each and every time they sleep with a musician they make themselves believe it’s going to be forever, and when it’s over in an hour they’re hysterical. Of course the C-level groupies are the most fun to be with, you better believe it! Basically I think that C-level groupies are the most honest of the bunch. At least you both know what they’re there for. In the back of their heads they know who they are and their place in society. They sure know their way around the blue vein, penis-wise.

B-level groupies always went out of their way to put down the C-levelers. They despised the lower class of groupies because they saw reflected in them the worst side of themselves. B-level groupies usually supported themselves legitimately, which sets them apart from the wandering gypsy kind. Most of them worked in the music business itself, as secretaries in record companies and booking offices and publicists. An efficient publicist is always a groupie in rock and roll. These B-levelers wanted sex, too, God knows, but not just a one-night stand. This plateau of idol worshipers wanted to possess you, have you around as a companion. They were the most difficult to deal with, too, because they didn’t want to go home in the morning.

A-level groupies were famous themselves, and if not famous, at least successful in their own right. Their bunch was comprised of actors, motion picture executives, writers, talent scouts and other rock stars. It’s an example of why Gregg Allman married Cher. It’s why I once watched the president of the largest record company in America trip over himself to get to say hello to Mick Jagger in Orsini’s restaurant. No matter how much of a star you become, there’s always somebody who’s a bigger star.