Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper

“We have a pervert of the year award to give away today. This goes to Easy Arnie. Easy Arnie managed to get a b.j. from a sixty-four-year-old chamdermaid ten minutes before he checked out of his hotel room. Take a bow, Arnie! What an animal, folks!

“And now for the ball scores. Last night there were 4 three-ways, 3 five-ways, 6 one-on-ones, and 2 one-ways with poor response. Once again, Jerry dated and fell in love with his own right hand last night.

“Quiet down in the peanut gallery, all you rock and rollers. I have a serious complaint here. Robin has been looking for her roommate for five days now. If Cheryl is anywhere on this tour, she hasn’t slept in her bed once. So if anybody of this birdy knows where she is, please report it to the nearest stewardess…”

It went on like that for twenty minutes every plane trip. There was nothing like the ball scores to start off a flight and put a smile on your face. Smiling is the key to touring. Smiling gets you along. We invaded the rest of Europe with a smile: Gothenburg (good wine there), Copenhagen (boring TV, beautiful women), Bremen (I opened the draps in my hotel in the morning, stark naked, and found myself five feet away from a factory where forty-five ladies where stitching at machines. They all waved), Boblingen, Ludwigshafeb, and then Vienna.

Vienna was interesting. First of all it was a fortuitous flight there; I won $600 at poker. Then, as I was leaving my hotel to go to the show, I met a guy who’s probably my biggest fan in the world [Our own Renfield by any chances? :-) ] I was on my way into the back of a white Mercedes limousine when an incredibly pathetic character stepped out of the shadows. He was hunchback, dressed in rags [I was right!]. His face was gray and grimy and I had no idea if he was young or old. He held up a photo album for me to see. I took it from him and opened it. It was filled with articles and photographs about Alice Cooper collected from all over the world and must have weighed five pounds.

“This is terrific,” I told him. “Thank you.”

He looked at me with great admiration and awe, but he was so terrified of meeting me he couldn’t even smile. I tried to talk to him but soon realized that the poor man was deaf and dumb, to boot. I swear I would have hugged him if I could have gotten my arm around him. I said, “C’mon, you’re with us,” and scooted him into the limousine.

I don’t think anybody could have had a better time than he did. He was at my side for the rest of the night and we even took him up on stage and let him watch the show from up there. He pumped my hand up and down when it was over and I stuck some marks into his pocket. Then he disappeared into the crowds.

Frankie and I rushed towards the rear door of the stage to leave the auditorium before the crush of people started outside, but it was already too late. There were at least five hundred kids waiting for me, standing in a clump around the limousine. We had to get out of the arena and into the car before the rest of the auditorium was let out. There were 16,000 very boisterous and happy kids about to leave that place and it wasn’t a good move to have to walk through them to get to the car. A wrinkled Viennese man with a big frown on his face stood guard at the door. He refused to unlock it for us. He wanted to count keys or people or something. We tried to explain that the crew and business people were still inside and they would handle the details. But the old man couldn’t understand a word of English. Every second we tried to make him understand the crowd outside got bigger by the hundreds. Finally Libert lifted him off the ground and the man’s little legs sup around like he was on a bicycle. Frankie broke down the door with his hand, and we made a dash for the limousine.

The kids had ripped my clothing but the time I got through the car door and Frankie came hurtling in behind me like he was blown into the car out of a cannon. We tried to slam the door behind us, but the kids kept sticking their arms inside. The car started to accelerate and Frankie’s traveling bag got tugged on just as the door slammed, trapping it outside the car. Riding out of the parking lot every last thing inside the bounced out onto the ground and the kids running after the car picked them up for souvenirs, including Frankie’s camera and watch.

“Oh Alice,” he moaned, “you won’t believe what those kids got.”

“Don’t worry about it, Frank. We’ll replace everything.”

“No. You don’t understand. That bathroom picture of you is on the roll of film in the camera.”

I slumped back in the seat, visions of a new poster of me appearing all over Europe: Alice Cooper relieving himself at the Savoy in a surprise photo by Frankie Scinlaro.