Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper

We didn’t even know we had bombed at first. We were so excited about being in New York we didn’t know what hit us. All we cared about for the first two days was getting laid and finding Glen’s guitar. Glen had a lead. Two junkies in the lobby of the hotel told him the Puerto Rican elevator operator was clipping and selling it in Harlem. Glen called Shep and Shep decided it was more likely we could get the guitar back if we confronted the guy ourselves instead of calling the police.

The next afternoon Shep, Glen, Billy and I got into the elevator in the lobby and asked for our floor. When we stopped at our landing Billy put his hand over the grating and asked the guy to wait a minute. It was hot and sticky in there as the four of us stared at the man in the corner. We had a prearranged plan, and I didn’t know what I was doing there except maybe to add some moral support. We just stared at the guy. I figured maybe we were psyching him out.

After an uncomfortable minute there was a soft whssst sound and I looked down and saw the elevator operator holding a very pointy switchblade. Shep looked around, pulled on a lock of hair and said, “Isn’t this our floor, gentlemen?”

The elevator operator pulled back the grating yanked down the crossbar and let us into the hallway. We scurried down the hall, looking over our shoulder as the man stepped into the hallway to watch us file into my room, still holding the switchblade by his side.

We checked out of the Allison an hour later and moved into the Hotel Edgar around the corner for safety. But at the Hotel Edgar there were just as perilous dangers: lice and rats. I spent my entire allowance on Pyrinate A-200 that week. I bathed with it two or three times a day, as did we all. At night, when we got sweaty in the clubs, the place reeked of it. I don’t know how humans could bear to come near us let alone those little crabs.

The rats at the Edgar were as big as dogs. I dreamed nightly they were eating me in my sleep. I walked into the room one day and found a rat dragging a half of a cream cheese and bagel sandwich across the room. Jesus, they were strong! There was also the most incredible faggot camped out in front of my room for two days. Whenever I came back to the hotel he would be lying on the floor of the hallway downed out of his mind on pills, “Come on, Alice, you can be guy for one night.”

It was so obnoxious to find him unconscious in front of my door that Neal and I went berserk one night. We dragged him into the room, tossed him in the tub filled with Pyrinate and cockroaches and turned on the shower. He began pulling off his wet clothes which we helped him tear to shreds. He was crying, “Oh, you’re so mean!” the whole time, but he had a tremendous hard-on. We tossed him out the door and poured a bottle of ketchup over him.

The next day Shep hired two limousines to take us to Philadelphia. Two sisters with silicon tits turned out to see Neal and Mike off and I had an entourage of drag queens on the sidewalk which looked like a meeting of the New York Mah-Jongg association. We left our luggage in the lobby of the Edgar, joking about lightning striking twice, and took our fans to the corner for egg creams. When we got back to the hotel, Glen’s suitcase of clothes had been stolen.

Our time in Philadelphia was spent worrying about the Scene. What could we do in New York to get their attention? Should we offend them? Maybe go out there and slap them around a little to bring them to?

The next night in the middle of my first number I broke a glass. I walked out into the audience and knocked it off a table. Most people thought it was an accident, but when a second and third broke a few minutes later they knew it was no joke. I began to smash bottles and glasses all over the room. Table of people burst up all over the place as I attacked their drinks. They called Steve Paul in from the front steps where he sat all night and he stopped the show. He refused to let us go back on until I swore I wouldn’t break any more glasses, but I lied. The second show I turned over an entire table. Steve Paul was furious but that’s why the place was called the Scene. Anybody who had ever been there talked about it, and even Steve Paul couldn’t stop telling his friends.

When we got back to new York from our gig in Philadelphia we moved into the Chelsea hotel, which is just a New York version of the Landmark. The Landmark was Disneyland compared to the Chelsea. I met more leather and strap freaks in four days at the Chelsea than I did in my entire career of wearing black leather. Sex at the Chelsea involved giving enemas and fist fucking. I didn’t care for it much. The rooms at the Chelsea were even guaranteed soundproofed. Now why would anyone want a soundproofed hotel room? Heavy sleeping?