Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper

I rode up in the elevator with a Puerto Rican girl in a big white hat. She got off on my floor and watched me go to my room from the other end of the hall. Three minutes later she knocked on the door to my room. She sat down on the bed, unbuttoned her pants, opened her purse and took out a picture of Mick Jagger and a vibrator. Then she pulled her pants down to her knees, laid back and masturbated. I called Mike and Dennis into the room to watch with me.

Glen was never at the Chelsea. He was sick of wearing the clothes he had on his back when his suitcase was stolen and he was determined to find his belongings before we left New York. People separated in waves around him as he strode down the hot streets in his smelly lame outfit, positive he would find some Puerto Rican hanging out in a doorway dressed in Glen’s purple pedal pushers and black beads.

Our last night at the Scene Shep asked Alan Strahl to come see us, and he in turn brought some of his own friends. They all arrived between shows and Shep waved me over to their table. Alan Strahl’s friends were some tough-looking guys from Brooklyn, and when he was introduced to me, his mouth fell open. I could tell he was embarrassed.

“Shep, Shep,” he stammered, “I thought they were a little strange, but….”

Our last night in New York Shep called a meeting. We were leaving the next morning on an early plane for Buffalo, and after the last show was the only time left to talk. By the time we wrapped the equipment it must have been three in the morning. I went straight to the bar and doubled up on my drinks.

When we got outside it was pouring with rain. I stood by the curb throwing up phlegm while Mike and Dennis went to the corner to hail a cab. A few minutes passed, and I was soaked through to the bone. Finally I walked to the corner to look for them and they were gone. I went back to the Scene, but everyone had left and Steve Paul was locking the place. He said Shep had just called looking for me. Mike and Dennis had forgot to tell the cabdriver to go back and pick me up. Steve Paul loaned me two bucks to get downtown to the Chelsea, and I went back out into the rain.

It was impossible to get a cab. It was just before dawn, I was alone, which was rare, and in New York, which was rarer. I did the only sensible thing. I started walking downtown. Ten minutes later I was a shivering wet mess and when I spotted an empty cab I almost fell over myself trying to hail it. When the driver saw how wet I was he made me sit on an opened newspaper. I closed my eyes and sat back when suddenly the cab stopped short.

Just up ahead of us a husky black man was standing in the middle of the street, as wet as I was, waving us down like we were a locomotive.

“Hey, I need a lift, man! You got a lift?” he shouted to us. The driver backed up and started to drive around him when the black guy grabbed one of the driver’s door handles and held fast. We dragged him a good five feet.

“Where the fuck are you going? I said I needed help!” The driver, an old man in a golf cap, spun around an locked all the doors as he began a chant of what I thought were New York cabdriver words.

“Crazy, foking nigger! Getoutahere!”

The black man took a knife out of his pocket and banged on the window with the handle. The driver put on the emergence brakes, reached under his seat and pulled out a bayonet. I thought, “Holy shit! These guys are crazy!”

I sat up in the back seat, fascinated and terrified as the driver got out of the cab and squared off with the black guy in the street. I figured that if the black guy got the driver first, I would be next, so I opened the passenger door and tried, drunkenly, to get across the street. I was sloshing around on the wet pavement when somebody took hold of my arms and helped me stand up. It was the black guys.

“He owes me ninety-five cents,” the driver yelled from the other side of the cab. “Leave him alone.”

“Watch the knife! Watch the knife!” I begged him. “You want a lift, I’ll be glad to give you a lift. You can have a lift, all right! Just put away the knife.”

We all calmly got back into the cab as if nothing had happened, and the driver turned around and said, “Where to?” The black guy gave him an address and I just sat there numb and wet, drunk and petrified. The driver kept mumbling. “What a job. What a craziness.”

“What’s this stuff, man?” the new passenger asked, fingering my clothes.

“What’s all this stuff you got on? What’s your scene?”

I told him I was a singer in a rock and roll band.

“No shit, man! You’re not a faggot?”

“Not really. I’m a singer in a band.”

“What’s it called? What’s your name? Do I know you?”

I told him my name was Jim Morrison but that didn’t seem to impress him.

“Listen, I got some girls I manage, you know? Really foxy ladies. They got voices like angels. You think I can get them to be stars? You know, like the Supremes?”