Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper

I looked around the room at all the motorcycle jackets and the girls with teased hairdos left over from the fifties and I shuddered. I figured my chances for survival were better if I picked a really big guy to talk to. Anybody near my size would have taken a swat at me immediately.

I felt a sharp pain in my ribs and across the table from me Glen turned white. A huge, filthy bearded biker was shoving his knuckles into my layer of skin and bones.

“I know you,” he said. “You’re that weirdo rock group. You’re the rock group of the Hells Angels in San Francisco.”

“I killed a chicken tonight and drank its blood onstage,” I offered.

Well, we were in. I knew we’d get out of there with our hides intact and maybe a gun, too. Glen suggested asking some of those guys back to the hotel with us for protection, but I couldn’t think of anything more horrible than having to play a minor celebrity with four smelly bikers. When I asked about a gun they thought it was a terrifically cool idea. They loved the idea that we were looking for a gun. “No wonder the Angels like you,” one of them said. “You guys really are weird! You going to hold up a bank or what?”

I told him I needed it as part of the show, which he readily accepted. He talked with some buddies for a few minutes and informed us we could buy a revolver for two hundred dollars. Glen looked at me. “This sucks.” he said. “You and your stupid murder threats. I’m leaving.”

“Murder threats,” the biker asked. “Somebody coming down on you guys? If you need protection we’ll be glad to stick the guy’s head up his ass.”

I said we wanted the satisfaction of taking care of it ourselves, but that our financial situation was rather poor. Would it be possible to get a gun for twelve dollars? There was a lot of discussion among the bikers while Glen sat there glaring at me. He kept punching me in the arm and every time the bikers weren’t looking I’d slug him back.

Finally they said we could have a gun for ten dollars, only it didn’t work. I didn’t really want to shoot anybody so I said it was all right with me and they asked us to step to the back of the bar. Glen suddenly got very brave and said he would handle it and left me sitting out front with all the people staring and nodding at me like a freak in a sideshow. I smiled back at them for twenty minutes while Glen was gone.

Walking back to the hotel Glen told me that before he paid for the gun, the biker offered to shoot him up with LSD. When Glen declined the biker insisted that Glen help tie off a vein for him. Glen waited while the guy diluted the acid in a cold drop of water. Then he tied the biker’s biceps with his belt until the veins bulged and he watched the guy shoot LSD straight into his veins.

When we got back to the hotel we found we had bought only half a gun and got plastered drunk telling Cindy the story. We even fell asleep with the door unlocked. The next morning we woke to find Steven himself, his pockets filled with hundreds of Seconal, sleeping on the floor beside us, a loaded gun in his hand.

That day while the rest of the group flew to Buffalo for a gig at the State University Cindy and I drove Steven back to Detroit in his car. He was unconscious for the rest of the day, and we stuck another Seconal in his mouth every time he opened it. We only left him alone once, to eat dinner at a diner just outside of Detroit. When we got back to the car he was asleep on the hood, stark raving naked. We left him lying there, like a hood ornament, and hitched the rest of the way to Detroit. It was the last time either of us saw him.

CHAPTER 10

There wasn’t a promoter in the country who would have us on stage. After the chicken incident we had a dual reputation: not only were we bad, we were dangerous. We were a treat to the music business. We would give rock and roll a bad name. The reaction was the same everywhere, from record company executives to other musicians. They were outraged. We obviously didn’t belong. What the fuck was a band doing dressing up in drag and killing chickens? Anything for a buck?

Janis Joplin’s manager, Albert Grossman, let it be known that he wouldn’t let us onstage with her. We went to Washington, D.C., for a concert and the Grateful Dead refused to let us use their sound system. Grace Slick insisted we be allowed to go on or she and Jefferson Airplane would refuse to play.

Alan Strahl didn’t even want the headache of handling us anymore. He was thinking about retiring and moving to Jamaica. He didn’t need to break his ass peddling a rock group that everybody hated. He handled the most expensive and prestigious groups in the country, and Alice Cooper was making him lose his credibility. One promoter told him he could take all of IFA’s rock acts and shove them if he had to book Alice Cooper as an opening act as part of the package deal. That’s a ten-million-dollar shove and a lot of bad vibes.