Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper

Never, at any time during all of this, did I have second thoughts about what I was doing morally because I was sure there was nothing wrong with it. I think the only time I got really shaken up was when word came to the Cooper Mansion that a fourteen-year-old boy in Canada had hanged himself and it was being blamed on me. They found a ticket to one of my concerts in his room and a Killer album. It was immediately made to sound as if I had inspired his death. What I needed to know the most was if I actually caused that boy to hang himself. Contrary to what you might believe, children are not that impressionable. I couldn’t believe that any stable child would put his head in a noose or into a guillotine from watching my show or listening to my music. Not anymore than they would try running through a screen door or put a lit stick of dynamite in their mouths from watching cartoons on TV, all of which are far more violent than I ever could have been.

If Alice Cooper was destroying anyone, he was destroying me. In looking back on it, it really wasn’t fun in the beginning. I was a very big success, to be sure, but I was also a freak, an oddball, a joke. I was the horror of every mother in Toledo. “What’s the matter with you, Herbie? You gonna grow up and become Alice Cooper?’ There were still radio stations and record stores that banned my albums. There were other performers who wouldn’t even speak to me. Steve Lawrence once stopped me in a restaurant to tell me that if I cut my hair I wouldn’t have a career left. I liked getting rich and I liked the fame and I liked the fans and limousines arid private jets, but don’t think that made me invulnerable to getting hurt. It bothered me every time I was criticized. I know, I know. I made my own bed, and I was being paid handsomely to sleep in it. But even if you’re grossing $20 million a year, it begins to drive you crazy when you get called a degenerate. I was tired of being the rebel. I was tired of being thrown out of church. I made my point, all right. Now what?

I drank. I drank to sustain the pressure, to buffer the hatred. To blot away the endless days and nights of travel and touring. I was treated like a criminal, and indeed, it made me feel guilty. I drank out of anger that it was happening to me and I drank out of fear it would stop.

I was no longer an alcoholic, I was a drunk. I was a blubbering, stumbling drunk, drifting through days in a stupor. The year 1972 is just a puddle of VO in my head. I changed. I got loud and obnoxious. I thought that was what people wanted of me. I had to be Alice all the time. I wanted everybody to see how drunk I was wherever I went. I wasn’t satisfied until I had caused a scene in public. I wanted people to say, “Boy, I saw Alice Cooper last night and was he drunk!” I was very aggressive, turning over tables and screaming, “I’m Alice Cooper!” I was so obnoxious I hated myself. I hated every minute of what I was doing and I was too drunk to stop and think about it.

There are so many adjustments to go through in the rock business. It’s easy for a pop idol to do himself in.You have all the money you need, so if your vice is cocaine or heroin instead of booze, you can kill yourself in a few months. As a rock star everything is done for you, so it doesn’t matter how incapacitated you are. They treat you like an infant, and soon you begin to act like one. You never have to be sober enough to do your laundry or drive to work. Your life, your day-to-day existence, is part of a grand plan drawn up in an agent’s office. There’s a sophisticated organization behind you, arranging your life for you, waiting for you to pay off.

And there’s never anybody around to stop you from hurting yourself. That’s because people are afraid. You’re a star and you make millions of dollars and that intimidates them. Some people won’t dare tell you you’re killing yourself, and others don’t think you deserve the consideration.

People felt that I should have known better than to let myself depend so much on booze for backbone. If that was the only way I could handle it, well then, tough shit. In rock and roll, when it comes to self-destruction, everybody pulls down their hats and lets the chips fall where they may. Cindy even stopped nagging me about it. We were away from each other so often that she really didn’t know what was going on, and she didn’t want to know anymore either. When we were together she threatened to walk out on me a thousand times, but she never got up the courage. As long as I was working, who was going to rock a million-dollar boat?

Shep did.