Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper

Within two years Alice Cooper had become an international phenomenon. My fame had transcended my craft. I was the biggest act in the world, and I felt I owed it to the public to come up with the biggest of all possible shows. I really wanted to do something that was more than just sheer entertainment. I wanted to do a show that was an observation, too, that made a comment about the world I had seen in my travels.

Every city I saw was the same, striving for total decadence. Every teenager in the world wanted more possessions, more stereos, sports cars, telephones and TVs. I knew seventeen-year-old kids in Greenwich and Bel Air with their own Rolls-Royces and drivers. The public was fascinated with my wealth and how I spent it. Overindulgence and affluence were the cornerstones of my life-style. It was why people loved me, and why people ripped me off, too.

No matter what the question, money was the answer: “Do you want to bring that snake into this auditorium?” — $166 in German marks. “Do you have the special papers to bring the guitars through customs?” — $500 cash. “Mr. Cooper’s suitcases? We’ll find them within the hour. What do you mean he’ll miss his plane?” — $50 and a bottle of VO. Everybody had questions for us. “Billion-Dollar Babies” was supposed to be the final answer.

The object of the “Billion-Dollar Babies” tour was to pull a show business coup based on the concept of greed. We wanted to blitz the public with a single tour and album of such overwhelming proportions we could retire afterwards. The basic plan was to release a Billion-Dollar Babies album followed by a swift, hard tour across the country, playing as many dates in the largest halls in as short a time as possible. We would have a chance of propelling the album to number-one position and gross nearly $6 million on the tour. In the end, “Billion-Dollar Babies” stood to gross $20 million. In the end, we tried to play sixty-two concerts in fifty-nine cities within ninety days. In the end, it wrecked us all.

We tried to record part of Billion-Dollar Babies album at the Morgan Studios in London. We invited Harry Nilsson and Marc Bolan by to join a session, but by the time the evening was over all we had was four hours of unusable tape and a L 300 bar bill. We finished recording on a mobile unit at the Cooper mansion in Connecticut and at the-Record Plant in LA and New York. The album cover was quite an extravaganza. It was shaped like an overstuffed wallet, snakeskin, naturally. Inside there was a billion-dollar bill, wallet-sized photos of the group, and a strikingly handsome sleeve jacket printed with a picture taken of us by David Bailey in his London studios. We made special arrangements with the FBI and the Treasury Department to have a million dollars in U.S. cash flown to London for the photograph. We posed in white satin suits, surrounded by dozens of white rabbits and green money, holding a little baby in Alice Cooper makeup. The album included “Elected,” which was already a best-seller, “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” my ode to the press, and several songs that became Alice Cooper classics, including an infamous version of Rolfe Kemp’s “Hello Hooray.”

The stage was designed and executed by award-winning set designers Joe Gannon and Jim Newborn at a cost of $250,000. It looked like a giant TV quiz show, with luminous platforms and multileveled areas for me to dance across. Every moment of the show was carefully rehearsed and planned. People were beginning to respect the fact that Alice Cooper was reviving vaudeville, and that “Billion-Dollar Babies” was not just another rock and roll slop show. I began the show with “Hello Hooray,” slithering down the steps like a drunken Dietrich, enticing the audience from the edge of the platform to come join me in the fun. From there we pounded into “Raped and Freezin’,” “Elected,” and “Billion-Dollar Babies.” The lights dimmed for “Unfinished Sweet.” I was strapped onto an operating table and attacked with a giant drill, after which I got chased by a huge dancing tooth which I finally clobbered with a four-foot toothbrush and a five-foot tube of toothpaste. Then into “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and “Sick Things.” During “Sick Things” I raped and chopped apart baby dolls and mannequins, soaring into an anthem, “I Love the Dead,” which the kids sang along with.

For “Billion-Dollar Babies” I gave up the noose and had a guillotine designed by The Amazing Randi, a magician who went on the road with us and played the parts of dentist and executioner. The guillotine had a real forty-pound blade in it. After “I Love the Dead,” Randi led me to the guillotine. As always the audience got quiet, waiting breathlessly for the sound of the falling blade. From my hiding place behind the set I could always tell when the dummy’s head got lopped off and fell into the barrel from the cheering in the audience. The rest of the band retrieved the bloody head from the basket and kicked it around the stage as a football.