May 26, 2026 • 42 mins
What happens when rock’s most infamous showman finds redemption—and discovers his true purpose? On this week’s episode of The Greg Laurie Show, Pastor Greg sits down with legendary rockstar Alice Cooper for an honest, electrifying conversation about faith, fame, addiction, and the power of second chances.
Once dubbed “the villain of rock and roll,” Alice shares the untold story behind the persona—revealing how decades of stardom brought him face-to-face with despair, addiction, and spiritual emptiness. Together, Pastor Greg and Alice dig deep into life’s biggest questions: What does it mean to reach the top and feel nothing? Why do so many icons lose themselves chasing fame, wealth, or escape? What happens when you finally answer the one knock that matters? If you’ve ever wondered how someone can turn the darkest chapters of life into hope for others, Alice and Pastor Greg’s conversation will serve as the testimony we all need to never give up on others, or ourselves.
Learn more about Alice Cooper on his website: https://alicecooper.com/.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:07 Alice Cooper Breaks Down Backstage Crying
01:57 Alice Cooper Hears His First Hit on the Radio
06:39 Meeting Elvis: A Loaded Gun and Priceless Story
08:53 Prison of Fame: Elvis’s Loneliness Revealed
11:13 Emptiness at the Top Without the Lord
14:05 Cocaine, Depression, and a Miraculous Turning Point
18:06 Walking into a Room of Rock Legends
23:32 Hollywood Vampires: Drinking with the Legends
24:44 God Heals Alice Cooper’s Addiction
26:06 Who Is Jesus to Alice Cooper?
29:36 Advice from Older Alice Cooper to His Younger Self
32:14 Answer the Door: Message to Addicts
35:12 Redemption & Life Priorities Redefined
41:11 Defining Redemption: None of Us Deserve It
43:24 Closing: Friendship, Faith, and Connecting Through Shared Stories
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Life audio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You didn't have to turn back to the Lord. You
could have continued on that course, and quite frankly, you
could have been another tragic rock and roll story.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
I was as close as anybody ever came, and I
said here and I go.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
I have no idea why you let me live.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Alice. At one point you were the number one rock
star in the world, and it started with your first
hit eighteen. You were in multiple bands. You started out
in a band called the Earwigs, and you were in
italent contest and kind of a Beatles imitation. Then you
started learning to play and becoming a proper rock band.
(00:53):
Then you ultimately ultimately became the Spiders and then Alice Cooper.
But that hit changed everything. So you're in a car,
I think maybe with some of your bandmates, and you
hear your song eighteen on the radio for the first time.
What was that like?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
We were the band that wasn't supposed to ever have
a hit. We were the notorious Alice Cooper band. We
were the outlaws.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Every parent hated.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Us, and that was good for business, wasn't that?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
It was?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
We didn't necessarily do it that way. We just ended
up being that. But at the same time. In that era,
if you had a hit on the top forty, you
were with Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkle, the Supremes,
all those people are always in the top forty. And
(01:40):
we did a song call I'm eighteen. I'm eighteen and
I Like it right. That was almost a punk anthem,
having no idea that that was going to be a
hit single. SKLW was the biggest station in the Midwest.
It came out of Windsor, Canada. We were in Detroit
and we're driving along and all of a sudden, we
(02:02):
hear pick hit this week on SKLW, and eighteen comes on.
Believe me, we stopped the car. We had never heard
any of our records ever on the radio before, and
we're sitting there listening to it, and we're looking at
each other just laughing, going, what a mistake they just made.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
You know?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Then I heard it two hours later, and then you're
hear it again two hours later, and then you realize
it's not just a pick hit.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
It's on the charts.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
And you're sitting there between the Rolling Stones and Simon
and Garfunkel, and there's your song.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Wow, and to the business.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Part of rock and roll that gets the attention of
the money guys. All of a sudden, the record company goes,
what that band has a hit. Okay, now we're going
to put the spotlight on them. We didn't expect that.
The worst thing you could do to a band like
Alice Cooper is Notorious we were was give us a hit,
(02:58):
because now you had to deal with us, and everybody
gets well, everybody gets one for once in a while,
I get a lot home run once in a while.
Second one came out, it was a bigger hit. Third
one came out with a bigger hit. So all of
a sudden, now we didn't chase the charts. We didn't
say we got to write a song that's going to
(03:19):
be on the charts, right, We got that song on
and now the charts was looking at us. And we
were in that golden age where Bob Ezra and our
producer knew how to take our songs and make him
any hits.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
So Alice, you're at the peak here of fame, and
you're hanging around the most unusual people you've met, all
of the Beatles, you're meeting every rock star of the day.
But not just that, but you're meeting people like Jack
Benny and George Burns and Groucho Marx, and you become
friends with these people, and you were even friends with
Peter Sellers, and so you'd go, you were telling me earlier,
(03:55):
you'd go to dinner with Peter Sellers and suddenly he
would go into his Inspector Glusseau character in front of you.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I don't know if he could help himself, but you
know a lot of comedians do that. Mike Myers will
turn into you know, this character every once in a while,
and some you know, same with Dana Carvey.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
He does a thousand characters, and.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Sometimes I don't know if that's a means of communication
or means of kind of hiding a little bit and
then coming out. But Peter Sellis just saw the moment
where Cluso would fit right into that moment, you know,
And of course it was the greatest thing. I was
never disappointed with meeting people like him or Vincent Price
(04:37):
was priceless.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
He was great.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
We had him come on one of the records and
do a vocal on it because we needed that voice,
and he stuck around and he did a video with us,
and he went on stage and did the show with us.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
His part on the stage.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
And I think that you find that you have a
bigger view of these people. You know, you have a
picture of who Elvis is, and then when you meet him,
you see a bigger picture of him.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
He's funny. You never see and being funny.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
He's funny, he makes fun of himself. He's a regular guy,
you know. And that's the part that people I get
to see that other people don't get to see.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Tell me about when you met Elvis.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, Elvis was great. Elvis was, you know, bigger than
life at that time. In nineteen seventy one, I got
a call saying, Elvis wants to meet you. I mean,
we had already had hit records and he saw all.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
This stuff and Hawaii at this point.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
This was in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Let's Vegas.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And I went to the hotel and they had an elevator,
especially elevator went up to his penthouse. So I get
in the elevator and there's e Lizaman, Ellie Chubby Checker
and Linda Lovelace, what and me and we're going to
go meet Elvis.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
So you go up there and kind of waiting when
he walks in the room. This wasn't fat Elvis, this
wasn't drugged out Elvis. This was Elvis in his prime.
And he walks in and he's hey, man, because to me,
he said, you really care with a snake, right, you know?
And yeah, I said, I mean that's cool. You're from Detroit,
aren't you?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
And I went yeah. He said, come here, I want
to show you something.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
So I go in the kitchen with Elvis, just me
and him closes, the door opens, the door takes out
a fully loaded thirty eight Smith and Wesson thirty eight
and I immediately start unloading.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
It, and he goes, no, I'll leave the bolts in.
It's all right, man.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
I almost sure you had to take a gun out
of somebody's hand because he was a crate guy.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So I'm standing there and I got the gun out
of him, and I'm going a little devil pops up
and goes shoot him in the foot.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
What a story, yellows. Cooper shoots Elvis, and then a
little angel comes over. He says, well, don't kill him,
but shoot him somewhere. You know, the gun's out of
my hand. I'm on the floor.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
A loaded gun, though that could have gone wrong.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
No, I know that was him though.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And then after that happens, he goes, would you like
to see my most prouded possession.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
I went, yeah, to go.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
In the bedroom, opens up a drawer and he pulls
down an envelope. This was the picture I had of Elvis.
Now all of a sudden that changed everything. And it's
an envelope and it's X rays and I going, what
is this and he says, well, I was leaving the
Hilton the other night when my boys are all with me,
(07:26):
and these three drunk cowboys wants to fight me, and
I called my boys off, and I thought.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
All three of them, he says.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Broke this guy's jaw right here, he says, and then
he pulls in, he said, and I swung around and
breaked this guy's ankle right there, And I'm going, this
is your prize possession. And I realized he had no
life outside of his capsule. He was a prisoner of
being Elvis Presley. He couldn't go to the movies, he
(07:53):
couldn't go playpool, he couldn't do anything, and so this
was his connection to the outside world. And I immediately thought,
I never want to be this big I never want
to be a pre Michael Jackson.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, same thing.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Same you know, if you married Elvis's daughter, if you.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Put anybody and say you here's the biggest mansion on
the planet. You can have anything you want. You can
have drugs, you can have alcohol, you have women, food,
but you can't leave the mansion. You'll find a way
to kill yourself to a prison. At a point you'll
find so you'll leave, to eat yourself to death, You'll
drug yourself to death. You'll do something, because it's not
(08:34):
natural to be in prison. Yeah, and that's everybody that
was in that position ended up dying, you know, way
before their time.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I saw a documentary film about Elvis called The Searcher.
It's actually very well done films, and it really did
show how this wasn't mean that was searching early on
in life. Interestingly, though, Elvis had gospel roots and he
would often sing call people up to us, so tell sweet.
I read this article where I think it was Tom Jones.
They were both in Vegas at the same time. Elvis
(09:05):
would call Tom coming over, My Alvis isn't as good
as yours, and he says, when every call you go,
because it's all us, sure, says we'd be up all
night singing gospel about so there.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Were before laure almost an hour before the show. He
would warm up with all gospel songs. Yeah, that's all
they do, and then he would go on stage.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
So he grew up.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
In that Southern gospel, you know, and that's where the
blues came from, and that's where this came from, and
that's where he ended up, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
But his roots, he'd go back to those roots.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Do you think when you're young and you're hungry, like
you're a young rock star, you're in your band the Spiders,
then you become Alice Cooper, you're climbing your way up
and then when you get there, then you go to
the stage too and stage three, and in your case
you become iconic. You're still iconic. You walk into a room,
you told me, you walked through an airport. People say
we're not worthy because it was in Wayne's world and
(09:55):
they think that the first people that did it, when
in fact, it happens to you all the time. But
you know, when you get to whatever stage that is,
do you think that for some of these people who
start abusing drugs or even take their own life. Is
it because they get to the top and they realize
there's nothing there maybe when they thought it would be there.
(10:17):
It keeps them going. But when they get there and
they don't find it, is that why they check out?
What do you think happens in the mind of a person.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
I think if you don't have.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
The Lord in your life, you're always going to be
trying to fill that hole with something. It's either going
to be drugs or it's going to be ferraris, or
it's going to be houses or wives or this or
that or fame, and you're never going to achieve it
because there's that inner thing of us that when we're
born of reconnecting with God, that's there, and even if
(10:50):
you're denying it, that's.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
What you're searching for.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
And so they'll go to, Oh, the new fad is this,
I'm going to go now a Buddhist. I'm now going
to be a vegetarian, goat yoga person.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
I'm going to be this.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
They go through everything and still don't find it, and
the last place they look is the Lord.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
That's right, well, I think.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Because once you say God, you're You're my God, You're
my savior.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Now you have to answer to him. People do not want.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
To give up their god self, the self that they control.
I control my life.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Even people go to church. I go to church.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Okay, yeah, but you haven't given yourself. You know, you
haven't given yourself fully, and that's where the fulfillment comes from.
But you can't you can't explain that to somebody that's
not searching, you know. I mean, people are searching, but
they don't as soon as somebody says, you know, Jesus Christ,
(11:52):
they go, oh, yeah, well right, I'm going to go
over here. It's it's you know, I know people that
the most miserable people I knew were billionaires because they
had everything and they still did not they didn't have.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
That fulfillment yet.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Okay, I'm going to go climb mount as ever it's naked.
The three biggest billionaires in the world are in space.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
All go into space.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Let's see what's up there.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah exactly. Isn't that weird? Yeah, it's like a James
Bond movie.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yes, and all around the same time too. It's an
amazing thing that you know, people chase after these things.
Young people today. You know, a poll was taken among
them and they said, what do you want more than
anything else? And they said to be rich and famous?
And Andy Warhol, who you knew, once made his statement
is attributed to him. At least one day everyone will
(12:47):
be famous for a fifteen minutes something along those lines.
And today that literally is true for some people. Suddenly
you're famous online because you posted this video that went viral.
You become a so called influencer, and this is their
whole goal in life, chasing after. But look, you've been there,
you've done that, You've bought the T shirt. In fact,
(13:09):
you've been the T shirt, and you're saying that what
you're really looking for is God? Am I hearing you? Right?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
If that's not your final goal? And that should be
the most important goal, right, everything else is secondary? Everything
else is third aary everything. You know, I always said
this before in it, and a lot of people don't
like the statement. But if I were going to put
what's important to me in order, Alice Cooper would be
about fifth. You know, once you've answered that knock and
(13:42):
once you've committed to that, and once you start realizing
how merciful that we've been treated, and you know, and
how much grace.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
We've been given. When you look back at your life
and go.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Wow, you've dodged a bullet more than once. When you're
a young man, you had a very serious surgery. You
still have a scar, and you're parents and you of
course as well. I'll believe that was a miracle. But
then fast forward later in your life, you're at the
peak of your success. You're an iconic figure, and you
got heavily into drugs, and you're in a room and
(14:19):
you've got a rock of cocaine like the size of
a softball. I recall you saying some along those lines,
and you're using it. Your wife effectively has left you.
She's moved to Chicago. She says, I'm done with this.
And you look in the mirror and what do you see.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I had been awake for about four or five days.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, and I was up on top of Beverly Hills
and my big mansion. I had a pipe, a rock
and a pistol whoa, and all my wives dresses hanging
up around the room so nobody could look in because
you're paranoid. Has all got about about police coming. You've
(14:59):
got your cocaine, and I'm sitting there going this is it.
I've alienated everybody. I've got my cocaine now though, and
I've got my gun. And I go in the other
bathroom and I look in the mirror. Now to this day,
I don't know if I had the Alice makeup on,
(15:21):
but I looked in the mirror and the lines that
come down from the makeup were blood.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
And I was probably.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Hallucinating, but I flushed the rock down the toilet right
flushed it went to bed for four days.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
And that was an expensive rock worth a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Oh, we still owed money on it. And finally called
up Cheryl and I said I'm okay, now I'm back,
and she goes not that easy. We finally got to
a point of her saying, Christian counseling and this and
that and that you set it up.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I want to know how serious you are about this.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
I set it up with Lehmann in Tucson and we
started going Christian, you know, and I had It took
five years before she realized that I was not going
to fall back, wow, you know, into still doing cocaine
and all that. But I understood that I could totally
understand why she would be. She loved me, but she
(16:29):
was suspicious. And any drug addict will tell you that
drug becomes like oxygen. If you don't have it, you'll
sell everything in your house to get it. I mean,
it's an addiction beyond addiction. And once it's gone, you
don't miss it at all. Yeah, I mean once it
was gone, I had never even it was just gone,
(16:51):
you know. But I mean, when you're addicted, you are
attached at the hip and honestly, nothing else is important.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Wow, when you were younger, you're just getting started in
your career. You met Frank Zappa. He was going to
record you. He says, do you have an agent? He said,
we don't have one yet. So you met Shep Gordon
and he walked into a room and three iconic rock
stars were in that room. Where were they?
Speaker 3 (17:18):
It was Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Almost like them, Mount Rushmore exactly, all dead at twenty
seven by the way.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah, so they're in the so called twenty seven club.
And you know now and since then, of course, Amy
Winehouse is joined that so called club of them. Yeah,
there are Brian Jones from the Stones and Kirk Cobain,
all tragically dead at the age of twenty seven. But
you walk into this room of these iconic rock figures
(17:48):
and they were so talented. I remember you told me
each one kind of was an innovator and music, weren't they.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I mean they were the three most influential people in rock, yeah,
I mean other than the Beatles and the Stones. Yes,
they were the three that were the Everybody knew who
they were, that's right, and they were Jimmy did something
nobody had ever done, Jim Morrison did something nobody's done,
and Janis Joplin did very true. So there they were
the most creative people in the building. Nobody knew at
(18:16):
that point they were going to be dead at twenty seven,
you know, but it got to.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
A point in a short period of time.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
They did so much. They did so much iconic music
in that time. And maybe it was that whole James
Dean live fast, die young, and have a good looking course,
But that was kind of the attitude, right, Nobody wanted
to get to thirty. I went when I hit thirty,
I went washed up. You know, nobody ever thought past
(18:46):
thirty because you went, oh my gosh, what am I
gonna do when I'm thirty?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
You know, you know my perspective as a fan. I'm
a few years younger than you, not that many, but
you know, I grew up listening to all this music,
admired all these people. So in a short period of time,
around nineteen seventy, the Beatles break up, all these rock
icons die. I was using drugs at that time. I
was smoking a lot of weed, using LSD, and in
(19:12):
my mind, to me, it was like, this era is over,
this is all empty. And that sent me on a search,
kind of a process of elimination. What is the meaning
of life? Was a seventeen year old kid. I said, well,
it's not in drug sex and rock and roll. Been there,
done that. In my own little version of it, it's
not in the affluent world that my mother lived, and
(19:34):
you know, and she was friends with John Wayne, and
she had a friend who was close to Frank Sinatra's wife,
so she knew Frank. So it's not in that world,
that affluent, swinging world. Where is it? And then I
came across a group of very outspoken Christians on my
high school campus sitting around in a circle singing songs
(19:54):
about God. I thought they were delusional, but for the
first time, in my life, I thought, what if they're
right when you realized you needed Jesus. Were raised as
a Christian. Oh, I was a Christian.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I mean I was the I grew up. All my
friends were Christian kids. I was in church Friday night,
Wednesday night, yes, Sunday, all day Sunday. All my friends
were Christian kids. And we grew up together, playing baseball,
doing everything you could possibly do. And then when the
band accidentally took off, yet one in a million chances
(20:30):
that your band's going to make and we went to
LA and LA was built to destroy bands, you know,
because you're all of a sudden you realize that your
drummer's been gone for three days because you went to
a party in Ellingwood Hills.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
You may not see them again. So but our bands
stayed together.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
And the competition and the springfield, the birds, all the
you know, every building up against led Zeppelin. It was
like the golden air of rock, Pink Floyd. So the
breakthrough then was not a small thing.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Well it was just to get noticed.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
It was a big deal, you know, But I mean
the thing about it, it was was one in a
million chants that you're going to actually make it in
this business. We were at that golden time when we
came along with something that everybody wanted.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
We were not peace in love. We were the other side.
We were the darker side.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
But there was a sense of humor to it, you know,
and people started getting the sense of humor that this
dark vaudeville was pretty funny, you know, it had it
had both things in it, and so, you know, the
I went as far away as you could get. I
became the poster boy for what was wrong. The seven
hundred Club was burning my albums on this is the
(21:45):
worst person you could ever.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Possibly did you like it at the time, and that
w we.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Were laughing, you know.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
I almost wanted to go on the show on the
seven hundred Club and go, Okay, what book do you
want to talk.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
About in the Bible? Because I grew up in the Bible.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
You could have given them a rent of their money.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
So but I went as far away as they could
became an alcoholic. Didn't realize I was going to become
an alcoholic here just drinking beer with the boys. He
did different ones. Different was that they could stop. I couldn't,
and that beer was constant now and it was not
alcohol it was medicine now almost like a prop too.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
And it was a prop, and I mean it was
a good I was never drunk. I was never angry.
It's never mean.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I was always that Dean Martin kind of cool until
it started started throwing up blood. Now Harry Nielsen had
already died. My Hollywood vampires, all the guys they used
to drink with, we're all dying.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
So let's talk about the Hollywood Vampires.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
That it was club, Keith Moon, Harry Nielsen, Mickey Dolens,
Mickey Dolans, Bernie Toppin, and anybody else that would come
into town.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
John Lennon occasionally, Yeah, he.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Would come in and we would sit there and we
would drink every night at the Rainbow, you know, last
man standing kind of thing. And when that kind of
broke up, because they even went back out on tour
half of the more debt, you know, and still we
went right on because we were I was in control
of this drinking, at least I thought I was, until
(23:15):
I realized I really wasn't in control. It was now
it was now medicine, and I didn't even like the
taste of.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
It anymore, but I had to have it.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
I woke up one morning threw up blood, and Cheryl goes,
party's over and I was in an institute, you know,
to stop. And you know what, after two days, I
felt great, But I kept going, when I get out
of here, I'm going to go back to my thing,
and it's going to be everywhere I came out of there.
(23:46):
Never once had a fallback, never fell back on alcohol,
never fell back on drugs. Thirty nine years, thirty eight years.
So God literally took it away from me.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
So you don't describe it as you were cured. You
say you were healed. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
People would say, well, you're a cured alcoholic, and I go, no,
it was a healed alcoholic.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
What's a different.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Well, God took it away from me.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Even the doctor said it's impossible that you don't at
least fall off the wagon three or four times, because
you're the classic alcoholic. And I said, what you don't
understand is that God took it away from me. I said,
it's a miracle. After a while though, they went, you
know what, God took it away from you because they said,
everything about your life should be deception. That's what an
(24:31):
alcoholic and a drug addict does. You put on this
air that they're cured. But back here they're doing this
and they're doing that that never happened. And so even
the doctors were going, miracle, you're one in a million cases.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
And I went, well, I said, you know, God works
like that.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
I think people are really surprised to hear that. A
lot of people don't know that you believe in Jesus Christ.
It still comes as a surprise to people. And yet
not only do you believe, but you have a strong
faith in him. You've established a center for young people
called Solid Rock, where you're trying to really help turn people,
get their lives turned around, turn them toward God. You
(25:13):
don't hide this in any way. So who is Jesus
Christ to you?
Speaker 3 (25:19):
He's the core of everything. He's life itself. He's the light,
you know. I mean, it's if we don't all revolve
around Christ and we're.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Way out in space somewhere, he draws you in. He's
the light. You're drawn to that light.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
And it's nothing you can explain in words. You know,
it's something that happens to your heart where all of
a sudden you realize who this is and you realize,
oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I don't. I'm not worthy of this talk about I'm.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Not worthy, I'm not worthy, where we are not.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Worthy and yet still being hung on the cross. He
knew your name, he knew my name, and that made
me go, how can I not believe in this?
Speaker 1 (26:10):
He changes your heart?
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Now, he didn't say, and now that you're a Christian,
you can no longer be in rock and roll. His
plan was, now you're a Christian, go be in a
rock and roll band, but follow me, be Alice Cooper.
And that's what Christians don't understand. I can be Alice
Cooper and you can't. I can't tell you how many
(26:33):
emails I get saying, you know that song you wrote, Hey,
stupid yeah changed my life. I was going to kill
myself this. That song spoke to me. Some of the
songs that don't make any sense at all, they go,
you know, I turned to christ speakinguse of that song,
and I go, that song it spoke to them differently,
It said something differently. So now when I write, I
(26:57):
always try to have some lyric pointing towards.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Christ some lyrics point We did an.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Album called Brutal Planet and Dragontown and what it was
talking about was. It was a heavy metal album.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Oh this is so cool man.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
And then Christian kids started listening to it and going,
this is a Christian album. It's talking about how this
is a brutal planet and Dragontown is the result of it.
If you get one shot, you don't get another chance.
If you end up in Dragontown, there's no way out.
(27:36):
But brutal Planet's pointing out all the things that point
to Christ, you know, the horrible things, but the things
also that point to Christ. That album and the Last Temptation,
which was another album about that. It was written sort
of like something wicked. This way comes the circus comes
to town. The kid goes to the circus and they
try everything to get him to join the circus right
(27:59):
and at the end he doesn't. They were being sold
in Christian bookstores, and my record company couldn't figure out
why they're going, why are we getting why are we
selling records in Christian bookstores? Because it was Christian elbos
you know, uh, two or three of my songs were
used like in choirs. You know that a song like
(28:21):
I Am Made of You, Salvation, there's on these stories.
There's you know, a murder mystery. But there's a song
called salvation. How the murderers going? Is there any chance
for salvation? Because well that's the song. So you did
all this horrible things, but yeah, there is a chance
for salvation.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
With an older Alice, say to a younger Alice, or
maybe I should say an older Alets say to a
young Vince. You know Vincent Fernae, right? I think I
pronounced it wrung twice? It's gay?
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Could be.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So? So Alice speaks to young Vince who has dreams
of success and fame and fortune and all that, and
now here you are, You've been there, You've lived it.
What advice would you give to a younger you? And really,
in effect, to someone that's watching right now who thinks
this is where it's at.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
If I knew it was going to end up where
I was at at that point, I would say do
exactly what I did.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
I became an alcoholic and.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
A drug addict for a good reason. I didn't know
it was a good reason, but I didn't know God
was going to use it. I can now go into
a place and talk to kids about drugs and alcohol
and they can't say.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, what do you know about it?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Ye've been there.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I did everything.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Okay, I've been there. I almost died from everything that
I did. I can speak from experience now. I think
God used my alcoholism and my drug addiction and said, yeah,
you're going to go through this, but it's gonna be
something I can use later. And I sit here and
(29:59):
I go, I have no idea why you let me live? Yes,
except for this fact that I can. I can talk
about it now, and I can give him all the credit.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, are setback and turn into a setup, and God
can use it. And you speak from experience. I mean
the Apostle Paul was a brilliant orator and communicator, but
almost every time he spoke, he just told a story
like this is who I used to be. I hunted
down Christians, I killed them, and Jesus came to be
on the Damascus and he tells the story, and you
(30:29):
know there's there's power in his story. And you have
one of the most amazing stories I've ever heard. So
maybe there's a young person right now watching and they're
almost where you were, or maybe they are where you
were when you were in that room and you had
the dresses up blocking out the windows and you're at
the end. You've got a rock of cocaine, you've got
(30:51):
a gun, and what would you say to that person
right there, here's what you need to.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Do for one thing.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
I don't know one drug addict that ever said, what
a great idea. It sounded like a great idea. And
you do get at that momentary buzz and you feel
a euphoric yeah, and you feel wonderful for a little while.
That euphoria turns normalcy.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
You're in. You're in this euphoria. Here's normal.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
You go up to the euphoria and you come back
down to normal pretty soon. You're living in euphoria. Normal
is depression. Depression is black depression. That's where suicide comes from.
I don't know one alcoholic or one in rock and
roll or in movies or anybody you've ever heard of
that said good idea. It's the most unfulfilling thing there is,
(31:43):
and yet Satan uses it pretty well because it's a thrill.
What you got, what you got to lose? You know,
here's a thrill, I would say to him. And the
kids are smarter enough than they used to be. Unfortunately,
their world is more dangerous now. When we were kids
if you've got in a fight, you got a black eye,
(32:04):
bloody nose, and next day a little respect. Now somebody
might drive by your house with a machine gun. When
we were kids, if you got in trouble with a girl,
you've got a penicillin shot.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Now you die.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
The anties up on everything. So these kids have got
to be smarter. And I think kids can look at
at our drug problems and go.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
I don't really want to get involved in that.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
My thing I would say to them is, when you
hear that knocking at the door, answer the door. If
the Lord is knocking at your door, answer it.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
It's the best thing.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
That you could ever do, and you can avoid all
this insanity. You know, listen for the door.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, I think Jesus summed it up perfectly when he
said the thieves, speaking of Satan, comes to steal, kill
and destroy. But I have come, and you might have
life and that were abundantly, you know. The Lord says
in scripture, behold, I said before you life and death,
blessings their curses whom you will serve. So it's a choice.
But then I left how that verse goes on to
(33:09):
say choose live. So it's almost like the Lord's saying, Okay,
here's the test, here's the correct answer on the test.
Make this choice. But it's up to us, isn't it.
He's not going to force us to believe. You didn't
have to turn back to the Lord. You could have
continued on that course, and quite frankly, you could have
been another tragic rock and roll story.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
I was as close as anybody ever came. Yeah, when
I went into the hospital, doctor said, you'll give you
a month before you're joining your buddies, because I mean,
you just can't treat your body like that. And on
top of it, I'm touring, so it's a constant flow,
constant energy, constant is constant party, and that sounds like fun.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
A constant party.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Got to a point where I would go backstage and
look at my stage costume and start crying because I
knew what I had, what I had to do to
get into that costume to perform was now depression. It
wasn't fun like it used to be, and it wasn't
because of the Alice character. Alice had was not the villain.
(34:12):
Alice wasn't the problem. I was the problem. Alice was
kind of the relief Because Alice didn't drink on stage.
Alice didn't do drugs on stage. I was the one that,
you know, mister doctor Juckle was the problem, not mister Hyde.
And really the only cure I had was Jesus, you know,
(34:34):
and the fact that I can still go out and
play the character, and I can still go out and
do the shows and have fun doing it and know
that I'm still helping people out in a way. You know,
people that you can look at it and say, well,
I get letters like this. If you can stop drinking,
(34:55):
well I can. As I said to Keith Richards, you know,
if you can stop well, then everybody can. So God
made me that that exception, you know, where he said
you are going to be known for this and then
you're not going to do it anymore. People will look
at that and go, wow, there's hope I can come
(35:16):
out of this. And then I think, once you get sobered,
then you can start recognizing Christ. It's very hard to
recognize Christ when you're high.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Because everything's fine.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Then you know, it's when you're sober is when you
start going what's important now? Oh, I need to go
after the light. I don't need to go after this anymore.
I don't need another car.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
You said, there's like Alice Cooper on your list, is
like fourth down on the list. What's number one, two, three?
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Well, I think your relationship with christ is the number
one thing. Of course your family. My family are all Christian.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
You know.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
My wife is just I mean, she's like walking in
a Bible herself, and yet she plays Mademoiselle Guillotine on stage,
and she plays all these characters. The kids are all
in show business, but they're all Christians.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
So when people say to you, they say who are you?
I go, well, first, I'm a child of God. Second
of all, I'm a rock band. You know, it's not
I'm Alice Cooper, the rock singer, and I'm a Christian.
The priority is that I'm a child of God. Oh
and then I'm a rock singer and I do this,
and I'm a father and I'm a husband. You know,
(36:33):
So in that order, I think is really who you are?
You know, if that doesn't come first, or something wrong.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
I watched a documentary called Roadrunner about the life of
Anthony Bourdain, and Bourdain, you know, was a celebrity chef.
You had the best selling cookbook called Kitchen Confidential. Then
he got his TV show on CNN Parts Unknown. It
was actually a really beautifully shot show. He traveled the world.
(37:01):
He would often ask people what makes you happy? He
interacted with the lot of people, lived a life that
many would dream of. But in this film was so
much footage to draw from his life. He almost tells
the story in real time because it's his voice telling
his own stories. That's unfolding. And at one point, Anthony
Bourdain is on a beach with Iggy Pop, who you know,
(37:25):
and so they're talking, and then the next thing, they're
in a restaurant. Anthony asks Iggy what thrills you? And
I thought Iggy Pop's answer was really interesting. He says,
this is really embarrassing. And I found that interesting that
this is embarrassing, almost like you wouldn't expect me to
say this, But it's being loved and actually appreciating the
(37:45):
people that are giving that love to me. And Anthony
Bourdain looked a little surprised, almost like he didn't know
what to do with that. But that sounds like Iggy's
onto something.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Yeah, I think he's seen the world. He's seen all
of it.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
I grew up with Igy pretty much in Detroit, you know,
in those days, and we partied harder than anybody. But
there comes that point in your life where when you're
lying in bed somewhere in Wichita on a tour bus,
where you go, what is this about?
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You know?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Is this really?
Speaker 2 (38:19):
It is? This old? There is?
Speaker 1 (38:20):
There's that song? Is that older is? Because it can't be.
There must be something better than this.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
And I think that's when you start hearing the Lord knocking,
because you know there's nobody on this planet that's that
he hasn't knocked on the door. You know again, you said,
we have a choice. Do we keep pursuing what's in
the world? Seek me and everything will be added to you.
(38:52):
You know, when I started proclaiming Christ, everybody thought, well
that's the end of Alice Cooper. We have never done better.
I mean on every level since I have proclaimed Christ.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
It should have gone the other way. It should have
absolutely ruined my career well.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Especially because of a persona and a trajectory that people
may perceive that you're on, but in reality they don't realize.
It's a performance. You take on the role of a character,
but you've redeemed it and turned it around to use
as a tool for good.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
I think that's how it's been used. You know, My
show has always been a good against evil. Alice plays
the villain, and what happens to him. He gets his
head cut off, because the bad guy's always got to
get his head cut off. And then what happens He
(39:51):
comes back, white top hat and tail balloons, and he's redeemed.
And just that simplicity of that is.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Connective.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
People go, oh, he can be redeemed, he's not.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
They can't kill him.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Well, you can kill his body, but you're not going
to kill his spirit, you know. And that's always been
the ongoing theme of Alice Cooper has been redemption.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
At the end, Alice, could you define what redemption is
to you?
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Well, none of us deserve redemption. But Christ on the cross,
if that blood is the most precious thing, that is
your redemption. He was the perfect sacrifice. There's no sacrifice
we could make that would be better than the Son
of God dying for you, understanding your sin, understanding that
(40:51):
you're going to sin after that, and yet still paying
the price. What possible else could you do? You can't do.
You can't ever repay that. And once you realize that
then you are connected to the Lord. He has taken
a residence in your life, and now he's with you
(41:14):
at every moment, and you make mistakes. The craziest thing
I've ever heard is people being anxious about, well, I
can't go to that church because.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
There's so many hypocrites.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
Well, the church is not based on the hypocrites.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
The family of God.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
We try not to, but we make mistakes and we sin.
The church is based on the one that didn't sin,
the ultimate sacrifice.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
We all look to him.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
That's what the church is based on. And we're imperfect,
but he was perfect, and that's why he was the
perfect sacrifice. So redemption is giving into that and saying, Lord,
you're right here.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
I am exactly.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
When Jesus has tied on the cross, he said it
is finished. It was a complete payment. It was like,
here's the down payment, we'll work out the rest later.
A complete payment. And the word finished is interesting. That
comes from a singing word to tell us that, which
means it's completed, it's accomplished, it's done. You know, like
the old song says Jesus paid it all all to him,
(42:15):
I owe.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
There's no way of repaying God back except for acceptance,
you know. And and again we go and we live
this life and we're in an everyday situation where everything.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Comes at us in a million ways. How do you
deal with it? Well, you lean on Christ.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
We're so thankful for how you speak up for your
faith and taking the time to even do this interview.
I want to thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Well, you know, for you, I feel a connection with you.
Everything we talked about, from Mad magazines to bullet mustangs, Yes,
to West Side Story.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Yeah, we're pretty connected.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yes, for sure, totally
Life audio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You didn't have to turn back to the Lord. You
could have continued on that course, and quite frankly, you
could have been another tragic rock and roll story.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
I was as close as anybody ever came, and I
said here and I go.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
I have no idea why you let me live.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Alice. At one point you were the number one rock
star in the world, and it started with your first
hit eighteen. You were in multiple bands. You started out
in a band called the Earwigs, and you were in
italent contest and kind of a Beatles imitation. Then you
started learning to play and becoming a proper rock band.
(00:53):
Then you ultimately ultimately became the Spiders and then Alice Cooper.
But that hit changed everything. So you're in a car,
I think maybe with some of your bandmates, and you
hear your song eighteen on the radio for the first time.
What was that like?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
We were the band that wasn't supposed to ever have
a hit. We were the notorious Alice Cooper band. We
were the outlaws.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Every parent hated.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Us, and that was good for business, wasn't that?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
It was?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
We didn't necessarily do it that way. We just ended
up being that. But at the same time. In that era,
if you had a hit on the top forty, you
were with Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkle, the Supremes,
all those people are always in the top forty. And
(01:40):
we did a song call I'm eighteen. I'm eighteen and
I Like it right. That was almost a punk anthem,
having no idea that that was going to be a
hit single. SKLW was the biggest station in the Midwest.
It came out of Windsor, Canada. We were in Detroit
and we're driving along and all of a sudden, we
(02:02):
hear pick hit this week on SKLW, and eighteen comes on.
Believe me, we stopped the car. We had never heard
any of our records ever on the radio before, and
we're sitting there listening to it, and we're looking at
each other just laughing, going, what a mistake they just made.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
You know?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Then I heard it two hours later, and then you're
hear it again two hours later, and then you realize
it's not just a pick hit.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
It's on the charts.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
And you're sitting there between the Rolling Stones and Simon
and Garfunkel, and there's your song.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Wow, and to the business.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Part of rock and roll that gets the attention of
the money guys. All of a sudden, the record company goes,
what that band has a hit. Okay, now we're going
to put the spotlight on them. We didn't expect that.
The worst thing you could do to a band like
Alice Cooper is Notorious we were was give us a hit,
(02:58):
because now you had to deal with us, and everybody
gets well, everybody gets one for once in a while,
I get a lot home run once in a while.
Second one came out, it was a bigger hit. Third
one came out with a bigger hit. So all of
a sudden, now we didn't chase the charts. We didn't
say we got to write a song that's going to
(03:19):
be on the charts, right, We got that song on
and now the charts was looking at us. And we
were in that golden age where Bob Ezra and our
producer knew how to take our songs and make him
any hits.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
So Alice, you're at the peak here of fame, and
you're hanging around the most unusual people you've met, all
of the Beatles, you're meeting every rock star of the day.
But not just that, but you're meeting people like Jack
Benny and George Burns and Groucho Marx, and you become
friends with these people, and you were even friends with
Peter Sellers, and so you'd go, you were telling me earlier,
(03:55):
you'd go to dinner with Peter Sellers and suddenly he
would go into his Inspector Glusseau character in front of you.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I don't know if he could help himself, but you
know a lot of comedians do that. Mike Myers will
turn into you know, this character every once in a while,
and some you know, same with Dana Carvey.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
He does a thousand characters, and.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Sometimes I don't know if that's a means of communication
or means of kind of hiding a little bit and
then coming out. But Peter Sellis just saw the moment
where Cluso would fit right into that moment, you know,
And of course it was the greatest thing. I was
never disappointed with meeting people like him or Vincent Price
(04:37):
was priceless.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
He was great.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
We had him come on one of the records and
do a vocal on it because we needed that voice,
and he stuck around and he did a video with us,
and he went on stage and did the show with us.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
His part on the stage.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
And I think that you find that you have a
bigger view of these people. You know, you have a
picture of who Elvis is, and then when you meet him,
you see a bigger picture of him.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
He's funny. You never see and being funny.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
He's funny, he makes fun of himself. He's a regular guy,
you know. And that's the part that people I get
to see that other people don't get to see.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Tell me about when you met Elvis.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, Elvis was great. Elvis was, you know, bigger than
life at that time. In nineteen seventy one, I got
a call saying, Elvis wants to meet you. I mean,
we had already had hit records and he saw all.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
This stuff and Hawaii at this point.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
This was in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Let's Vegas.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And I went to the hotel and they had an elevator,
especially elevator went up to his penthouse. So I get
in the elevator and there's e Lizaman, Ellie Chubby Checker
and Linda Lovelace, what and me and we're going to
go meet Elvis.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
So you go up there and kind of waiting when
he walks in the room. This wasn't fat Elvis, this
wasn't drugged out Elvis. This was Elvis in his prime.
And he walks in and he's hey, man, because to me,
he said, you really care with a snake, right, you know?
And yeah, I said, I mean that's cool. You're from Detroit,
aren't you?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
And I went yeah. He said, come here, I want
to show you something.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
So I go in the kitchen with Elvis, just me
and him closes, the door opens, the door takes out
a fully loaded thirty eight Smith and Wesson thirty eight
and I immediately start unloading.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
It, and he goes, no, I'll leave the bolts in.
It's all right, man.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
I almost sure you had to take a gun out
of somebody's hand because he was a crate guy.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So I'm standing there and I got the gun out
of him, and I'm going a little devil pops up
and goes shoot him in the foot.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
What a story, yellows. Cooper shoots Elvis, and then a
little angel comes over. He says, well, don't kill him,
but shoot him somewhere. You know, the gun's out of
my hand. I'm on the floor.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
A loaded gun, though that could have gone wrong.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
No, I know that was him though.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And then after that happens, he goes, would you like
to see my most prouded possession.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
I went, yeah, to go.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
In the bedroom, opens up a drawer and he pulls
down an envelope. This was the picture I had of Elvis.
Now all of a sudden that changed everything. And it's
an envelope and it's X rays and I going, what
is this and he says, well, I was leaving the
Hilton the other night when my boys are all with me,
(07:26):
and these three drunk cowboys wants to fight me, and
I called my boys off, and I thought.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
All three of them, he says.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Broke this guy's jaw right here, he says, and then
he pulls in, he said, and I swung around and
breaked this guy's ankle right there, And I'm going, this
is your prize possession. And I realized he had no
life outside of his capsule. He was a prisoner of
being Elvis Presley. He couldn't go to the movies, he
(07:53):
couldn't go playpool, he couldn't do anything, and so this
was his connection to the outside world. And I immediately thought,
I never want to be this big I never want
to be a pre Michael Jackson.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, same thing.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Same you know, if you married Elvis's daughter, if you.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Put anybody and say you here's the biggest mansion on
the planet. You can have anything you want. You can
have drugs, you can have alcohol, you have women, food,
but you can't leave the mansion. You'll find a way
to kill yourself to a prison. At a point you'll
find so you'll leave, to eat yourself to death, You'll
drug yourself to death. You'll do something, because it's not
(08:34):
natural to be in prison. Yeah, and that's everybody that
was in that position ended up dying, you know, way
before their time.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I saw a documentary film about Elvis called The Searcher.
It's actually very well done films, and it really did
show how this wasn't mean that was searching early on
in life. Interestingly, though, Elvis had gospel roots and he
would often sing call people up to us, so tell sweet.
I read this article where I think it was Tom Jones.
They were both in Vegas at the same time. Elvis
(09:05):
would call Tom coming over, My Alvis isn't as good
as yours, and he says, when every call you go,
because it's all us, sure, says we'd be up all
night singing gospel about so there.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Were before laure almost an hour before the show. He
would warm up with all gospel songs. Yeah, that's all
they do, and then he would go on stage.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
So he grew up.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
In that Southern gospel, you know, and that's where the
blues came from, and that's where this came from, and
that's where he ended up, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
But his roots, he'd go back to those roots.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Do you think when you're young and you're hungry, like
you're a young rock star, you're in your band the Spiders,
then you become Alice Cooper, you're climbing your way up
and then when you get there, then you go to
the stage too and stage three, and in your case
you become iconic. You're still iconic. You walk into a room,
you told me, you walked through an airport. People say
we're not worthy because it was in Wayne's world and
(09:55):
they think that the first people that did it, when
in fact, it happens to you all the time. But
you know, when you get to whatever stage that is,
do you think that for some of these people who
start abusing drugs or even take their own life. Is
it because they get to the top and they realize
there's nothing there maybe when they thought it would be there.
(10:17):
It keeps them going. But when they get there and
they don't find it, is that why they check out?
What do you think happens in the mind of a person.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
I think if you don't have.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
The Lord in your life, you're always going to be
trying to fill that hole with something. It's either going
to be drugs or it's going to be ferraris, or
it's going to be houses or wives or this or
that or fame, and you're never going to achieve it
because there's that inner thing of us that when we're
born of reconnecting with God, that's there, and even if
(10:50):
you're denying it, that's.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
What you're searching for.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
And so they'll go to, Oh, the new fad is this,
I'm going to go now a Buddhist. I'm now going
to be a vegetarian, goat yoga person.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
I'm going to be this.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
They go through everything and still don't find it, and
the last place they look is the Lord.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
That's right, well, I think.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Because once you say God, you're You're my God, You're
my savior.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Now you have to answer to him. People do not want.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
To give up their god self, the self that they control.
I control my life.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Even people go to church. I go to church.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Okay, yeah, but you haven't given yourself. You know, you
haven't given yourself fully, and that's where the fulfillment comes from.
But you can't you can't explain that to somebody that's
not searching, you know. I mean, people are searching, but
they don't as soon as somebody says, you know, Jesus Christ,
(11:52):
they go, oh, yeah, well right, I'm going to go
over here. It's it's you know, I know people that
the most miserable people I knew were billionaires because they
had everything and they still did not they didn't have.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
That fulfillment yet.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Okay, I'm going to go climb mount as ever it's naked.
The three biggest billionaires in the world are in space.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
All go into space.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Let's see what's up there.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah exactly. Isn't that weird? Yeah, it's like a James
Bond movie.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yes, and all around the same time too. It's an
amazing thing that you know, people chase after these things.
Young people today. You know, a poll was taken among
them and they said, what do you want more than
anything else? And they said to be rich and famous?
And Andy Warhol, who you knew, once made his statement
is attributed to him. At least one day everyone will
(12:47):
be famous for a fifteen minutes something along those lines.
And today that literally is true for some people. Suddenly
you're famous online because you posted this video that went viral.
You become a so called influencer, and this is their
whole goal in life, chasing after. But look, you've been there,
you've done that, You've bought the T shirt. In fact,
(13:09):
you've been the T shirt, and you're saying that what
you're really looking for is God? Am I hearing you? Right?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
If that's not your final goal? And that should be
the most important goal, right, everything else is secondary? Everything
else is third aary everything. You know, I always said
this before in it, and a lot of people don't
like the statement. But if I were going to put
what's important to me in order, Alice Cooper would be
about fifth. You know, once you've answered that knock and
(13:42):
once you've committed to that, and once you start realizing
how merciful that we've been treated, and you know, and
how much grace.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
We've been given. When you look back at your life
and go.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Wow, you've dodged a bullet more than once. When you're
a young man, you had a very serious surgery. You
still have a scar, and you're parents and you of
course as well. I'll believe that was a miracle. But
then fast forward later in your life, you're at the
peak of your success. You're an iconic figure, and you
got heavily into drugs, and you're in a room and
(14:19):
you've got a rock of cocaine like the size of
a softball. I recall you saying some along those lines,
and you're using it. Your wife effectively has left you.
She's moved to Chicago. She says, I'm done with this.
And you look in the mirror and what do you see.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I had been awake for about four or five days.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, and I was up on top of Beverly Hills
and my big mansion. I had a pipe, a rock
and a pistol whoa, and all my wives dresses hanging
up around the room so nobody could look in because
you're paranoid. Has all got about about police coming. You've
(14:59):
got your cocaine, and I'm sitting there going this is it.
I've alienated everybody. I've got my cocaine now though, and
I've got my gun. And I go in the other
bathroom and I look in the mirror. Now to this day,
I don't know if I had the Alice makeup on,
(15:21):
but I looked in the mirror and the lines that
come down from the makeup were blood.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
And I was probably.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Hallucinating, but I flushed the rock down the toilet right
flushed it went to bed for four days.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
And that was an expensive rock worth a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Oh, we still owed money on it. And finally called
up Cheryl and I said I'm okay, now I'm back,
and she goes not that easy. We finally got to
a point of her saying, Christian counseling and this and
that and that you set it up.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I want to know how serious you are about this.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
I set it up with Lehmann in Tucson and we
started going Christian, you know, and I had It took
five years before she realized that I was not going
to fall back, wow, you know, into still doing cocaine
and all that. But I understood that I could totally
understand why she would be. She loved me, but she
(16:29):
was suspicious. And any drug addict will tell you that
drug becomes like oxygen. If you don't have it, you'll
sell everything in your house to get it. I mean,
it's an addiction beyond addiction. And once it's gone, you
don't miss it at all. Yeah, I mean once it
was gone, I had never even it was just gone,
(16:51):
you know. But I mean, when you're addicted, you are
attached at the hip and honestly, nothing else is important.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Wow, when you were younger, you're just getting started in
your career. You met Frank Zappa. He was going to
record you. He says, do you have an agent? He said,
we don't have one yet. So you met Shep Gordon
and he walked into a room and three iconic rock
stars were in that room. Where were they?
Speaker 3 (17:18):
It was Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Almost like them, Mount Rushmore exactly, all dead at twenty
seven by the way.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah, so they're in the so called twenty seven club.
And you know now and since then, of course, Amy
Winehouse is joined that so called club of them. Yeah,
there are Brian Jones from the Stones and Kirk Cobain,
all tragically dead at the age of twenty seven. But
you walk into this room of these iconic rock figures
(17:48):
and they were so talented. I remember you told me
each one kind of was an innovator and music, weren't they.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I mean they were the three most influential people in rock, yeah,
I mean other than the Beatles and the Stones. Yes,
they were the three that were the Everybody knew who
they were, that's right, and they were Jimmy did something
nobody had ever done, Jim Morrison did something nobody's done,
and Janis Joplin did very true. So there they were
the most creative people in the building. Nobody knew at
(18:16):
that point they were going to be dead at twenty seven,
you know, but it got to.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
A point in a short period of time.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
They did so much. They did so much iconic music
in that time. And maybe it was that whole James
Dean live fast, die young, and have a good looking course,
But that was kind of the attitude, right, Nobody wanted
to get to thirty. I went when I hit thirty,
I went washed up. You know, nobody ever thought past
(18:46):
thirty because you went, oh my gosh, what am I
gonna do when I'm thirty?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
You know, you know my perspective as a fan. I'm
a few years younger than you, not that many, but
you know, I grew up listening to all this music,
admired all these people. So in a short period of time,
around nineteen seventy, the Beatles break up, all these rock
icons die. I was using drugs at that time. I
was smoking a lot of weed, using LSD, and in
(19:12):
my mind, to me, it was like, this era is over,
this is all empty. And that sent me on a search,
kind of a process of elimination. What is the meaning
of life? Was a seventeen year old kid. I said, well,
it's not in drug sex and rock and roll. Been there,
done that. In my own little version of it, it's
not in the affluent world that my mother lived, and
(19:34):
you know, and she was friends with John Wayne, and
she had a friend who was close to Frank Sinatra's wife,
so she knew Frank. So it's not in that world,
that affluent, swinging world. Where is it? And then I
came across a group of very outspoken Christians on my
high school campus sitting around in a circle singing songs
(19:54):
about God. I thought they were delusional, but for the
first time, in my life, I thought, what if they're
right when you realized you needed Jesus. Were raised as
a Christian. Oh, I was a Christian.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I mean I was the I grew up. All my
friends were Christian kids. I was in church Friday night,
Wednesday night, yes, Sunday, all day Sunday. All my friends
were Christian kids. And we grew up together, playing baseball,
doing everything you could possibly do. And then when the
band accidentally took off, yet one in a million chances
(20:30):
that your band's going to make and we went to
LA and LA was built to destroy bands, you know,
because you're all of a sudden you realize that your
drummer's been gone for three days because you went to
a party in Ellingwood Hills.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
You may not see them again. So but our bands
stayed together.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
And the competition and the springfield, the birds, all the
you know, every building up against led Zeppelin. It was
like the golden air of rock, Pink Floyd. So the
breakthrough then was not a small thing.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Well it was just to get noticed.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
It was a big deal, you know, But I mean
the thing about it, it was was one in a
million chants that you're going to actually make it in
this business. We were at that golden time when we
came along with something that everybody wanted.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
We were not peace in love. We were the other side.
We were the darker side.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
But there was a sense of humor to it, you know,
and people started getting the sense of humor that this
dark vaudeville was pretty funny, you know, it had it
had both things in it, and so, you know, the
I went as far away as you could get. I
became the poster boy for what was wrong. The seven
hundred Club was burning my albums on this is the
(21:45):
worst person you could ever.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Possibly did you like it at the time, and that
w we.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Were laughing, you know.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
I almost wanted to go on the show on the
seven hundred Club and go, Okay, what book do you
want to talk.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
About in the Bible? Because I grew up in the Bible.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
You could have given them a rent of their money.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
So but I went as far away as they could
became an alcoholic. Didn't realize I was going to become
an alcoholic here just drinking beer with the boys. He
did different ones. Different was that they could stop. I couldn't,
and that beer was constant now and it was not
alcohol it was medicine now almost like a prop too.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
And it was a prop, and I mean it was
a good I was never drunk. I was never angry.
It's never mean.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I was always that Dean Martin kind of cool until
it started started throwing up blood. Now Harry Nielsen had
already died. My Hollywood vampires, all the guys they used
to drink with, we're all dying.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
So let's talk about the Hollywood Vampires.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
That it was club, Keith Moon, Harry Nielsen, Mickey Dolens,
Mickey Dolans, Bernie Toppin, and anybody else that would come
into town.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
John Lennon occasionally, Yeah, he.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Would come in and we would sit there and we
would drink every night at the Rainbow, you know, last
man standing kind of thing. And when that kind of
broke up, because they even went back out on tour
half of the more debt, you know, and still we
went right on because we were I was in control
of this drinking, at least I thought I was, until
(23:15):
I realized I really wasn't in control. It was now
it was now medicine, and I didn't even like the
taste of.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
It anymore, but I had to have it.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
I woke up one morning threw up blood, and Cheryl goes,
party's over and I was in an institute, you know,
to stop. And you know what, after two days, I
felt great, But I kept going, when I get out
of here, I'm going to go back to my thing,
and it's going to be everywhere I came out of there.
(23:46):
Never once had a fallback, never fell back on alcohol,
never fell back on drugs. Thirty nine years, thirty eight years.
So God literally took it away from me.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
So you don't describe it as you were cured. You
say you were healed. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
People would say, well, you're a cured alcoholic, and I go, no,
it was a healed alcoholic.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
What's a different.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Well, God took it away from me.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Even the doctor said it's impossible that you don't at
least fall off the wagon three or four times, because
you're the classic alcoholic. And I said, what you don't
understand is that God took it away from me. I said,
it's a miracle. After a while though, they went, you
know what, God took it away from you because they said,
everything about your life should be deception. That's what an
(24:31):
alcoholic and a drug addict does. You put on this
air that they're cured. But back here they're doing this
and they're doing that that never happened. And so even
the doctors were going, miracle, you're one in a million cases.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
And I went, well, I said, you know, God works
like that.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
I think people are really surprised to hear that. A
lot of people don't know that you believe in Jesus Christ.
It still comes as a surprise to people. And yet
not only do you believe, but you have a strong
faith in him. You've established a center for young people
called Solid Rock, where you're trying to really help turn people,
get their lives turned around, turn them toward God. You
(25:13):
don't hide this in any way. So who is Jesus
Christ to you?
Speaker 3 (25:19):
He's the core of everything. He's life itself. He's the light,
you know. I mean, it's if we don't all revolve
around Christ and we're.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Way out in space somewhere, he draws you in. He's
the light. You're drawn to that light.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
And it's nothing you can explain in words. You know,
it's something that happens to your heart where all of
a sudden you realize who this is and you realize,
oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I don't. I'm not worthy of this talk about I'm.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Not worthy, I'm not worthy, where we are not.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Worthy and yet still being hung on the cross. He
knew your name, he knew my name, and that made
me go, how can I not believe in this?
Speaker 1 (26:10):
He changes your heart?
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Now, he didn't say, and now that you're a Christian,
you can no longer be in rock and roll. His
plan was, now you're a Christian, go be in a
rock and roll band, but follow me, be Alice Cooper.
And that's what Christians don't understand. I can be Alice
Cooper and you can't. I can't tell you how many
(26:33):
emails I get saying, you know that song you wrote, Hey,
stupid yeah changed my life. I was going to kill
myself this. That song spoke to me. Some of the
songs that don't make any sense at all, they go,
you know, I turned to christ speakinguse of that song,
and I go, that song it spoke to them differently,
It said something differently. So now when I write, I
(26:57):
always try to have some lyric pointing towards.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Christ some lyrics point We did an.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Album called Brutal Planet and Dragontown and what it was
talking about was. It was a heavy metal album.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Oh this is so cool man.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
And then Christian kids started listening to it and going,
this is a Christian album. It's talking about how this
is a brutal planet and Dragontown is the result of it.
If you get one shot, you don't get another chance.
If you end up in Dragontown, there's no way out.
(27:36):
But brutal Planet's pointing out all the things that point
to Christ, you know, the horrible things, but the things
also that point to Christ. That album and the Last Temptation,
which was another album about that. It was written sort
of like something wicked. This way comes the circus comes
to town. The kid goes to the circus and they
try everything to get him to join the circus right
(27:59):
and at the end he doesn't. They were being sold
in Christian bookstores, and my record company couldn't figure out
why they're going, why are we getting why are we
selling records in Christian bookstores? Because it was Christian elbos
you know, uh, two or three of my songs were
used like in choirs. You know that a song like
(28:21):
I Am Made of You, Salvation, there's on these stories.
There's you know, a murder mystery. But there's a song
called salvation. How the murderers going? Is there any chance
for salvation? Because well that's the song. So you did
all this horrible things, but yeah, there is a chance
for salvation.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
With an older Alice, say to a younger Alice, or
maybe I should say an older Alets say to a
young Vince. You know Vincent Fernae, right? I think I
pronounced it wrung twice? It's gay?
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Could be.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So? So Alice speaks to young Vince who has dreams
of success and fame and fortune and all that, and
now here you are, You've been there, You've lived it.
What advice would you give to a younger you? And really,
in effect, to someone that's watching right now who thinks
this is where it's at.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
If I knew it was going to end up where
I was at at that point, I would say do
exactly what I did.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
I became an alcoholic and.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
A drug addict for a good reason. I didn't know
it was a good reason, but I didn't know God
was going to use it. I can now go into
a place and talk to kids about drugs and alcohol
and they can't say.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, what do you know about it?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Ye've been there.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I did everything.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Okay, I've been there. I almost died from everything that
I did. I can speak from experience now. I think
God used my alcoholism and my drug addiction and said, yeah,
you're going to go through this, but it's gonna be
something I can use later. And I sit here and
(29:59):
I go, I have no idea why you let me live? Yes,
except for this fact that I can. I can talk
about it now, and I can give him all the credit.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, are setback and turn into a setup, and God
can use it. And you speak from experience. I mean
the Apostle Paul was a brilliant orator and communicator, but
almost every time he spoke, he just told a story
like this is who I used to be. I hunted
down Christians, I killed them, and Jesus came to be
on the Damascus and he tells the story, and you
(30:29):
know there's there's power in his story. And you have
one of the most amazing stories I've ever heard. So
maybe there's a young person right now watching and they're
almost where you were, or maybe they are where you
were when you were in that room and you had
the dresses up blocking out the windows and you're at
the end. You've got a rock of cocaine, you've got
(30:51):
a gun, and what would you say to that person
right there, here's what you need to.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Do for one thing.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
I don't know one drug addict that ever said, what
a great idea. It sounded like a great idea. And
you do get at that momentary buzz and you feel
a euphoric yeah, and you feel wonderful for a little while.
That euphoria turns normalcy.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
You're in. You're in this euphoria. Here's normal.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
You go up to the euphoria and you come back
down to normal pretty soon. You're living in euphoria. Normal
is depression. Depression is black depression. That's where suicide comes from.
I don't know one alcoholic or one in rock and
roll or in movies or anybody you've ever heard of
that said good idea. It's the most unfulfilling thing there is,
(31:43):
and yet Satan uses it pretty well because it's a thrill.
What you got, what you got to lose? You know,
here's a thrill, I would say to him. And the
kids are smarter enough than they used to be. Unfortunately,
their world is more dangerous now. When we were kids
if you've got in a fight, you got a black eye,
(32:04):
bloody nose, and next day a little respect. Now somebody
might drive by your house with a machine gun. When
we were kids, if you got in trouble with a girl,
you've got a penicillin shot.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Now you die.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
The anties up on everything. So these kids have got
to be smarter. And I think kids can look at
at our drug problems and go.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
I don't really want to get involved in that.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
My thing I would say to them is, when you
hear that knocking at the door, answer the door. If
the Lord is knocking at your door, answer it.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
It's the best thing.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
That you could ever do, and you can avoid all
this insanity. You know, listen for the door.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, I think Jesus summed it up perfectly when he
said the thieves, speaking of Satan, comes to steal, kill
and destroy. But I have come, and you might have
life and that were abundantly, you know. The Lord says
in scripture, behold, I said before you life and death,
blessings their curses whom you will serve. So it's a choice.
But then I left how that verse goes on to
(33:09):
say choose live. So it's almost like the Lord's saying, Okay,
here's the test, here's the correct answer on the test.
Make this choice. But it's up to us, isn't it.
He's not going to force us to believe. You didn't
have to turn back to the Lord. You could have
continued on that course, and quite frankly, you could have
been another tragic rock and roll story.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
I was as close as anybody ever came. Yeah, when
I went into the hospital, doctor said, you'll give you
a month before you're joining your buddies, because I mean,
you just can't treat your body like that. And on
top of it, I'm touring, so it's a constant flow,
constant energy, constant is constant party, and that sounds like fun.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
A constant party.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Got to a point where I would go backstage and
look at my stage costume and start crying because I
knew what I had, what I had to do to
get into that costume to perform was now depression. It
wasn't fun like it used to be, and it wasn't
because of the Alice character. Alice had was not the villain.
(34:12):
Alice wasn't the problem. I was the problem. Alice was
kind of the relief Because Alice didn't drink on stage.
Alice didn't do drugs on stage. I was the one that,
you know, mister doctor Juckle was the problem, not mister Hyde.
And really the only cure I had was Jesus, you know,
(34:34):
and the fact that I can still go out and
play the character, and I can still go out and
do the shows and have fun doing it and know
that I'm still helping people out in a way. You know,
people that you can look at it and say, well,
I get letters like this. If you can stop drinking,
(34:55):
well I can. As I said to Keith Richards, you know,
if you can stop well, then everybody can. So God
made me that that exception, you know, where he said
you are going to be known for this and then
you're not going to do it anymore. People will look
at that and go, wow, there's hope I can come
(35:16):
out of this. And then I think, once you get sobered,
then you can start recognizing Christ. It's very hard to
recognize Christ when you're high.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Because everything's fine.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Then you know, it's when you're sober is when you
start going what's important now? Oh, I need to go
after the light. I don't need to go after this anymore.
I don't need another car.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
You said, there's like Alice Cooper on your list, is
like fourth down on the list. What's number one, two, three?
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Well, I think your relationship with christ is the number
one thing. Of course your family. My family are all Christian.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
You know.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
My wife is just I mean, she's like walking in
a Bible herself, and yet she plays Mademoiselle Guillotine on stage,
and she plays all these characters. The kids are all
in show business, but they're all Christians.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
So when people say to you, they say who are you?
I go, well, first, I'm a child of God. Second
of all, I'm a rock band. You know, it's not
I'm Alice Cooper, the rock singer, and I'm a Christian.
The priority is that I'm a child of God. Oh
and then I'm a rock singer and I do this,
and I'm a father and I'm a husband. You know,
(36:33):
So in that order, I think is really who you are?
You know, if that doesn't come first, or something wrong.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
I watched a documentary called Roadrunner about the life of
Anthony Bourdain, and Bourdain, you know, was a celebrity chef.
You had the best selling cookbook called Kitchen Confidential. Then
he got his TV show on CNN Parts Unknown. It
was actually a really beautifully shot show. He traveled the world.
(37:01):
He would often ask people what makes you happy? He
interacted with the lot of people, lived a life that
many would dream of. But in this film was so
much footage to draw from his life. He almost tells
the story in real time because it's his voice telling
his own stories. That's unfolding. And at one point, Anthony
Bourdain is on a beach with Iggy Pop, who you know,
(37:25):
and so they're talking, and then the next thing, they're
in a restaurant. Anthony asks Iggy what thrills you? And
I thought Iggy Pop's answer was really interesting. He says,
this is really embarrassing. And I found that interesting that
this is embarrassing, almost like you wouldn't expect me to
say this, But it's being loved and actually appreciating the
(37:45):
people that are giving that love to me. And Anthony
Bourdain looked a little surprised, almost like he didn't know
what to do with that. But that sounds like Iggy's
onto something.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Yeah, I think he's seen the world. He's seen all
of it.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
I grew up with Igy pretty much in Detroit, you know,
in those days, and we partied harder than anybody. But
there comes that point in your life where when you're
lying in bed somewhere in Wichita on a tour bus,
where you go, what is this about?
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You know?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Is this really?
Speaker 2 (38:19):
It is? This old? There is?
Speaker 1 (38:20):
There's that song? Is that older is? Because it can't be.
There must be something better than this.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
And I think that's when you start hearing the Lord knocking,
because you know there's nobody on this planet that's that
he hasn't knocked on the door. You know again, you said,
we have a choice. Do we keep pursuing what's in
the world? Seek me and everything will be added to you.
(38:52):
You know, when I started proclaiming Christ, everybody thought, well
that's the end of Alice Cooper. We have never done better.
I mean on every level since I have proclaimed Christ.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
It should have gone the other way. It should have
absolutely ruined my career well.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Especially because of a persona and a trajectory that people
may perceive that you're on, but in reality they don't realize.
It's a performance. You take on the role of a character,
but you've redeemed it and turned it around to use
as a tool for good.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
I think that's how it's been used. You know, My
show has always been a good against evil. Alice plays
the villain, and what happens to him. He gets his
head cut off, because the bad guy's always got to
get his head cut off. And then what happens He
(39:51):
comes back, white top hat and tail balloons, and he's redeemed.
And just that simplicity of that is.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Connective.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
People go, oh, he can be redeemed, he's not.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
They can't kill him.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Well, you can kill his body, but you're not going
to kill his spirit, you know. And that's always been
the ongoing theme of Alice Cooper has been redemption.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
At the end, Alice, could you define what redemption is
to you?
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Well, none of us deserve redemption. But Christ on the cross,
if that blood is the most precious thing, that is
your redemption. He was the perfect sacrifice. There's no sacrifice
we could make that would be better than the Son
of God dying for you, understanding your sin, understanding that
(40:51):
you're going to sin after that, and yet still paying
the price. What possible else could you do? You can't do.
You can't ever repay that. And once you realize that
then you are connected to the Lord. He has taken
a residence in your life, and now he's with you
(41:14):
at every moment, and you make mistakes. The craziest thing
I've ever heard is people being anxious about, well, I
can't go to that church because.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
There's so many hypocrites.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
Well, the church is not based on the hypocrites.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
The family of God.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
We try not to, but we make mistakes and we sin.
The church is based on the one that didn't sin,
the ultimate sacrifice.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
We all look to him.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
That's what the church is based on. And we're imperfect,
but he was perfect, and that's why he was the
perfect sacrifice. So redemption is giving into that and saying, Lord,
you're right here.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
I am exactly.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
When Jesus has tied on the cross, he said it
is finished. It was a complete payment. It was like,
here's the down payment, we'll work out the rest later.
A complete payment. And the word finished is interesting. That
comes from a singing word to tell us that, which
means it's completed, it's accomplished, it's done. You know, like
the old song says Jesus paid it all all to him,
(42:15):
I owe.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
There's no way of repaying God back except for acceptance,
you know. And and again we go and we live
this life and we're in an everyday situation where everything.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Comes at us in a million ways. How do you
deal with it? Well, you lean on Christ.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
We're so thankful for how you speak up for your
faith and taking the time to even do this interview.
I want to thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Well, you know, for you, I feel a connection with you.
Everything we talked about, from Mad magazines to bullet mustangs, Yes,
to West Side Story.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Yeah, we're pretty connected.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yes, for sure, totally
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