School’s Out: A Rock Star Conversation With Alice Cooper & Sheryl Cooper

Genius is not just coming up with a great idea. Genius is making it work. Genius is coming up with a really good idea and then figuring out how to make it work so that people actually do it or accept you for what it is. Coming up with the idea of putting makeup on and doing all the theatrics on stage could have been absolute disaster. But it was thought out, it was rehearsed until the point where you couldn't not like it.

How would you ever introduce yourself to someone that doesn't know who you are? I mean, what's the typical. Sort of.

Like, I'd usually say that I'm the one that your parents wouldn't let you go see. You know, there was a moment in our career when shock rock. What I saw was there was a world of Peter Pans in rock and roll and no Captain Hook. And I would gladly be Captain Hook. Rock needed a villain, and I was more than happy to play the villain. To do that, you have to do a show around it. You can't just say, welcome to my nightmare. You have to give the audience the nightmare. So I let the lyrics to the songs become the script for the show. Nobody had ever done theater in rock and roll before, and it's the most theatrical music there is. So putting all that together, you know, you climb out on that limb in the world of Crosby, Stills and Nash, and if it works, you're a genius. If it doesn't work, you're an idiot.

Right?

And it worked. So, I mean. But you have to have the songs. That's the main thing. If you don't have the songs, you don't have anything. If you don't have the cake, you can't put the icing on it, you know? So the songs were everything we spent. If there was an eight hour rehearsal, seven hours is on the music. Because you're competing with Led Zeppelin, you're competing with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. So that was always first in our mind was, how good is the music? Then let's decorate it. Now that we have that song, let's let Alice take it over and perform it. Yeah. So?

Well, I mean, I think you're quite a packager. So, Cheryl, how would you respond to that? I mean, what do you typically tell.

People after almost 43 years of marriage? He's hot. People always ask me, you know, what's the secret to your relationship? A lot of secrets. But one thing I always say is that he still continues to pursue me like I'm not already his.

Wow. That's actually that's pretty good.

You know, guys, every once in a while you have to whisk your wife off to a cheap motel on a Tuesday afternoon. And that's. That's very romantic, huh?

When you say cheap hotel, like, I mean, are you talking like Motel 6 or what?

I'm talking about. Yeah, McDowell down on McDowell. You know, the old. You know, the ones you would never stay at.

That is fantastic. So how did you become Alice Cooper? I mean, this is kind of like a partnership. I mean, how long was this going on before you met Cheryl?

Well, Cheryl. I met Cheryl in 1976. 75, was it. Okay. We had the rehearsals for welcome to My Nightmare, the production. And it wasn't going to be like any other rock show. Billion Dollar Babies had just broken all the Stones records. So we were at that point the number one band in the world. And that was the number one record schools. That was the number one record. And here comes this next production. And everybody thought that we couldn't do a bigger show than Billion Dollar Babies, which was a kind of a. The gauntlet was down. And I said, let's make this one look Billion Dollar Babies, look like a small show. Let's really do this one. It was about five months of rehearsal. Our choreographer was David Winters from West side Story. I had Disney building the props. It was going to be a Broadway production. Most kids have never. Mostly kids in that era had never seen a Broadway show. So I said, well, let's do it on our terms. We're not going to water it down. We're going to make this thing in your face angry. You know, it's going to have blood in it, but it's going to also be funny. It's going to be vaudeville, but it's going to be. Have the same kind of glitz as a Broadway show. Took a lot of rehearsal, a lot of writing, and I said, we need four dancers. We need two girls, two guys. And they put that out in Variety that there was this audition coming up in la. I'll let you do the rest of that because you know the rest of the story better than me.

Well, you're talking to a girl who came from a classical background. I can tell you anything about Schumann, Mahler, Mozart, what opus? Cantata and movement. My classical background is classical music and ballet. So I knew the Beatles. That was it. I knew the Beatles. And this was before the age of the Internet. So any dancer in Los Angeles had to read either the Hollywood Reporter or Variety magazine to know what auditions were going on. So I came out of my third class of the day, Sweaty, stringy hair. And I saw all the girls getting ready for this audition and. And they look good. I said, where's everybody going? They said, are you the only person that has no idea that Alice Cooper is having an audition? It's a year and a half contract. It's a world tour, a television special, and a movie. And I said, really? I said, alice Cooper? Who's she? And that's what they said. And so I wasn't going to go. You know, I had sweatpants and a holy sweatshirt. And one of my friends said the operative word. She said, aren't you trying to make it in the dance world? Why don't you go to the audition? Besides, who says you're going to get it anyway? I said, let's go. Game on. And I went, he wasn't even there. And Somehow out of 2000 girls, I was picked.

Well, it's a little more than that. I mean, all these girls got up and danced. When Cheryl hit this floor, David Winter said, stop. That one right there. Because she was obviously the trained, you know, ballerina and jazz and everything. So you can't beat that. When somebody. When you. When you see somebody that's on it, you go, that one. I do the same thing with guitar players when I'm auditioning for guitars. You know, there'll be a lot of guitar players and then there'll be that one that you go, whoa. That one. Because you hear something that nobody else hears, right? And he saw something in Cheryl. You know, she could have been in west side Story. She could have been in any of the. She was 18 years old. You know, we didn't really meet till after the. We got in the middle of the tour and really started talking. At one point she played a giant tooth. Okay, you have to picture this now. It's just legs coming out with high heels and. And a tooth. And I had a giant toothbrush. It was part of a nightmare that he was having. And at one point on the tour, we're flying. We had our own jet. You know, we're flying. And I looked over and she had shorts on. And I went, hey, you're the tooth. And she goes, yeah, I'm the tooth. Right then I knew I was in love with her.

Hollywood Vampires is a. Basically a cover band that sings songs of your. Many of your buddies that died are dead drunk. Drug addictions and stuff.

Well, I mean, you know, you have to remember we grew up in the late 60s, so our best friends were Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, you know, Frank was straight, totally straight. But Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, they were our big brothers and sisters. And it was fairly required to be high all the time. In Los Angeles. We all lived at the same hotel, the Landmark Hotel where Janis Joplin died. So it was an ongoing party there forever, you know. But 27. Do you know how many rock stars died at 27? It's amazing when you start counting Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, I mean, it goes down the list. And every one of them were world changers. They were all the top of their line. But, you know, some of them, like Jim Morrison, I always say, they say, isn't it awful that he died at 27? I go, the fact that he got to 27 is a miracle. If you knew Jim offstage, he was, I mean, everything was nihilistic. This is the end. Break on through. Every song had something to do with him dying and going to the other side, you know, right on stage, he was brilliant. In the studio, he was brilliant, but the other 22 hours, he was basically killing himself.

I mean, what is that with artists? What is it? I mean, do you have any thoughts on where so many enormously talented people and we see it today that are just, that are world famous and I'm gonna ask you some questions about fame, but, like, related to, to that there's so much self destruction in the world of entertainers.

It's. I, I, I, I believe that some of these entertainers had had success complexes. They didn't think they deserved the success. They didn't think that they actually. Some of them literally sabotaged their own careers.

Yeah.

You know, a Kurt Cobain, I mean, that doesn't make any sense at all. The guy was brilliant. I mean, but shotguns and heroin don't mix. Right. You know, and, but it was a little more. In our day when we were coming up, it was a little more innocent than it is now on a level that I didn't know anybody that shot anything. At least I didn't know about it. You know, when we found out that Janice Joplin was shooting heroin, we, we were in shock. I mean, we drank with her. She could drink anybody under a table, you know, but nobody knew she was shooting heroin. If we would have known that, we would all been in a room getting rid of all of it, you know, so it wasn't the hard drugs then. It was the very soft drugs. Everybody was drinking or smoking. Pretty much later on, it got into the hard drugs. I never Understood the heroin thing, it just so dangerous, you know, the funny thing was, was the bands that you would think were in the hard drugs were not like Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper. We drank beer, you know, the Cowsills, you know, and Mamas and Papas, Bee Gees, you know, those guys were all into hard, hard stuff. And it was funny. The lighter the band was, the harder the stuff they were in. It seemed to me, you know, the heavy bands, you know, drink, have beer, you know.

So the lesson is, listen to really hardcore.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now I think kids are smart enough. Kids are not stupid at all. You're not finding a lot of drugs with young bands. If it is, it's maybe smoking and. But still, you know, alcohol is a drug. Yeah. I have to remind people of that, that alcohol is probably the most dangerous drug if you start looking at statistics of anything.

Well, so I did an interview with Shep Gordon, who's. You've been your manager for 50 years. Yeah.

Thank you, thank you.

It was excellent.

Appreciate it. And I had read a line from Janis Joplin that I mentioned on that interview. And he's like, I'd never heard that because he was just Janis Joplin's manager. Also where she said, I would go out and make love to 20,000 people and then go back to my hotel room alone. And this. I mean, you've had millions of admiring fans over the years. How do you interpret that? How do you take that in? I mean, you talk about. I mean, I guess underneath it all is, had you not met Cheryl, very similar to Dan Sullivan. Remember we had dinner over Danny's house with Dan and Babs and a couple of our Jim Genius X members, and Dan, who's coached more successful entrepreneurs than anyone in the world. It's a funny thing. He was saying, if I had not met Babs, I'd be a drunk with a lot of good ideas. Had you not met Cheryl, what do you think would have happened to you? Do you still think you would have had the success?

I would have been dead easily. When I quit drinking and doing Coke, I was 35 years ago. And the doctor said I'd give you about two weeks before you join your friends. You know, I woke up one morning, threw up blood, and I went, that's probably not good, you know. And this one says, hey, superstar, party's over. Boom. And I'm in the hospital. Now, the interesting thing about the hospital was I can tell you a couple great stories about this. They put me in a hospital that was obviously not Just a hospital for people that are coming off of a drug. Some of the people in there were in there for some really strange reasons. I had to write a whole album with Bernie Toppin about it called from the Inside.

I still have that original record where you open it up and you're.

But I realized after a while that I was the only one in there for substance abuse. A lot of people that were in there were in there. Instead of going to jail because they could afford to go there, they got sentenced pretty much there. They were all multi. Multi millionaires. One lady owned, you know, some big steel company. I can't go into exactly which ones, but after about two months, I think I was in for two months. Three months. About three months. There was a guy named Joe that was in there, and he was about 70 years old. 80, maybe 80, but looked it. And I'm getting. Going to get out the next day. And we're both in our robes, you know, and he says, alice, tomorrow you're going to leave here and you're going to go back and be with your wife, and you're going to get your career back, and you're going to see your kids and everything's going to go well for you. I said, yeah, Joe, that's right. And he says, and someday I'm going to get out of here, and when I do, I'm going to kill you. And I went, okay. And he was. I don't know if he was serious or not, but I mean, that was the level of the people that were in there. You know, you'd sit there and go, okay.

I mean, that probably gave you a lot of material for future shows.

We wrote an entire album about every character that was in there. I had to change the names, of course, because. Because, you know. But it was an interesting place to be for a lyric writer. It was like heaven because everybody in there was an interesting character. I'd sit and talk to these people and go, wow. You know, I'd write all this stuff down. I'm called Bernie. I said, wait till you hear about this guy. You know.

So, Cheryl, how do you. How do you navigate all of this? I mean, you have a very famous musician in a sort of mental institution, and you are in love with him, and he's also, you know, going off the rails and stuff. How did you. Was that the most difficult part of your relationship in the many years you've been together, or how did you navigate it?

I think so. I think that it was a really tough time in that I didn't have a lot of faith that it could be rebuilt. And there was a lot of love that was lost. You know, I tell brides on their wedding day, don't ever say, I don't think I could ever love him any more than I do now. I go, that's just the beginning. You know, if you can hang in there and hang in there is what I did. And, you know, he really did have to prove that not only was he never going to touch any substance again, but he would spend the rest of his life making restitution to me. Whoa, that was a lot to take in. But the man I see now is not only the man I knew was in there, he's also the spiritual leader of our family. He is an example to so many who look up to him. So for me to navigate that part, yes, it was the toughest part. And that's where you're. You're hitting the pavement. You realize that you can only look up. You can only say, God, save him. Yeah, save him from. And he did. Alice will look at you and say, if you put a glass of whiskey right here and a glass of arsenic right there, I wouldn't touch either. I can't. He said, they're both poison to me. And 35 years later, true to his word.

Well, also, there was a. There was a thing with our relationship where neither one had ever cheated on each other. We've never cheated on each other. And in my business, that's rampant, you know, I mean, that's like. Most guys think that when they go on tour. Well, I'm married in college.

They're married in their zip code.

That's it, you know, and that never once I was married, I was married. You know, my grandparents were married 76 years. Both of our parents were 50 years. I took marriage very seriously. My dad was a pastor. My grandfather was a. An evangelist. Her father is a Baptist pastor. We're both PKS preachers, kids. I was the. I was the kid that grew up in the church, went as far away as you could get, became the poster boy for everything wrong, and then came back to the church. So Cheryl and I are both Christian, and there's nothing in the Bible that says that. Alice Cooper. I think Jesus would say, alice, go be Alice Cooper. But follow me. Yeah.

So where we've interacted a lot is solid rock foundation. And so you just saw a little bit of Andre and Jamie and, you know, a little bit about what I'm doing with genius recovery. And then we've talked a lot about artists for addicts and all of that. And so what is your big goal and what is your big mission right now?

You know, Cheryl and I went to visit this neighborhood ministries where one lady has taken on a city block in the worst part of the west side of downtown Phoenix and brought little kids in and got them sort of the safest place they could be. She does it on her own dime. She does it on her. We went there. I watched a drug deal go down with a 16 year old, two 16 year old kids. I'm being from Detroit, you know, I've seen drug deals go down and I watched this thing go down and I, and it came to me, I said, how do I, how does that kid know he might not be the best guitar player in Arizona or the other kid might be the best drummer because they've never had the opportunity to put those instruments in their hand. But they're born into the gangs. Mom and dad are both in the gangs. They're arguing not if they're going to be in a gang. They're arguing which gang they're going to be in. So their future is blueprinted already of what's going to happen to them. You know, we talked about it and I said the only way to dissuade that or to change that dog chasing its own tail is to give them an alternative to that. So we, you know, for 20 years now, we started solid rock. It's all Christian businessmen. And the whole idea was 13 to 19 years old. Give these kids a place where they can go that's safe, where they can find their talent. Every kid's got a talent. I don't care if it's drawing. Some of these kids are tattoo artists, but they're great. So. Well, here's an art studio. Paint if you can draw, you can. Paint if you can, sing if you can. You know, one gives you what part of the guitar and they're in there every day. And now they're pretty good players. But what it happens is it moves them away from that street life. And now they're more addicted to the music than they are to selling meth. The crazy thing is, is their older brothers and sisters who are gang bangers are all for us. They're. They're 100% for us and the parents are for us. You get one kid that changes, you change. Not just that house, you change a neighborhood. Right, because they're rooting for that kid to be a guitar player, not a drug dealer. You know, we've never had any problems with gangs ever. Bothering us because most of their little brothers and sisters are there. So we're fairly protected in there.

So this is a place where, here in Phoenix, where people can go, any.

Kids, any teenager can come in. And the funny one is people say, well, it's for kids that are in danger. And they say, you know, on the west side, all these kids are selling drugs. And I go, who do you think they're selling the drugs to? The kids on the east side with the money. How do you say that? One is less in danger than the other. Yeah. So we have kids that come in from Scottsdale, the biggest houses in Scottsdale. Kids that come in from the worst barrios and they sit down together and what do they talk about? Music. That's what they have in common. That is the common denominator right there. Now, we're a Christian organization, but we don't beat people over the head with the Bible. We just say, look, this is what we do. We give you this opportunity. And the kids are smart. They go, what's the catch? I said, catch is you show up. And for an example, we had one kid that come in there every day, played guitar. He started getting really good. And I said, look, we trust you to take this guitar, go home and practice. He said, I can't do that. My dad will sell it for drugs. And I went, that's so smart that you know that, you know, that you know that dad will do that. And being from an insulated society that we're in over in Paradise Valley, we hear stories that make your jaw drop. A 14 year old kid that's done every drugs, tried suicide four times. They've lived a life that all of us put together, couldn't live in 14 years. And they've done it all. They all, I don't know what's next. And I go, try dancing, Cheryl will do. And they come there every day. That's feeding them, that is that artistic drive. They find something they like and they go to that and they're addicted to that. So Cheryl gets girls in there that have never tried ballet and they look and they go, well, what is that? And the next thing you know, they're in there doing ballet. You know, we had one girl that was, I love this example because she was 15 and she says, alice, she says, I want to show you, I do everything by lists. I list everything. How I'm gonna, what I'm gonna do that day. That's what I do. I want to show you my list from last year. 14, she was 14. She says, get up, go to school, have lunch with my friends, do my afternoon classes, go to the park, kill myself. Now, we are not equipped to ask why. We don't go into. We don't ask, what's your situation at home? That's not for us. All we do is we give them an outlet. But this girl on her way to the park, she had a pocket full of razor blades and a pocket full of pills. She was going to take the pills, sit down by a tree and, you know, and somebody happened to see her and say, hey, you should come over to Solid Rock. So she went over to Solid Rock and there's all these kids there and they were all, you know, I call it the glorious racket because. Because when they first start, they're just awful and it's great. I love hearing the awful playing because that means they're trying. And she is there every day at 3 o'. Clock. To this day, she's there every day at 3 o'. Clock. And that, to me, I told the board, I said that one girl is worth every minute we've ever had as a board meeting because she's here, she's alive, she's not dead. You know, that's a win. I said that to me is we've already won. Now, other kids, well, thank you. She should get the applause for this. You know, she gets the applause for taking her life into her, into her hands and making it work. We were just the facility for it, but I saw the need for the facility, said you need to open a place where they have that. At least have that. You know, you could go there instead of going over at home again and say, okay, what are we doing tonight? Oh, yeah, I got to sell this bag of this, you know, so to us, that's, you know, that's, that's a big deal in our life is solid Rock. And, you know, it's fun too. These kids are. Half of them don't have any idea who I am, you know, Rock and roll. They're Latino.

I love it when I walk in my dance class and they go, there she is. And who's that guy with her?

Yeah, yeah, he's. I don't know. He says this. He's that old rock guy, you know, because I'm not from their generation. But it's great, though, to see them in there. You know, some of them just come in and go to the social room and just sit and talk. Yeah. You know, but they're not out selling drugs and they're not shooting each other. Right. So That's a win.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out. And if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. So what does fame mean to you? And what's the positive and dark side of fame?

You know, when this. We were a band that was on the west side of Phoenix in a garage and trying to learn Beatles songs, trying to learn Rolling Stone songs, and we got good enough to start playing clubs. And that sent us a little further. The strange thing about this band was we had three guys that were four year lettermen. We were jocks, we were milers, and two milers across country. We were unbeatable. We were 72 and, oh, you know, so we were jocks. But we were also in this band called the Spiders. That was like the best underground band in town. It feels like we were a dual personality thing. And when you actually do see your name on a billboard, it doesn't come with a book of instructions. So it's a kid in a candy shop. Especially in the 60s in Los Angeles, right? And you had to pretty much learn how to navigate and not die. Most guys, most bands last about two years in Los Angeles because Los Angeles is built to destroy your band. There's a party every night, there are girls every night. There are drugs every night. And your band just kind of goes like that. You can't find them anymore. We all live together. The band lived together. So we rehearsed every day, every day, every day. And we knew that we were the underdogs. Every single record company turned us down, except Frank Zappa. Frank Zappa saw us and he saw us play. And he goes, I don't get it. And I said, is that good? And he says, well, for Frank Zappa to say, I don't get it. Yeah. He said, I have to sign you guys. Because he didn't understand the theatrics and this. And he says, where are you guys from? New York. Or, you know, so we're from Phoenix. And he says, now I really don't get it, you know, because that doesn't make any sense that you would be this far out with these theatrics and be from Phoenix. It's cowboy town, you know. From then we just kept doing it until we met Shep Jimi Hendrix. Actually introduced us to our manager. We were living in the Chambers Brothers. I don't know if you know the Chambers Brothers. We were living in their basement in Watts during the riots. So we would pick our heads up and there'd be a tank on the front lawn, and they would push us back down. Jimi Hendrix knew them. He would come over. Shep, at the time, was selling marijuana at the Landmark Hotel. He was a young guy. Jimi Hendrix says, shep, you're Jewish, right? And he goes, yeah. He says, you need to be a manager. And he goes, I don't know how to manage you. He says, yeah, but the cops are going to see the fact that you have a lot of money and you don't have a job, so you better. I know a band that needs a manager. So he brought us over there. I knocked on the door. I opened the door, and I couldn't see. I thought there was a smoke machine in the room because I couldn't see from here to here because of the smoke. And then when we got through, there was Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Credence Clearwater. You know, everybody was in this room, and we were a little fly on the wall, you know, we hadn't made any dent at all in anybody. And she goes, I'm your new manager. I went, cool. And he hands me, like, a handful of marijuana. And he goes. And I went, this is our manager. This is the greatest thing ever. Because, you know, that was the only thing we did was smoke grass at the time. And it was dangerous to do that in Los Angeles. If they caught you with a seed, the sheriffs were on your butt all the time. We learned that when we started touring, all of a sudden we started going, we can't carry anything. We're going to be known as the Beer Band. They can't bust you for beer. Because we were definitely under the microscope, you know. And from then on, it was just. Shep just kept finding ways to irritate parents, you know. He says, you know, what if we could? In London, we stalled a gigantic poster of Alice Cooper half naked with a snake coming out. In London in 1971 or 72 at Piccadilly Square at rush hour. And it made the front page of the paper, right? We found out that the British loved the Hollywood publicity stunt. And immediately we had two MPs that said, they can't play here. We need to ban them. That was the golden ticket. As soon as we got an MP to ban us, we sold out every record we owned, right to number one. And sold out every ticket at Wembley because the British were going, how dare you tell us what we can see? And that's how we. We actually broke in England before we broke in the States.

And so you parlayed that. So in a lot of ways, you are a very unique packager of this, of Alice Cooper.

We knew how to put a thorn under the. You know, we said, the more the parents hate us, the more the kids will love us. Which was very true. You know, it was very true. But you had to have the goods. Once they came to the show, then you couldn't just be an average band because you'd be done in a second. You had to have the songs and you had to have the show and you had to deliver. And what happened was we delivered on a level that they weren't expecting at all. It was like, wow, you know, this thing was. It took off them. You know, it was just. It was like a rocket ship because we could deliver.

So what are the best ways? So this room is filled with very successful entrepreneurs. And what are some of the most effective ways that you've discovered to get and hold attention?

Well, first of all, just quality. You have to have quality. I mean, there's no such thing as a bad Alice Cooper show, as far as I'm concerned. You never do a bad show. I mean, if we think it's a bad show, the audience hasn't seen the show, and it is. They walk away talking about it because, you know, we're used to the show. And I know if somebody hit two or three bad notes, you know, but you surround yourself with the best people. I only pick the best players. Cheryl only picks the best dancers. And we sit there and we write the show so that it's going to be clever, it's going to be funny, but it's going to also appeal to everybody. Right? And that is what the hard work comes in. That's where the hard work comes in, is writing the show and delivering the show every night. You know, find something that nobody's done. That was really what we did. Nobody wanted to be the villain. How did you guys be the villain?

Well, psychologically, even to this day, there's so much of your. The branding, I guess, for lack of a better word, that, you know, this crazy rocker, I mean, did the mental. The thing that's most interesting to me about celebrities and the ones that don't seem to get taken down are their ability to navigate the people that love them and the people that hate them. I mean, you got millions of people that know you that have. I mean, you can walk into places and get mobbed. How do you mentally handle that sort of attention?

There was a moment in the career where Shep and I sat down and said, we can't live on this. Alice is the, you know, the horror character forever. We have to start letting Alice out of the bag a little bit. So I'd start doing the Johnny Carson show, but I was there just as a talk host, you know, as a talk, you know, guest. And I could make people laugh, you know, because they didn't know what to think. Oh, we can talk. You know, all they knew about me. All they knew about me was the fact that I was this dangerous. They didn't want their kids going to this concert, you know, and there was nothing in the concert that was in the least bit satanic or. There was no bad language. There was no nudity. It was just different. And people didn't know how to put it in a box. So I started doing that and I started acting. Then I started getting parts. And I would work with Gene Wilder and I would work with, you know, Helen Hayes and Vincent Price and people like that. And suddenly the. It broadened out, and it gave the general audience now a fact to like, a way to like me. And without giving up the dark show, without giving up the comedy dark show, because when you go to see Alice, you were going to see this show, but when you saw him on this, this, this and this, or Wayne's World or whatever it is, it was a different Alice. And now the parents and now the grandparents would go, oh, I like him. He's okay. That broadened the audience, you know, but if I didn't do that, I had painted myself into a corner where I wasn't going to be able to get out of that corner unless I started doing these bigger things, these, you know, these more broad shows.

So what are some of the life lessons that you would recommend for living not only a success, successful life, but a fulfilled life?

I think that leading a fulfilling life. See, for us, the career comes about four or five rungs down the ladder. It really does. Because I think so many people, when you meet somebody, what's one of the first things you ask them? Tell me about yourself. And what's the first response? Oh, I'm a. Or, this is what I do. And I want to say, that's not what I asked you. I want you to tell me about yourself. So many people equate who they are by what they do. This man does not. Because who he is is a child of God, a person of worth, a faithful husband, a loving father. So the career follows that. And what I love is that he hangs up the coat and hat like Captain Hook once the show is over and he comes back to being the most amazing spouse and partner ever. So I mean that in of itself the priority, you know, having God be first, having each other be second, our kids right up there. But Job is fourth or fifth. So who you are is not necessarily what you do. It's a byproduct of who you are. But I don't think my husband lets that define him and that's fulfilling.

I always say it's really fun to play this character because he's nothing like me. He's this arrogant villain. You know, when I did Herod and Jesus Christ Superstar, they did, you know, it was going to be a one night thing. And Andrew Weber and Tim Rice says, well, who's going to play Herod? And they both said, Alice. And they said, because we want Herod to be this arrogant, Alan Rickman condescending kind of character rather than this roly, poly kind of dumb guy. So I said, that's exactly. I'll play that easily, you know, because I'll just play, I'll play it as Alice. Here it is, Alice. Only I'll make it a little more like that. And, but like you said, when the curtain comes down, I don't know where Alice goes, but it certainly doesn't come off stage. He stays on stage. There was a time when I didn't know where that gray area was. I didn't know where I started and where Alice ended. When I got sober, I started realizing if I, if I look at videos of Alice when I was, when I was high, Alice was a victim. He played a victim. He played society's victim. Every kid could, could look at that and say, yeah, that's me. Everybody hates me. They, they're going to cut my head off, they're going to hang me, they're going to do all this stuff. You know, when I got sober, I started realizing I can't play that character anymore. What am I going to do with Alice? And I said, I want Alice now to be the villain. I want him to be the joker. I want him to be this. When he walks on stage, the audience goes, you know, oh. Because he doesn't go up there and say, gosh, I hope you like us tonight. He goes, come here. And the audience wants that. They want to be taken, you know, okay, you know, and that's how we play Them now, you know. But he would never swear on stage because he's too much of a gentleman. He'd slit your throat, but he'd never swear. And it would be in the nicest way.

So you are, as far as I know, the top golfer in the world that's a musician.

There's a couple better than me. The drummer from no Doubt is awfully good. Adrian is a great player. Dweezel Zappa can play. Frank's son. There's a couple of good players out there. Nobody plays as much as I do. How much golf do you play? I play six days a week.

So, you know, George Carlin would say that, you know, it's. It's a waste of real estate. And you love golf. What is it about golf that you just love so much? I actually read your book on Golf, the 12.

When I quit, you know, when I realized I had an addictive personality and I couldn't take a substance anymore. So I had to find an addiction that wasn't going to kill me. I was a pretty good baseball player. I could put the bat on the ball anywhere, you know. I said, well, how hard could golf be? It's not even moving, you know. And I got up there and I took one swing and hit a seven iron right down the middle with a little draw on it. And the process. You're a natural. Wow. You know, and at that point I played, the first year I was sober, I'd get up in the morning, Cheryl would point to my clubs and go, go play. And I would play 18 holes with a pro, have lunch, and then play 18 holes in the afternoon with another pro. And then one of the Pros would drop 500 balls 60 yards away from the green and say, we have to get all these on the green. So by the end of the first year, I was an eight handicap, you know, I was a single digit handicap. And I never get tired of the game. Every single day I get up and play golf and I never get tired of it, you know. She says, do you never get. I said, do you get tired of ballet? She goes, no. I said, same thing. You know, I just never get. You never have the same situation twice.

How are you good at golf?

Can I tell you something? Yeah, I can do this. For the first time, I pared three holes. After one lesson. He says, honey, you look like you could be with lpga. So I've got the stance, the swing. Let's have this conversation next year and I'll tell you how well I'm doing.

But one of the real reasons is because her sister plays, who's also a ballerina, and there's a little bit of, you know, a little bit of competition going on there. You know, will Cheryl, if you played, we could play. And she'll go, oh, really? So now she's taking lessons. She'll be better than me probably after a while.

That's great. So we have the same exact birthday.

Yeah. February 4th. February 4th.

You're 20 years older than me. And when was the worst year of your life in terms of your addiction? How old were you?

Probably 82. 82 was when everything was. I was totally addicted on every level, and I really couldn't see straight. Of course, when you're doing cocaine. Cocaine, the very nature of cocaine tells you you're doing everything great. It reinforces itself, saying, oh, yeah, that song you wrote just now is really, really good. And then, you know, you go back and listen to it now and go, oh, my gosh, I should have thrown that one away. You know? But at the time, you were on top of the world. As long as you had that next hit, you were doing great. The problem is, is here's normal, here's depression and here's ecstasy. Here's. You know, you go up with the cocaine. You come down and you go up with a cocaine. Pretty soon you're up here all the time. Now, normalcy is now depression. Depression is now black depression.

Yeah. I mean, I was a coke addict.

So, you know, it's. It's like you take away that drug and all of a sudden, everything. Your whole. The whole house of cards collapse, Right? Because now you've given that drug all the credit in the world. Same with drinking. Now, I had a. I had a. I was kind of assigned to John Daly. When John Daly went with Calloway, Ely Calloway said, I want you to play with John because you're 15 years sober and he's five minutes sober, you know. And I. I told him, I said, you. What you've done, John, is. I said, is you've made alcohol your caddy. I said, you. You've made him your teacher, and you've given him all the credit in the world. Because you say if you quit drinking, that's part of your formula. You won the Master, not the Master. You won the US The PGA Championship and the British Open. Drinking, right? Yeah. And now you feel that you can never win again unless you have that part of the formula going for you, Right? I said, did you ever think that you might have won five majors without the alcohol? You Know, and I give that to myself, too. I had all these platinum albums, and then they started falling off, falling off, falling off when I thought I was doing my best work. And I said, why am I giving alcohol all the credit for these albums? Alcohol didn't do anything to help me write these songs. In fact, when I start looking at my production, the more I drank, the more I started falling off the charts, you know, so you. You can't give the drug or the alcohol any credit for your talent. All it does is hold you back.

You know, Bill W. The founder of aa, One of the founders, he has this very interesting line where he said, as alcoholics, we're trying to drink God.

Out of a bottle. Yeah.

And even if someone is, you know, an atheist, I often think of the pursuit of that drug, the alcohol, the sex, the gambling, the high, the workaholism, you know, the obsession is a pursuit of just being disconnected, because the opposite of addiction is connection. And so what was the pain in your life? What is that pain that so many people have? If there's a way that you could even put words to it, what was it for you?

I didn't think that God would approve of me being Alice Cooper. And he probably didn't, except for the fact that when I got sober and I went back to what I really believed, it worked twice as well. My Jewish manager says, I told him why. I said, I'm Christian now. And he says, well, kiss the career goodbye, you know. He said, kids are going to hate you because you're Christian. I said, well, I said, you know. He says, what's. He took out a checkbook. He said, what's it going to cost? Right? And I said, nothing and everything. And it was certainly not a gamble, because if I had a choice, I would have taken my faith rather than the career. But it just so happened that all of a sudden I got bigger. And the more I talked about it, people were fascinated by the fact that what I was. I used to be, you know, this. My pastor said. I told him, I said, I think I've got to quit being Alice Cooper. And he says, why does God make mistakes? And I said, no. And he said, well, look where he put you. He says he put you in the camp of the Philistines. You weren't just there. You were the leader of these guys. You know, the Hollywood Vampires was a real drinking club, and I was the president, and that was, you know, Keith Moon and John Lennon and all those guys. So when I got sober, everybody kind of went, wow, what happened? You know, I said, oh, no, I'm sober now. I'm Christian. And it didn't affect anything. And, you know, it was one of those things where they said, well, I guess they sat back and said, let's see how this works now. One of the reasons that I became Christian was when I was in the hospital. I was the classic alcoholic. Classic. And I came out of the hospital, went right to a bar and sat down and had a Coca Cola, waiting for the craving. I said, I better face. Never came, right? I said, okay, tomorrow morning is going to be hell. Because I used to wake up in the morning and I had an ice bucket full of beer. I would take a drink before I open my eyes. And next morning never came. And it never came for 35 years. So I would go to the doctor, and he says, so AA meetings, no sponsor? No. He says, hiding bottles around the house? No. He said, what happened? I said, it's gone. It was taken away. I said, it's a miracle. And they checked and they went, you know what? It's a miracle because you should be the classic NAA every day to stay sober. And I said, well, I said, you could put anything in front of me right now, and I have no willpower. I mean, I have willpower, but I don't have the willpower. Certainly I wouldn't have become an addict if I had willpower. So this was beyond any of that. And the doctors had to agree. They said, chalk it up to a miracle.

You know, this guy wrote a book called Willpower Doesn't Work.

Yeah, yeah. The more you try to have willpower, the harder it is. So I just let God be God in my life. And it worked. You know, I can't tell people how AA was because I've never been to an AA meeting. You know, I can't tell people. I know one thing that people call me all the time and they say, can you talk to my brother? He's an alcoholic and he's a drug addict. And I go, no. I said, because I'm just another guy doing this. I said, he's going to bite my finger off. When somebody would come to me and say, you've got to stop drinking because you. That was the enemy. If he calls me, he's halfway home because he's going, I have a problem with drugs and alcohol. And a lot of guys that you guys all know would call me at 2 in the morning and say, well, where do I go? I'm in trouble. And I would say, okay, I'll keep it on the down low. But this is where you go. These are the people. Da, da, da, da. That. And I said, and you're halfway home. And, but, but you, you can't go in as an adjutant. You can't go in with this attitude because now you just become the enemy again. Any. I was an alcoholic and a drug addict and anybody that told me that I couldn't do that stuff, I was immediately, I would go get high just to spite them. As soon as I decided that I was in trouble, it was a different thing.

Gotcha. So what advice would both of you give to your. Whatever that age was in 1982 at your worst state? Knowing what you know now, what you've been through, what would you have told your younger self back then?

Well, I did this with my kids, with our kids. We have a 36 year old daughter who's an improv comedian now and she also is an actress. She's very good at that. She was on our tour for a while playing Cheryl's part when Cheryl was raising the kids. And we have a son that has a record out right now that's like number 27 in Billboard Dash and a younger daughter, Sonora, that just got married. And I said, I noticed that all of you drank. Oh, yeah. I said, do me a favor, go two weeks without it. Calico did. She went, a month. She said, I'll go a month. She went, you know, and I said, good, okay, good. Then you drink because you like, because you like the taste of it. And you can stop, right? Absolutely. All three kids did the same thing. They just said, yeah, I can take it or leave it. But I had to be sure. I didn't know if it was, you know, I didn't know if it was like in the DNA or not. So that's the one thing is you have to take, you have to check yourself to make sure that you're not. That it's not medicine. If it becomes medicine. It's not, you're well on your way to alcoholism.

Gotcha.

I think demystifying is important for a parent to do too. We have a daughter that wanted to go to a rave when she was 16 years old. And that's ecstasy personified right there. And she said, no, no, mom, I just want to go because I want to dance. I went, great, let's go. And I go with her. But it's demystified. It really is.

You know, I had kids as Christian kids. You know, they all grew up, they all had purple hair and they did all the insane things that any Kid does. But they were never in trouble for drugs, they were never in trouble for alcohol. They never got pregnant, they never had, never got arrested. So they were the opposite of most rock stars kids, but they were as lunatic as anybody.

You know, our house was a safe house, believe it or not.

Yeah, that is pretty funny if you think about it. What? Did I not ask you that I could or should have that would be worth sharing with all of these awesome people out here?

Well, you know, we talk about genius. Genius is not just coming up with a great idea. Genius is making it work. Genius is coming up with a really good idea and then figuring out how to make it work so that people actually do it or accept you for what it is. Coming up with the idea of putting makeup on and doing all the theatrics on stage could have been absolute disaster. Disaster. But it was thought out, it was rehearsed until the point where you couldn't not like, was so much fun to be at, and it was so well done that even people that didn't like Alice Cooper would go, that was a great show. Right? You know, I have to admit, that was a great show. And the band was awfully good, you know, and after a while, he went, yeah, I really like that band. You know, I'd go see them again. So genius is, is making a great idea come to life and have people getting attached to it and saying, okay, I can relate to that. You know, I can relate to that idea. You know, I, I, I had an idea for. How about inventing a tape recorder, a DV DVD player that records your dreams. And so next morning, how many times have you had a dream and you go, oh, I wish I could remember that dream. You actually play it and you see the dream. You know, how many divorces would be involved in that? I didn't even know her. What? So a lot of, there's a lot of loopholes in those. Make sure that your idea is, you know, there's always the other side of that idea.

Cheryl, relationship advice for all married couples and people that are in partnerships.

Anybody that ever comes to you and tells you that relationships are 50, 50 run, they are 100 and 100, or they're nothing. And they may not always look like that, because there are some times where he's got to schlep my bags, take out my trash, defer to me, defer to me, you know, and other times, I'm running in his dust. So it doesn't always look, I mean, it can look like 90, 10, but the intention, when you get up in the morning is how can I serve that person? How can I make their day better? Not to be a doormat, but that's what a partnership is, is to look at it as 100 and 100.

Awesome.

Love it. Thank you.

Okay.

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. They're over here.

Do it now. Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.