Chapter fifteen

Within two years Alice Cooper had become an international phenomenon. My fame
had transcended my craft. I was the biggest act in the world, and I felt I owed
it to the public to come up with the biggest of all possible shows. I really
wanted to do something that was more than just sheer entertainment. I wanted to
do a show that was an observation, too, that made a comment about the world I
had seen in my travels.
	Every city I saw was the same, striving for total decadence. Every
teenager in the world wanted more possessions, more stereos, sports cars,
telephones and TVs. I knew seventeen-year-old kids in Greenwich and Bel Air with
their own Rolls-Royces and drivers. The public was fascinated with my wealth and
how I spent it. Overindulgence and affluence were the cornerstones of my
life-style. It was why people loved me, and why people ripped me off, too.
	No matter what the question, money was the answer: "Do you want to bring
that snake into this auditorium?" - $166 in German marks. "Do you have the
special papers to bring the guitars through customs?" - $500 cash. "Mr. Cooper's
suitcases? We'll find them within the hour. What do you mean he'll miss his
plane?" - $50 and a bottle of VO. Everybody had questions for us.
"Billion-Dollar Babies" was supposed to be the final answer. 
	The object of the "Billion-Dollar Babies" tour was to pull a show
business coup based on the concept of greed. We wanted to blitz the public with
a single tour and album of such overwhelming proportions we could retire
afterwards. The basic plan was to release a Billion-Dollar Babies album followed
by a swift, hard tour across the country, playing as many dates in the largest
halls in as short a time as possible. We would have a chance of propelling the
album to number-one position and gross nearly $6 million on the tour. In the
end, "Billion-Dollar Babies" stood to gross $20 million. In the end, we tried to
play sixty-two concerts in fifty-nine cities within ninety days. In the end, it
wrecked us all.
	We tried to record part of Billion-Dollar Babies album at the Morgan
Studios in London. We invited Harry Nilsson and Marc Bolan by to join a session,
but by the time the evening was over all we had was four hours of unusable tape
and a L 300 bar bill. We finished recording on a mobile unit at the Cooper
mansion in Connecticut and at the-Record Plant in LA and New York. The album
cover was quite an extravaganza. It was shaped like an overstuffed wallet,
snakeskin, naturally. Inside there was a billion-dollar bill, wallet-sized 
photos of the group, and a strikingly handsome sleeve jacket printed with a
picture taken of us by David Bailey in his London studios. We made special
arrangements with the FBI and the Treasury Department to have a million dollars
in U.S. cash flown to London for the photograph. We posed in white satin suits,
surrounded by dozens of white rabbits and green money, holding a little baby in
Alice Cooper makeup. The album included "Elected," which was already a
best-seller, "No More Mr. Nice Guy," my ode to the press, and several songs
that became Alice Cooper classics, including an infamous version of Rolfe Kemp's
"Hello Hooray."
	The stage was designed and executed by award-winning set designers Joe
Gannon and Jim Newborn at a cost of $250,000. It looked like a giant TV quiz
show, with luminous platforms and multileveled areas for me to dance across.
Every moment of the show was carefully rehearsed and planned. People were
beginning to respect the fact that Alice Cooper was reviving vaudeville, and
that "Billion-Dollar Babies" was not just another rock and roll slop show. I
began the show with "Hello Hooray," slithering down the steps like a drunken
Dietrich, enticing the audience from the edge of the platform to come join me in
the fun. From there we pounded into "Raped and Freezin'," "Elected," and
"Billion-Dollar Babies." The lights dimmed for "Unfinished Sweet." I was
strapped onto an operating table and attacked with a giant drill, after which I
got chased by a huge dancing tooth which I finally clobbered with a four-foot
toothbrush and a five-foot tube of toothpaste. Then into "No More Mr. Nice Guy"
and "Sick Things." During "Sick Things" I raped and chopped apart baby dolls and
mannequins, soaring into an anthem, "I Love the Dead," which the kids sang along
with.
	For "Billion-Dollar Babies" I gave up the noose and had a guillotine
designed by The Amazing Randi, a magician who went on the road with us and
played the parts of dentist and executioner. The guillotine had a real
forty-pound blade in it. After "I Love the Dead," Randi led me to the
guillotine. As always the audience got quiet, waiting breathlessly for the sound
of the falling blade. From my hiding place behind the set I could always tell
when the dummy's head got lopped off and fell into the barrel from the cheering
in the audience. The rest of the band retrieved the bloody head from the basket
and kicked it around the stage as a football.
	In the end of the show I return dressed in white, the good Alice back
again. During the finale we had a recording of Kate Smith singing "God Bless
America." I walked around the stage waving an American flag and spitting
Budweiser at the audience with an actor named Richard M. Dixon who looked just
like the ex-President. When the lights came up in the auditorium we beat the
hell out of him. (We knew what we were doing way back then.) 
	The logistics of moving the set, sound, and people through the country
were staggering. The tentative crew included the five members of the band, Shep,
Dave Libert as tour director, Mike Rozwell as advance man, Shep's assistant Gail
Rodgers, The Amazing Randi, Richard Dixon, a four-member road crew, three
members for stage production, a master electrician, a master carpenter, Charlie
Carnal for lights, three technicians from
Showco Sound, two truck drivers, and six guys in an opening act. 
	Then there were incidentals: 400 comic books, 3,000 pounds of crunchy
Granola, 5,000 pre-prepared meals, 140 cases of Seagram's VO, 250,000 cans of
Budweiser, 300 deeks of cards, and 1,000 Alice Cooper poker chips. (And Flo and
Eddie, who are two of my best friends and kept me going through all of this.)
	We took this assortment with us on our own plane, a huge F-27 Electra
dubbed the AC-I. We had a snake in the shape of a dollar sign painted on the
tail. Most of the seats were torn out and replaced with pillows. We had a
blackjack table installed, at which I won $4,700. The walls were papered with
nudes and Alice Cooper paraphernalia, and the plane was equipped with everything
Alice Cooper, right down to napkins that said "Fly Me, I'm Alice." The two
stewardesses had both been dismissed from commercial airlines on morality
charges.
	On the ground, in two tractor-trailers, along with the set, traveled
forty tons of equipment, including the sound system, the dentist's giant drill,
a surgical table, six whips, six hatchets, 22,000 sparklers, 23,000 program
books, 10,000 patches, 3,000 baby dolls, 58 mannequin torsos, 14 bubble
machines, 28 gallons of bubble maker, 280 spare light bulbs, 6,000 mirror parts,
250,000 packets of bubble bath, five pounds of gold glitter, a carton of
mascara, and 20 mice a week for the snake.
	We set off on this venture March 1, 1973, not healthy and strong frorn
rest but worn and with no confidence. I had resumed a drinking schedule for the
tour. There was no question that I could remain on the road sober. I had a
physical when I got back from Jamaica, and it was decided that the most sensible
drinking plan was to hold off on the VO until eight at night.
	They woke us at ten every morning. Dave Libert did this himself, bounding
through the halls with a room list in his hand, pounding on doors and cursing.
Mandi Newall, who we stole from Derek Taylor in London, woke up the heads of
each crew and the crew chiefs who in turn woke up their own people. At 10:45 A.
M. everybody put their luggage outside their doors and Libert got to the phone
to call people, praying not more than a dozen or so had taken their phones off
the hooks and gone back to sleep. The band, at least, was always still in bed.
	Somebody cheeked with the bus company and limousine service to make sure
they were on their way. Libert called the airport to cheek on weather conditions
here and in the next town. Rozwell, on advance in the next city for a day
already, called his limousine service to make sure the cars are waiting at our
destination. He also confirmed interviews and put hotel room keys in separate
envelopes that included room lists. Then there was one person to count people.
He stood in the lobby or the plane and checked names of a master list to make
sure nobody got stranded in a bathroom in Toledo.
	You get crazy leading your life like that. That's why rock and roll
groups wreck hotels, because they get crazy being uprooted and transported. Some
guys trashed hotel rooms to relieve the tension. I got drunk and watched TV.
	The only constant companion in your life when you're on the road, the
only thing you can count on to be there, is the television set. TV was always
very important to me. It colored my life, gave me a sterling education and great
insights into this country. But on the road it was more. It was an anchor with
reality. It was the only thing that was the same everywhere. I was no longer in
a strange city while I was with Art Fleming playing Jeopardy. I was home with
friends on the Hollywood Squares, where Paul Lynde kept me company through my
second can of beer. When I got off the tour I even had the Sony company build a
five-foot 
TV screen for me to watch at home. But on the tour people kidded me about it;
while everybody else was scoring chicks and getting laid, I watched TV. Cindy
wasn't on the road much, which we both agreed was best, and I didn't have
anything to do with the groupies, so the tube became my best friend.
	My bodyguard, Norm Klein, left me alone in the room one night, and I
decided that when he came back, it would be funny if I was making love to the TV
set in the middle of the floor. I lugged the thing off its frame and laid it on
the floor and turned up the volume. There was a knock and the sound of a key and
I dropped my pants and started humping the set with my ass to the door. The door
opened and slammed shut. I waited there on the floor for a while, looking around
at the empty room. After a few minutes of Love of Life playing into my groin, I
heard a key in the door again and started humping. When I didn't hear Norm
laughing
I turned around. The maid had come to the door first. She called the house
detective who met Norm in the hallway. All three of them were standing there in
shock watching me. 
	The most hideous moment on the tour happened in Evansville, Indiana. I
was warming up with Eva Marie Snake in my bedroom, trying to get her used to my
body temperature because her cage had been on the floor. Eva Marie Snake was
nearly fifty pounds, the largest snake I ever worked with and up until that time
a complete sweety. 
	She played on my arms and neek for a few minutes and then very
determinedly coiled around my rib cage. I paid no attention and just rubbed her
back for a while. She gave me a tiny squeeze just to let me know that she could
love me to death if she felt like it, and I decided it was time for Eva Marie to
go back to her cage until show time. I was just beginning to unravel her from my
chest when she started to constrict. I called out for help once, but the cry
caused me to take a breath, allowing Eva Marie to tighten her grip. In a small
panic I
stood up, balancing her fifty-pound weight around me, and walked into the living
room. Norm Klein was watching TV, and when I pointed at the snake he just said,
"Hi, Eva." It dawned on him a moment later that the snake was constricting. We
grabbed hold of her head and tried to pry her loose, but she was stronger than
the two of us. Norm took out his pocket knife and cut her off me.
	After two months on the road it was as if I had never been to Jamaica. I
was right back in the hole. I fell down continuously but elegantly on stage,
bruising myself and breaking bones. My falling looked professional, as if I had
choreographed and rehearsed it for years, but it was a killing pace. Norm kept a
towel by the side of my bed so I could throw up on something during the night. I
dreamed every night of the moment in the morning when I would vomit, clearing my
stomach and bronchial tubes, which had became clogged.
	On it went for three months. The same hotel room. The same hotel, the
same city in every state, the same reporter waiting for me outside my bedroom or
down the hall. The same groupie - I swear it looked like the same groupie - in
every town with smudged Alice Cooper eye makeup waiting to shoot LSD under her
tongue with me.
	I can't tell you how hideous the monotony of it is. The repetition, the
uprooting from one town to the next, the sweating, the waiting. Yet the moment I
stepped up on the stage I was all right. I loved being up there. I lived for the
giving and taking. It was the only thing that got me through the rest,
especially the waiting. It makes me sick to my stomach, quite literally, to
think about those hotel rooms. The wallpaper and plastic furniture haunt me like
no other demons.

	The rock star who kills himself or becomes a junkie is supposed to do it
because of the strain of stardom. Well, there is no strain of stardom. Being
famous can be dealt with. It's the strain of the rock business. It's the
machinery that grinds you to a halt, keeping one step ahead of the public, on
schedule, on tour, getting the next album out, doing promotion. It goes on
forever. No days off. No time away. You have to work twenty-four hours a day to
stay on top. Once you interrupt the flow you could be finished, over, a
fifteen-minute star.
	There's some sort of disrespect for rock stars that makes them rebel. A
rock star figures, "Well, I'm no Frank Sinatra and I'm never going to be treated
like one, so I might as well do things my own way." Then they go on taking their
career as a joke. It's so much easier to look down on yourself and get sloppy
instead of trying to raise your standards and become a professional. If you take
your own career as a joke then it becomes a joke. That's not for me. Fred
Astaire didn't do that. He worked at his craft, and I wanted to work at mine.
It's that chemical in me that drove me on, and I knew that to exist by my terms
and standards I had to become a total pro.
	The effects of the tour were devastating. Glen retired from rock and
roll. So did Joey Greenberg. He had been on the phones every day for years,
grinding, hovering three inches above his chair, taut and pulling himself
tighter. Once Joey started working on an Alice Cooper project he couldn't slow
down. The business had gotten to him. It was like he was in shell shock. One day
he just said, "Hey, this is too crazy. I'm leaving." He walked out the door, and
we haven't seen him since.
	I fought my way through the "Billion-Dollar Babies" tour like it was a
war, and indeed it was. By the time I reached the end of the tour, at Madison
Square Garden, I went on stage with six broken ribs, a broken wrist, a fractured
elbow and I was twenty pounds overweight, bloated with fluid.
	We turned to the grosses for consolation, but found none. Our glamorous
life on the road, the parties and press junkets and jets, had eaten up most of
our profits. We had devoured America and gotten very little flesh in the
process. 
	"Billion-Dollar Babies" took the life out of the band. It killed the
spark between us. Many years ago in the John Phillip Law house in Los Angeles,
when we were all still children playing a game we didn't think we'd win, Shep
and Joey called a meeting. They said that for the sake of the group's publicity,
and because I was the lead singer, I should do all the interviews when possible.
We all agreed to this because it was easier to sell one image than five. I
represented all their personalities. When the public sat my face, they saw all
of us. It
was taken for granted that my name was Alice Cooper. As the years went on the
public became interested in me, not the whole band. The band never dreamed that
the personality of Alice could become bigger than the five of them. They never
thought for a second that they'd be lost, that the press wouldn't want to speak
to them at all!
	We were all making unbelievable amounts of money, but it didn't make it
up to them in ego. I don't know what I would have done if I was in their boots.
I don't know if I could have tolerated being in the background. I just never
would have let it happen in the first place, and come to think of it, I didn't.
	We began to have the same exact fights we had when we were poor, except
"That's my tomato you're eating" turned into, "That's my Rolls, get your ass out
of it."
	After a few months' rest we went back into the studios together and
recorded a seventh LP, Muscle of Lose, but the spark was obviously gone between
us. Although the album was another enormous commercial success, it wasn't our
most creative or pleasant recording experience. The following Christmas we hit
the road again for a short holiday "Billion-Dollar Babies" tour, which only
ripped the group further apart, compounded by a book written about the tour by
Chicago journalist Bob Greene that washed our laundry in public for
the first time. It made it embarrassing for us to see each other.
	In spring we went to South America to do five concerts, a great honor
considering there had never been a rock show in South America before. The
reaction down there was total hysteria. They hadn't even lived through Donnie
Osmond or the Beatles and here they were being whelped on me, Alice Cooper. Talk
about future shock. Welcome to the seventies, Brazil!
	After South Arnerica we all went our own ways. Neal Smith got married and
bought a house in Connecticut. Neal's sister Cindy married Dennis Dunaway. Glen
Buxton bought a home in Greenwich and retired to spend his days lazing in the
sun with his girl friend, Susan. Michael Bruce bought an estate on Lake Tahoe
and recorded his own solo album. 
	As for me, I had no home and I needed roots. I needed some personal
independence, to begin living a semblance of a normal life.