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 America 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.
CHAPTER 16
I’m okay now.
I’m tan. And healthy. And rested.
In fact, I’m even better than I ever was.
I’m sitting in the sunshine by a pool in Beverly Hills.
I took two stretching and dance classes this morning.
I don’t drink as much as I used to, but I play just as hard.
I broke up with Cindy Lang, but we’re still best friends.
My liver and I are now on speaking terms.
I live in a rented house perched on a hillside. I’m staying here while they rebuild a house I bought. I was watching the Eleven O’Clock News in New York one night when they started to play “Welcome to My Nightmare” and showed newsfilm of my house burning down to the ground.
The ugly Alice is gone for good. I’ve totally divorced him from real life. I never even see him till I’m on stage.
I play golf, with a passion, and I shoot in the high 70’s.
I have a mustache now because Alice would hate having one.
Grandmothers in Florida hotels love me.
I’m a deputy sheriff in Nashville and a deputy senator in Kentucky.
I’m on the National Arts Committee for the Bicentennial.
I do TV shows whenever I have the chance. One of the first I did was a guest spot on the Virginia Graham show. She hadn’t even heard of me before. They just told her that the singer Alice Cooper was on and she thought I was a female folksinger. They promised me they would have five hundred kids in the audience, but when we got there we found five hundred middleaged housewives out front. Peter Lupus was on — doing push-ups — and Morgana King sang. Then they announced Alice Cooper and the curtain parted to reveal me in a straightjacket. There was complete silence. I did “The Ballad of Dwight Frey” for them and Virginia Graham’s mouth dropped to the floor. Peter Lupus was even more shocked. I treated the old ladies just like I treated the kids and I even threw the straightjacket into the audience at the end. They went to a commercial break and when they returned to the show two minutes later they were still applauding.
The first thing I did after I sat down with Virginia was to say hello to Cindy over the air so Virginia would know I wasn’t queer. She said I looked like a cute orthopedic body stocking. She was insecure with me at first, but I was really nice to her. By the end of the interview she was holding my hand and saying, “You have the prettiest blue eyes. You just keep doing your thing.”
Peter Lupus was offended. “Do you ever go out with girls?” he asked.
Morgana King teased me and said, ‘Who does your hair?” I said, “Peter Lupus.”
I see Groucho all the time.
I had the honor of being presented to him as one of his birthday gifts on his eighty-fourth birthday. We were introduced in the outdoor garden of the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When he found out that I was actually shy and retiring in real life he enoyed embarrassing the hell out of me.
“I understand from my people that you don’t use any drugs? Is that so?” he asked during lunch.
I told him it was.
“Well, why not?” he screamed. Heads turned everywhere. Groucho called over the waiter. “Dope!” he shouted. “Do you have any dope for my friend? He needs dope.” I sat there saying “shhh, don’t do that!” as the waiters rushed around the table looking more embarrassed than me.
Groucho came to visit me at my old house one night, but I didn’t have any furniture and he refused to sit on the floor. The next day he sent me a round bed that he had slept in for five years. “I never had any luck in it. Maybe you will,” the note read. Some time later Groucho and I decided to give the bed to Paul and Linda McCartney as an anniversary present. We sent it to them in London, with a big brass plaque on the headboard that says, “May all your stains be large ones. From Groucho and Alice.”
I rang Groucho’s bell one day and he came to the door wearing a bathrobe and Mickey Mouse ears. He slammed the door right in my face, and after a few confused minutes I rang the bell again. This time his housekeeper opened the door. She sighed when she saw me and said, “Alice, thank God it’s you! Groucho said Charles Manson was at the door.”
I had one of the greatest successes of my career with my solo album, “Welcome to My Nightmare,” and the single, “Only Women,” which proved to everyone Alice Cooper really can sing!
I’m happy.
I’m only twenty-seven years old.
Ha-ha!
(TO BE CONTINUED IN TEN YEARS)
“Don’t forget the Coop!”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Alice Cooper and Steven Gaines would like to thank the following people: Shep Gordon; Joey Greenberg; Cindy Lang, for inspiration; Ether and Ella Furnier for their time and trust; Nickie Furnier; Ashley Pandel for starting the ball rolling so many years ago; Alan Strahl for making this book happen; Michael Bruce, Neal Smith, Dennis Dunaway and the inimitable G.B., all of whom spent many selfless hours getting times and dates right.
Dick Christian for the other side of the story; Bob Ezrin, who has the key; Cindy Smith Dunaway; Mandi Newall, who knows more than she’s saying; Gail Rodgers for fortitude; Joe Gannon; Ronnie Volz; Mike Rozwell; Dave Libert, Michelle Cohen for shelter.
Susan Cochran; Jack Crow; Skip Taylor; Shanaberg and Lambusta for Brazil; Leo Fenn; Carolyn Pfeiffer Donna Dobbs; Brooks Ogden and PatriciaWadsley for their indispensable help and sticking it out to the end.
Lynn Grossman and Bob Balaban for organic direction; Bob Weiner; Frank Scinlaro; Gerry Rothberg and the Circus Magazine Files; Billy Smith; Larry Hitchcock; Gabrielle Messab, Carolene Richards, Abe Jacob, and the gang at Heartbreak Hotel; O. B. Lewis, for holding down the fort; Ziggy, for the plane tickets; Merry Old Cornwall; Moumi; Patricia McKinnon; Cheryl Goddard.
