via: NME

Alice Cooper has revealed the identity of the only rockstar calls him by his birthname of Vincent Damon Furnier.

‘Alice Cooper’ was originally the name of a band in which he sung lead vocals. After the band broke up in 1975, he took it on as both his legal name and his stage name for that year’s ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’.

In an interview with The Sun, Cooper revealed: “The only person who calls me Vince is Keith Richards.”

“He’ll say, ‘Vinnie, Vinnie, how long has it been since you had a drink?’ And I’ll reply, ‘More than 30 years’. And he goes, ‘Ah, begs the question, why?’ ”

Cooper, who has been sober for 38 years, also recalled how his days of hedonism led to difficulties separating himself from his stage persona.

“When I was drinking and drugging, I didn’t know if I was supposed to leave the house with make-up on. I felt I was going to disappoint people if I walked out without a snake around my neck,” said Cooper.

He continued: “Alice is my favorite rock star but he stays onstage and I go back up to my normal life. That’s why I can speak about Alice in the third person. Somebody will bring in a costume and I’ll go, ‘No, Alice would never wear that!’”

Last week, meanwhile, Cooper hit back at Gene Simmons after the KISS bassist recently claimed that rock music is “dead”.

“There’s a bunch of 18-year-kids in there with guitars and drums and they’re learning hard rock,” he told NME. “It’s the same with the United States: there’s all these young bands that want to resurge that whole area of hard rock.”