Apr. 6, 2020

Q&A: Alice Cooper On His New Podcast, Guns ‘N’ Roses, Jimmy Page And Hanging With Pink Floyd In 1968

via Forbes

For the last 16 years, Alice Cooper has done double duty as a rock legend and host of the global radio show Nights With Alice Cooper. As a true rock icon who partied with the likes of John Lennon and Keith Moon in the Hollywood Vampires and has played with everyone from Foo Fighters and Led Zeppelin, Cooper has unparalleled access in the rock community.

He has utilized that access to interview everyone from Jimmy Page and Slash to Queen’s Brian May and Ozzy Osbourne. But as Cooper points out those interviews were often one and done, so if fans missed them they could not access them again.

So a few months back he was approached by Storic Media about turning the show into a podcast. “We are proud to launch Alice Cooper’s Vintage Vault as part of United Stations’ new podcast network, Storic Media. Through Storic we will be launching a series of podcasts ranging from children’s stories to all things music and beyond,” said Kristin Verbitsky, director of Storic.

Cooper felt the same. And this week I spoke with him about the podcast, his interview technique and more. Few people have the stories of Alice Cooper and he did not disappoint as he filled me in on Guns ‘N’ Roses, Jimmy Page and a truly amazing Pink Floyd story at the end of the interview.

Steve Baltin: How are you holding up in all of this?

Alice Cooper: The great thing in Arizona is that the golf courses are open. They say it’s an outdoor event, you’re not touching anything but your own equipment. And they want people out doing something — walking, outdoor activities and they said that is the one sport that is not a contact sport. There are 200 golf courses here. So we go out every morning, first off there’s nobody out there. We have the whole place to ourselves and we’re done by 9:30, 10 o’clock and it’s great. We come home and then I don’t feel guilty sitting watching TV all day.

Baltin: Was the podcast always intended to come out during this time frame or was the release sped up to come out during the quarantine?

Cooper: We had planned the podcast before. We’ve been doing the radio show for 16 years and the podcast came up four or five months ago. I said, “What is it?” And they said, “The idea is to take old interviews and for you to go into that interview and either explain it or be the narrator, the voice over top of these. Because every single interview, even if it’s not your interview is somebody you know or have interviewed. So it’s not like this is somebody you’ve never talked to before.” So I kind of go in and do insight into that person or before they’re talking. What it does is bring up all these great interviews that were kind of lost. You hear them once and they’re gone. And I said, “Wait a minute, they’re like records. What if we want to hear what Jimmy Page has to say about this? What if we want to hear what Slash says about that or whoever?” So it’s taking these interviews and turning them into something new all over again.

Baltin: Using your record analogy, when you go back and listen to old records you often hear new things in there. Is that the case for you with the interviews too?

Cooper: I started going, “We started out this album with absolutely no storyline and it accidentally turned into a storyline because every single character was a paranormal character. I didn’t design it to be that. It happened like that.” When I did the interview at the first I said there was no storyline. Two months later there was a storyline that was accidental. That’s just one example of how I might be talking to Duff McKagan and Duff goes, “Well, I don’t know if Guns ‘N’ Roses ever gonna get back together, doesn’t sound like it ever will.” And four months later they’re on tour and doing the best tour they’ve ever done (laughs). So it’s kind of neat to see what actually did happen against what they thought was gonna happen.

Baltin: Are there particular interviews that have been fun to revisit?

Cooper: Sometimes I look at the date of when this interview came out and I go, “Oh boy, look what happened to that band since then.” They weren’t expecting to have a hit or they were expecting this to be their biggest album and it didn’t go anywhere. But I don’t like to dwell on what never happened. I think it’s funny to let the audience also discover that. “Let’s see what they were talking about in 2005.” I’m sure Brian Johnson [AC/DC] was not expecting to lose his hearing. He’s going on and on about how he loves it and can’t wait to get back on stage and here you go a couple years later and he can’t hear anything. Who would ever predict that? It’s kind of fun to look back and say, “Wow, if it were a time machine we never would have expected that.” I always look at it like if you were to tell me in 2005 the world’s greatest male athlete was going to become a woman, Bill Cosby was gonna become a [convicted] rapist and Donald Trump was gonna be the president I’d say, “What world are you in?” That’s a Kurt Vonnegut novel you’re talking about, that’s not reality. And yet all that stuff happened. We kind of take it for granted after a while, but when you start adding up the insanity…if somebody said, “There’s something so small that nobody can see it that’s going to stop the entire world for about three or four months” you’d go, “What? Is it an alien?” And they go, “No, it’s just a germ, but it’s gonna stop the entire world.” You’d go, “No, that’s never gonna happen.” On a smaller level it’s like that on interviews where people have all these great ideas of what’s going to happen and this is going to be the greatest tour we ever did and of course that tour never happened. So it’s almost funny.

Baltin: At times it becomes overwhelming to think of the interviews you have done. Like it took me years to appreciate interviewing James Brown. Do you have that experience?

Cooper: Yeah, I forgot a lot of these interviews. I totally forgot that I interviewed Jimmy Page. I’ve known Jimmy since 1968. We did the Whisky A Go Go together, but I totally forgot that interview. And in that interview there was never any mention of him going back in to all the Led Zeppelin albums and remixing them. And I think at the time they were still up in the air about Zeppelin getting back together. Of course that never happened and everybody in the whole world went, “Why? Everybody’s still viable except the drummer and they’ve got his son who plays just like his dad.” So I think it is a bit of a game to listen to what was supposed to happen, what didn’t happen, what wasn’t supposed to happen that did happen and it’s a little bit shocking to see we don’t have any control over what is going to happen.

Baltin: This is an obvious question but is there one person you’d like to interview you never have?

Cooper: Oh yeah, who wouldn’t want to interview Bob Dylan? I’ve never interviewed Bob Dylan. And the easiest one in the world would be Paul McCartney. He’s the nicest person you’ve ever met in your life. I did a really good interview with Jeff Beck one time. In fact I said I look at it this way: Jimmy Page best rock and roll guitar player; Jimi Hendrix, most inventive guitar player; Eric Clapton best blues player; Jeff Beck, best guitar player. And he went, “Yeah, that’s right.”

Baltin: What would be the one question you’d most like to ask Dylan?

Cooper: Somebody told me that he doesn’t use a teleprompter. That’s 400 songs, okay. Everybody in that band has to know every song because he does an audible, he doesn’t just give them a setlist. He’ll get done with a song and say, “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands.” And they have to know that. If he’s not using a teleprompter it’s one of the most amazing memories of all time. I was told he doesn’t use one. I would ask him if he does use a teleprompter because as a singer I would be lost without my teleprompter. And I know those songs. I still like to have it on. So I would ask him, is it just whatever song you want to play right at that moment? It is just an audible?

Baltin: Are there things then from these interviews you’ve put to your own music?

Cooper: Yeah. One thing I do in my interviews is I tell the person right up front let’s not make this an interview, let’s make this a conversation. If there are a couple of hot points I want to get I work it in to the conversation. But I want it to sound like somebody is listening in on a telephone call between me and Bill Wyman from the Rolling Stones. And we’re just talking and whenever it goes it goes. I might have one or two questions that I work in there that I want to know about, that I really want to hit up. That way that interview doesn’t sound like question, answer, question, answer. I let them get to what they want to talk about more than anything else. I just sort of sit back and let them go with what they want to talk about cause I’ve done enough interviews where I’ll get done with the entire interview and I’ll go, “We didn’t even mention the tour or the new album. We just did 15 minutes of what I did in 1973.” I get off the phone and I go, “That was a totally wasted interview. I didn’t get across what I was trying to do.”

Baltin: How are your interviews different you think from other interviewers?

Cooper: Most of these guys, when you get two rock stars talking they’re gonna go off in a million different directions. I think people would much rather feel like they’re voyeurs and they’re listening to a private conversation that they shouldn’t be listening to between two guys. I think that’s a more interesting interview. But if it is something where they’re really trying to sell something I’d say, “Okay, let’s get that out of the way so we can just riff from then on.” And I think that makes it a more comfortable interview for everybody and a more unique interview cause you kind of feel like you’re getting away with something. You’re listening to Alice talk to this guys about this city and that person. If I were listening and didn’t know anything about it I love backstage stories. “He did what?” (laughs)

Baltin: Even listening to the Slash one that was true as I was surprised at how open he was with you about the friction in Guns ‘N’ Roses at the time. I don’t think he would have been that open with a journalist.

Cooper: It was so obvious that there was such a tumor going on with Guns ‘N’ Roses. I took them on their first tour and a band cannot be as good as they are without being best friends. If you starve together, get high together, get arrested together, if somebody died and you cried together, you go through a lot of stuff when you’re in a band early on. You really do become brothers. So those guys knowing that I’ve gone through the exact same thing as they have they can open up cause they know you know what they mean. As a fellow musician I totally get what he’s talking about. I’ve been there. I know exactly what that is.

Baltin: What is one of your great backstage stories?

Cooper: I remember sitting around and listening to a Burt Bacharach album with Pink Floyd in 1968, sitting there going, “Oh man, listen to that. Listen to what he did there.” Because of the simplicity of that kind of writing is impossible. It’s so hard to write a simple song. Then you look who you’ve got. You’ve got Pink Floyd who are writing these musical epics and Alice Cooper writing this insanity. And both of us are sitting there listening to Burt Bacharach going, “Wow.” I’d say lyrically and musically nobody was better than the Beatles and Burt Bacharach. They were the best.