Big Apple Dreamin' - On Tour with Alice Cooper

I've just finished reading Louder Than Hell, and it's a great book - as the cover blurb attests:

"THE BOOK EVERY METAL FAN SHOULD OWN" - Alice Cooper.

The authors employ first-person accounts to trace the evolutionary history of Metal from progenitors Blue Cheer, Mountain and Black Sabbath through the later strands of heavy-, NWOBH-, glam-, thrash-, industrial-, nu-, speed-, death-, dark-, black-, and dork-metal (plus hardcore and metalcore).

"I looked around and I noticed that everyone I was trying to be like was dead.  I went, 'I get it. Alice has got to be one thing. And I've got to be another.  I can't co-exist with Alice; Alice has to be a character I play onstage.'  When the curtain comes down, he doesn't really want to live my life, and I don't want to live his. He lives two hours a night on stage.  He doesn't play golf, he doesn't want to be married, he doesn't want children.  He doesn't like anything except what he does onstage, and you leave him up there.  To this day, we have a great relationship."

Vincent Furnier/Alice Cooper,

Louder Than Hell

!t Books, (C) 2013

In LTH, Alice Cooper earns Founding Father status for his early incorporation of dark on-stage symbology and theatrical make-up, both so widely and persistently imitated as to have become iconic.

Motif # 1

In early July, 1997 I was on business in NYC and staying at the Righa Royal Hotel on West 54th.  Waiting in the lobby for a colleague before heading out in suit & tie to the first meeting of the day, I was seated with Wall Street Journal in hand as Alice emerged from the elevator and walked briskly across the diagonal to the front door.

We shared the lobby for all of 5 seconds.  I instinctively dropped the Journal and rose from my chair.

Maybe I Scared Him . . .

Now, in the late 70's my college band got a lot of mileage out of playing School's Out every spring, blasting away on the quad following the last day of classes.  Naturally, I tried to yell out "School's Out!" but - in the excitement - could only produce a very loud and unintelligible grunt: "HHhnhguuhyaugghhnnt!"  If you've ever heard the Derek and Clive routine wherein Peter Cook describes the sound made by a rival fan whom he claims to have kicked "square in the bollocks!" at an Arsenal-Spurs game, that's the sound I made .  Maybe not unlike what Alice is used to hearing from the louts and punters 20-deep at the front in a general admission show.

He looked up, smiled and raised an eyebrow at me as he reached for the revolving door and exited into the New York City summer sunshine.

I like to think that he's wondered from time to time who that obstreporous clod in the suit was.

"Skyscrapers and subways and stations
Staring up at the United Nations

New York is waiting for you and me, baby
Waiting to swallow us down
New York, we're coming to see what you're made of ... "

Alice Cooper, 1972

Big Apple Dreamin

Also Part of the Scene:
Took A Trip In A Gemini Spacecraft: My Hollywood Dinner with Bowie and Iman.