Alice Cooper on Why Johnny Depp’s Staying in the Band and Being Mislabeled Republican
Courtesy Jenny Risher
The legendary shock rocker opens up about his new No. 1 album, golfing buddy Donald Trump, and his journey to becoming a born-again Christian.
Alice Cooper: His name alone instantly conjures up the stuff of rock and roll legend. Yet even after 50 years of hit albums, global mega-tours, guillotines, straitjackets, and did he or didn’t he rumors, the man who single-handedly invented “shock rock” remains as famous—or perhaps infamous—as ever.
Detroit Stories, Cooper’s latest album, is the icon’s biggest hit since 1973’s Billion Dollar Babies. It not only reunited Cooper with fabled producer Bob Ezrin, who’d helped give the original Alice Cooper Band its signature look and sound 50 years ago, it chalked up chart-topping positions around the world, and brought an apparently much-needed bit of hard rock—as well as good old-fashioned Detroit-style boogie—to Cooper’s legion of fans.
But Cooper, born Vincent Damon Furnier to an evangelist dad and homemaker mom in Detroit, Michigan, 73 years ago, is a notoriously complex guy. He’s written several no-holds-barred memoirs and books, recounting tales of debauchery with the likes of Jim Morrison and John Lennon, as well as Bible study and daily prayer, with stops for cameos in Wayne’s World 2 and The Muppet Show, plus a few rounds of golf with Donald Trump, along the way.
