The Hollywood Vampires

Youth and Talent will never beat Age and Treachery."

Alice Cooper's identity crisis

By BY PHILLIP VALYS and SOUTHFLORIDA.COM

OCT 25, 2013 AT 9:49 AM

Shock rocker Alice Cooper welcomes you to his nightmare Sunday night at the Hard Rock Live in Hollywood. (Hard Rock Live/Courtesy)

In September, Alice Cooper recorded vocals for a new covers album that will pay tribute to his old drinking buddies, the so-called Hollywood Vampires. The honorary members of his underground booze club: Keith Moon, Mickey Dolenz, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison.

Throwing classic rock covers into his concerts is hardly new for the self-proclaimed "old vampire," who during shows often bounds through a cemetery growling Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" and the Who's "My Generation."

But when the theatrical monster unveils this as-yet untitled album next spring, it will reflect a troubling time in Cooper's four-decade career of wickedness and camp: the heady, alcohol-fueled hedonism of the early-1970s.

"It was a gray area. I didn't know where I started and where I ended," recalls Cooper, speaking by phone from the couch of his home in Phoenix, on the eve of a tour that stops at the Hard Rock Live on Sunday. "That was until I realized that what killed Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison was they tried to be rock stars 24 hours a day, instead of switching it off. I realized, 'I'm going to be a little smarter than that.'"

The man born Vincent Damon Furnier is now 32 years sober and, no doubt, knows who he is. This Alice Cooper – the guy on the couch, with a rerun of "Paranormal Witness" paused on the TV and a Ricola clicking in his teeth, not the maniacal rogue who emerges from a coffin cradling a boa constrictor – is the one who coaches Little League and occasionally golfs at the Jacaranda Golf Club in Plantation when he's in town. He also knows that becoming Alice Cooper, the alter-ego he stitched up Frankenstein-style from the body parts of other rock gods, the man who leaps through the fog banks to growl "School's Out" and "I'm Eighteen," is still the thrill he craves.

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"People used to think I was out terrorizing some schoolchildren when I wasn't on a stage," Cooper deadpans. "I'm actually very ordinary without my top hat."

But Cooper recalls a time when he wasn't always so clear on the division between monster and man: when he swung back a few with the Vampires at Hollywood's Rainbow Bar, which provided as many lost weekends as bizarre memories. "Keith would come dressed as Adolf Hitler, or the Queen of England, or a French maid," Cooper says with a laugh.

"I think that, with this album, people will like that there's some authenticity to Alice doing these songs," Cooper says.

This Alice Cooper – not the guy on the couch, but the one who has sparked imitators in everyone from Rob Zombie to Marilyn Manson – spent the summer touring with the latter. Manson, he says, could not stop sharing his admiration.

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"It turned out to be the best tour. Every night we'd try to outdo each other," he says, shifting the cough drop in his mouth. "But I've got the 14 Top-40 songs that everybody knows. I'm still here to blow you off the stage. Youth and talent will never beat age and treachery."