Alice Cooper

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2010

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is the rock musician Alice Cooper.

As a teenager he says it was British music that he tuned in to - listening to The Beatles, The Yardbirds and The Who. He realised that while rock music had many heroes, there were few villains - that was the territory he marked out for himself. He developed his trademark look - blackened eyes, straggly hair and glamorous clothes - and set about designing live shows that were gleefully gory and macabre.

While critics have described him as 'the world's most beloved heavy metal entertainer', it took him a while to untangle himself from his creation. "For a long time I honestly didn't know where I began and Alice ended. My friends at the time were Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and I was trying to keep up with them. And I realised when they all died that you didn't have to be your character off stage."

Record: Work Song - The Butterfield Blues Band Book: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Luxury: An indoor golf driving range

Producer: Leanne Buckle.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.
0:06.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:10.0	For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.
0:17.0	Radio 4. My castaway this week is the rock star Alice Cooper. Born in Detroit, he grew up an
0:39.0	asthmatic skinny kid, but a turn in the school concert, maiming to Beatles' tracks, convinced him that
0:45.4	his future lay on stage.
0:47.7	He realized early on that while rock music had many heroes, there were few villains, and that was the territory he marked out for himself.
0:56.0	I was more than happy, he says, to be Rock's Captain Hook.
1:00.0	He developed his trademark Luke, blackened hollow eyes and long straggly hair and set about designing
1:05.9	live shows that were gleefully gory and macabre.
1:09.4	He has staged countless mock executions using a guillotine, electric chair, noose and significant quantities
1:16.2	of fake blood.
1:17.8	He says of those early days, we were into fun, sex, death and money when everybody else was into peace and love.
1:25.6	It strikes me, Alice Cooper, you must have a very good sense of humor.
1:28.9	I hope so.
1:29.9	That's the one thing people I think have finally started digesting about Alice Cooper from the beginning.
1:35.8	It was a marriage of rock, horror, and comedy.
1:40.2	I don't think you can really scare somebody without giving him a laugh afterwards.
1:44.1	You know, I mean I think that's part of it.
1:46.1	That's really what our show is.
1:47.1	You talk about Alice Cooper in the third person then.
1:49.0	He's someone else, is he?
	...

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