From the Keith Moon archives: Alice Cooper
A 1996 interview about the man who "was the heart and soul of The Who."
I was all set to post this interview with Alice Cooper two weeks ago, using it as the launch pad for a series of archives from my Keith Moon biography. However, literally the moment before I sat down to edit in Substack, I noticed someone on my FB evince disgust at Alice’s apparent right-wing verge and I figured maybe he was in the news.
He was. It turned out that at the end of a deep interview with Rachel Brodsky for online music site Stereogum, to coincide with Alice’s new album, Road, and the accompanying tour, the veteran artist was invited to take some credit for the younger generation’s relatively fluid approach to sexuality. Rachel said the following:
“In a 1974 interview with SPEC, you gave really forward-thinking responses to questions about sexuality and gender. You said “In the future, everyone will be bisexual,” and you accurately defined pansexuality, among other things. You also said, “Lots of men who perform wear make-up – that’s a theatrical tradition, it has nothing to do with sexuality.”
She then invited him to comment on people like Dee Snider and Paul Stanley who, she said, had recently “called gender-affirming identity a sad and dangerous fad.”
He could have refused. He could have taken credit where due. He could also have said that being a Born Again Christian he had cause to question some of his past beliefs – though not to the extent of denouncing his own stage act, name, dress sense and songs – and just leave it there. Simply put, he had every opportunity to get out while the going was good. Instead, Alice went down a rabbit-hole of Fox News talking points about trans kids and rapists and “Woke” society and even AI.
It began with the apparent scourge of six-year-olds encouraged by their parents to become a tree, continued with the news that “we can’t say ‘mother’ now, we have to say ‘birthing person’” (I am afraid I have failed to receive this memo), and concluded with that hoary old hysterical threat that ‘“A guy can walk into a woman’s bathroom at any time and just say, “I just feel like I’m a woman today” and have the time of his life in there… Somebody’s going to get raped, and the guy’s going to say, “Well, I felt like a girl that day, and then I felt like a guy.” (It’s all here.)
I’d be inclined to say “Grow up, Alice!” but he’s 75 years old, so it’s a bit late. Somewhere down the line he’s crossed over and become like anybody else’s annoying uncle who watches too much conservative television where the talking points exist to rally hate against the left rather than base themselves on fact. It’s disappointing and it’s frustrating, and I paused on publishing the interview and offered up an extract from Dear Boy/Moon instead.
It is all the more personally disappointing because, if you have read my first memoir Boy About Town, you’ll know that with the single “School’s Out,” Alice Cooper made the first major significant and lasting impact upon me as a music fan, after which I never looked back. Indeed, the first three albums I acquired, over the next eighteen months, were all Alice Cooper albums. I still own them. I still revere them. I thought they were brave and outrageous and stupid and clever and brilliant and funny and hard and tender and so much more besides. I thank Alice Cooper for introducing me to rock.
Alice’s comments in Stereogum were reported far and wide, and there were consequences. Only a week before the interview was published, a make-up company called Vampyre Cosmetics announced a collaboration with Alice, crediting him as “one of the first male artists to show the art form of face makeup wasn't a gender-specific product in an era where this was controversial.”
By August 30, Vampyre had released a statement which noted that the company was “proudly women owned, disabled owned, and LGBTQ owned,” and that, “In light of recent statements by Alice Cooper we will no longer be doing a makeup collaboration. We stand with all members of the LGBTQIA+ community and believe everyone should have access to healthcare.”
Maybe Alice will come back around to planet earth, maybe not. The show goes on regardless and ultimately I have to place his ill-informed comments in the context of other musicians whose ageing conservatism can get in the way of appreciating, but ultimately should not negate, their significant cultural contributions.
Which brings us back to the place I had hoped to come in on two weeks ago. Alice Cooper was among the many famous people who agreed to be interviewed for my Keith Moon biography at the first time of asking. I would love to have conducted that interview with him in person (we had met once before, only briefly) but I could not schedule a trip to Los Angeles when enough of my interviewees would be in town simultaneously, so it was conducted on the phone instead, back in 1996. In that conversation, Alice was sober, serious, amusing, compassionate, funny, whimsical, reflective, and more besides, and I am happy to share the transcript accordingly. Here’s hoping he has another religious conversion – or at least a correction – while he is still with us.
We started off talking in general terms, about Alice Cooper's association with the Who, which began in the 1960s.
Alice Cooper: We were much more smitten with the Yardbirds and the Who [than the Beatles and The Stones]. The Yardbirds were our band but The Who was what we wanted to be. We used to play with the Who at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, it held 3000, and we would play and The Who would play, and my drummer Neil Smith would always find out how many drums Keith had and add one! At one point they were both on stage with all their drums and Keith came up and played with us and there was 70 drums!
...The Speakeasy and Tramps were the place to be in London. There was a little loft at the Rainbow Room in LA, they only had that for the club, and the club was myself, Keith Moon, Ringo, Micky Dolenz, Harry Nilsson. It was that crowd, every night those same people. Every once in a while John Lennon would come into town or Keith Emerson and they would be honorable members of the night. They still have a plaque there at the Rainbow, where it says "The Lair of the Hollywood Vampires."
I lived in Beverly Hills. Keith would come over and drive up to the house and stay for four days. "Hello Alice, good to see you old boy," he was Robert Newton. He would come over and he had a 26ft long Rolls Royce, a 1929 Silver Satan or something, he had the back seats taken out and a throne put in. Because I just had this new 1975 Rolls, but his was twice as long as mine. He had a throne in his, and a place for his golden goblet of brandy. He would come up to my house and stay for so long that we would go stay with someone else for a couple of days! We'd come back and he'd still be there.
Is that an indication of his restlessness?
I don't know if it was his restlessness or the fact that he was everybody's best friend. I couldn't hang out with Keith all the time. He would exhaust you because he never got tired, and it wasn't because of drugs necessarily, he was just one of these guys who never got tired. You'd be passing out and going "enough" and he'd be going, "let's go out!” I don't know where he got the energy. He was amazing. He really was the heart and soul of The Who.
You had the reputation for outrage in those days.
Yes, but I did all mine on stage.
And were you conscious of that difference between you and Keith?
Yes. The stage was my outlet for anything I did. If I had a great idea, I would always put it on stage in front of people. Whereas Keith lived it at all times. I was probably much more conservative than him. When I was offstage I was probably more opposite of my character, whereas he was actually more outrageous offstage than onstage. Can you imagine if he would have been a lead singer? He would have been beyond.
You were boozing as well in those Hollywood Vampire days. Did you have too much of a problem to know that Keith had a problem?
I think we all knew we had problems, but they weren't problems at the time because we were having way too much fun. We weren't mature enough to understand that what we were doing was a problem. At the time it was just, hey we're rock'n'rollers, what do you expect? I guess he heard stories that I would get up in the morning and throw up blood, and I would hear stories — any time I heard a story about Keith I would never doubt it, because I was like, that's Keith. But when he died.... I wasn't surprised when Jim Morrison died, I wasn't surprised when Janis Joplin died, I was surprised when Keith Moon died. Because he had no death wish. He was having too much fun living. So his thing when he died, that was an absolute accident.
Did Keith get into trouble when you were out?
No, because he was Keith. He had the license to do anything he wanted to do. Even the police liked Keith. They expected it, they knew it was Keith, and he was the guy who... He never did anything to hurt anybody.
What specific stories do you remember?
Oh, he would come in dressed up like Hitler. Him and Viv Stanshall. And you walk down Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard, there's a lot of Jewish people there in showbiz and I'm sure they didn't think it was funny. But it went beyond any racial thing. I don't think he did it as any set of racial thing. I think he just thought “this will be funny.” But you know what he was like. Like a hyperactive little kid: "Keith, did you take your Ritalin this morning?"
I remember Dougal, his driver, because you would never, certainly never put Keith behind the wheel of a car, that would be like inviting mass murder. What a job that guy had! Did that guy earn his money?!
Did Keith ever drop his guard with you? Were these deep friendships?
When I used to see Keith, it was always just more of a madhouse, it was always just like, we only have two days, let's really blow it. I never had enough time to sit down and talk with him about anything. I did with Harry Nilsson, with Lennon and other people at the time because they were a little bit more serious. But with Keith, it was like I said — having your hyper best friend over to stay all night.
That suggests Keith didn't want that serious side.
I don't think he did. I think he thought, "Well, when I get older — if I get older — I'll have time to get serious." But I never had a serious conversation with Keith, I don't know if that was possible. I never got over to his house. I saw him at Ringo's house and maybe at Ronnie Wood's house... We usually met at the clubs. Because you see he would never go home. I would actually go home. No one really knew where he lived, because he was always out.
...I still don't figure there is one drummer out there anywhere near him. I always say if you can get 25 rebounds a game you can dye your hair like Rodman, if you can play like Charles Barclay you can talk crap. If you can back it up... and Keith could back it up. And I think it was a very big part of him too. If you were going to ask me who had the most fun in rock'n'roll I would say Keith Moon. Who really actually understood what rock'n'roll was about, it would be Keith Moon. It's not to say it's right. Because he died way prematurely. I don't think he had another gear to go down to.
I would imagine normalcy for him was depression. People on a normal level, they go up and have fun, they drink and they have that party and they come back down to normalcy and that's normal, and if they get depressed that's depression. With him I think he stayed up there so long that when he came back to normalcy that was depression, and then if he got depressed that was dark, that must have been black depression for him. You always expected him to be him. And I think that wore him out. People expected him to always be Keith, and he felt obligated to always be Keith Moon. I had the same problem where I always thought I had to be Alice, onstage and offstage, to be this character that was dark and menacing and in trouble. Then I finally realized that character belongs on stage, and [I should] play him to the hilt [on stage], but don't be him off stage, then I was able to lead a normal life.
I think everyone sat around afterwards and said "I wish I could have spent more time with him, I wish I could have said ‘slow down,’" but nobody would ever say that while he was going, because he would just have looked at you and said, "Are you crazy? I'm Keith Moon."
When he came to stay would he be a good guest?
He'd be the sweetest guy in the world. "Hello Cheryl, how are you doing, you're so lovely…" And after about 12 hours of that, Cheryl would say "I've got to get out of here" and I'd say, "Me too, he's wearing me out." We'd say "Keith, we're going out, see you later," we'd go out, come back the next day, and Keith would still be there: "Hello, did you bring me anything?"
Is he hanging out with Dougal?
They'd both be there. Hollywood was like that though. I had three or four people staying at my house and I didn't know who they were. After a while I'd say "Exactly how long have you been here and who are you?" But every rock 'n' roller's house was like that, I could name you ten houses like that, like freefall. Especially in Hollywood where people had these big big houses, and people could live like that without anyone knowing.
Did you see drugs with Keith?
I was never much into that. I'd see him take a handful of things. I'm not sure he'd know what they were. He'd go to parties, Hollywood parties, which would be all stars, and there'd be a candy bowl full of pills, and Keith would just take a handful. Jim Morrison would do the same thing. Just come in, didn't know what it was, just take a handful of whatever it was and down it with a JD. Keith had that same modus operandi.
I was much more conservative. I only drank two whiskeys, it had to be Canadian Club or Seagrams VO and it had to be with Coca Cola or I wouldn't drink. I was very particular about what I was drinking. Keith was a brandy man. Townshend was more of a cognac drinker, because one night at the Speakeasy he said, “let's trade bottles” and I was so sick, I didn't know cognac was distilled champagne.
Back then even though it sounds pretty decadent, I didn't know anyone who was doing needles. During the day I would usually drink beer and in the evening switch to whiskey, but I was very functional, I never missed a show, never slurred a word. I don't think there was any way he could have been Keith Moon and been anybody but who he was.
It was like you saw it happening. The guys in the band, I'm sure they must have said, "Come on Keith, we do have to live through this," but I don't think there was any way of slowing him down because it wouldn't have been Keith. At the rate he was going, if he was 50 this year [in 1996] he would have looked like 90. Not only that..... He wasn't stupid at all, he was just caught up in the fact that he could do... He was like a kid in a candy shop. He absolutely would do anything he wanted to do and he could afford to. Well that was pretty dangerous to give Keith that option.
When we were doing Sextette, the directors would sit there and say "How do we contain him until the cameras are on?" They were afraid he was going to wear out. I'd say, "I don't think you have to worry about that. It's not like the battery is going to wear down." I play an Italian waiter and sing a song with Mae West of all things. It was awful, one of the worst movies ever made, but we still loved it. Timothy Dalton was in it and George Raft, and Ringo and Dom DeLuise, it was one of those movies that should never have been made. Like Sgt Peppers. I was in the worst two movies ever!
Looking forward to reading more Keith Moon stories. My favourite drummer ever.