COOPER STILL PLAYS 100 shows a year, and though his songs don't get dropped into the rotation on many radio stations, he still records new albums and believes that his last five or six are among the best he's ever done. As for that lack of airtime? "I don't get disappointed, because I understand it now. I was, for a long time, outraged. I said, 'This song that I've got right here is so much better than what they're playing on the radio,'?" he says. "That song they're playing on the radio every hour - we would have thrown away. Bowie would have thrown it away. Elton would have thrown it away. Rod Stewart would have said [it's terrible]. But it's getting played because they're the new band. Every once in a while, they come up with a good song, and you go, 'Oh, turn it up; that's a good one,' but it's rare."

That's not to say that Cooper has disdain for every new band. He's keen on the eclectic sound of Panic! at the Disco and is clearly agog over the White Stripes. "I was so curious to see that band live," he says. "I like the records, and I hear the Detroit garage rock in it, and I hear that this guy [Jack White] has so much stuff going on in his voice and in his guitar playing. Then I went and saw him live in London, and they got me. This guy pulls it off onstage. He never stops moving. He's always playing, and it's a little off, but it doesn't matter. I bought into all of it."