Hitting the Clubs with Alice Cooper (So to Speak)
Rock's most enduring villain is far from ready to hang up his straitjacket — or his putter. By Jenna Schnuer. Photographs by Sean McCormick.
ALICE COOPER snickers while telling the story of his onstage midair skewering of a doll thrown from the audience, done with a sword formerly owned by Errol Flynn. Moments later, I’m standing just a few feet away from the original shock rocker as he raises another potential instrument of death and prepares to whack away at a small object. But instead of aiming for my head, Cooper sends a dimpled golf ball sailing out over a grassy expanse, courtesy of a highly polished titanium driver and a powerful but elegant swing.
It’s my first lesson in a good golf swing. To be honest, it’s my first golf lesson of any kind — and from Alice Cooper, no less.
My 1970s and ’80s childhood was laced with Cooper. Actually, every rock fan born within the past 30 or 40 years has grown up with Cooper — even if heavy metal isn’t his or her music of choice. His face, eyes wedged inside thickly smudged black eyeliner, is one of the most enduring images of rock’s devilish side. His song "School’s Out" is the anthem of generations of high school graduates. Really, who doesn’t know Cooper?
I don’t, it turns out.
I had no idea who Cooper really is — or at least is now. The scariest thing about spending time with offstage Cooper is trying to figure out, premeeting, what I should wear for heading out onto a golf course with him. A pale green straitjacket (sleeves dangling, of course)? Sherbet-pink bondage pants? A sun visor with chains? After all, until that first moment I meet him at the Riverview Golf Course in Mesa, Arizona, he is still an angry rock god to me — not Coop, as his friends call him, a 59-year-old father of three who loves to shop (he has 17 televisions), prefers golfing in the earliest hours of Phoenix daylight when he’s home, and goes head-to-head with Kenny G — yes, that Kenny G — at pro-am golf tournaments. His recent memoir, Alice Cooper, Golf Monster: A Rock ’n’ Roller’s 12 Steps to Becoming a Golf Addict, is as much Cooper’s rules for a great game as it is a romp through a life in rock.
And even though a quick premeeting Google search of the terms Alice Cooper and golf puts my mind at ease, I am relieved to see him wearing a standard-issue sun visor and polo shirt when he arrives at the golf course with his longtime teacher and friend, golf pro Jim Mooney.
JUST ABOUT the only things Cooper and his stage persona have in common are a name and a mischievous sense of humor. Actually, Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier) is pretty sure that Alice wouldn’t have much respect for his offstage life. “I don’t have lunch with him. I don’t talk to him,” says golf Cooper of the stage villain. “I know what he’s going to do because I control him, but I am totally entertained by him myself. When you get to be the Sheriff of Nottingham and not Robin Hood, when you get to be Bela Lugosi and not Van Helsing — that’s the most fun thing in the world.”
While modern rock is littered with “now you hear them, now you don’t” bands, Alice Cooper has some serious staying power. “I think a lot of [Alice Cooper] records of the ’70s, the hard-rock stuff, are really solid,” says Phil Freeman, a rock critic and the managing editor of Global Rhythm. “If you go back to it, it’s really well-played, well-produced, really good hard rock, with good melodies and interesting lyrics. Yeah, Alice is hugely important. I don’t think underrated, but he should be listened to more.” The original band released its first album, Pretties for You, in 1969. It took a while for Cooper to trust that anybody really got his band. “I honestly thought we were the black sheep of rock and roll. I thought that until we had platinum albums and number one albums,” he says. And later, the Alice Cooper action figures and comic books, along with a turn as a clue on Jeopardy!, really convinced him he had made it. “If you become a Pez dispenser, that means you are recognized around the world,” he says.
IN PERSON, Cooper is instantly familiar, but sans makeup, there’s a kindness about his face that the stage Cooper would certainly sneer at. He smiles easily (especially when he’s poking fun at me or cheering me on). His golf attire won’t win any villain points either: Instead of wearing the theatrical outfits rock fans know him for (not every man can pull off a black leather jacket bedecked in giant sequins), Cooper dresses in a white polo shirt piped with black and black pants, making him a lean, country-club-ready figure. His black hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and a white Callaway visor — he’s the golf brand’s hardest-rocking pitchman and devotee — is snuggled onto his head.
I hadn’t warned them that I am a lefty. So after switching out the equipment already set aside for me, and with Cooper joshing me, saying, “I play with a guy who’s a lefty every day; we put up with it,” we head outside to the driving range. A line of people are wrapped up in their own little worlds, just swinging, swinging, swinging. Nobody takes notice of the rock god. It’s clear that Cooper is a familiar sight on the nine-hole course. In fact, the Riverview is home to the annual Alice Cooper Bloodbath — “the tournament that benefits no one,” says Cooper.
After Mooney positions my hands on the club, the swinging begins. “She’s got a great grip already,” says Cooper. I’m trying not to beam, to remain the journalist and not switch into adoring-rock-fan mode, but … it’s difficult. “You’re proud of me?” I ask. Then, after swinging at — and purposely breaking — a few tees to make sure I can connect, Mooney loads a tee with a ball. After a few misses, thwack. “Well, excuse me … up in the air and down the middle,” Cooper beams back, shooting his arms into the air as though he himself just collected a big win.
“I’ll be on the tour with you very soon — and I used to play violin, if you need that onstage,” I say.
His reply: “Hit another million balls, and you’ll be ready.”
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.”
But Cooper doesn’t record for radio; he does it for his fans — and the range of ages at his shows makes it clear that the fans wouldn’t be pleased if he decided to hang up his straitjacket. Mooney, a longtime fan (though when the rocker first showed up at Mooney’s golf club all those decades ago, he had no idea what or who Alice Cooper was), nearly gave up going to Cooper’s shows at one point, afraid he was too old. “I thought, You can’t go anymore; you’re the oldest guy here,” he says. “But I wasn’t. I look around, and there are guys older. He’s crossed all those generational lines.”
Though Cooper wishes more artists would put a theatrical edge on their shows, he’s hardly sitting around lamenting the past. He still crafts his own theatrical stage show and has found his own way to give the monsters of classic rock airtime: He hosts Nights with Alice Cooper, a syndicated program that airs five to six nights per week on 110 stations around the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, and Ireland. “Dick Clark’s company said the one slot in radio that’s dying around the country is seven to midnight. [They asked], ‘What do you think about taking that spot syndicated?’ ” recalls Cooper. “I said, ‘I’ll take it if you let me play what I want to play.’ ”
So at least five nights per week, Cooper summons tunes by the Yardbirds, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and, of course, Alice Cooper, and gives his underserved-by-radio audience the chance to listen in on conversations between him and his rock contemporaries, including AC/DC’s Brian Johnson, Rush’s Geddy Lee, and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry.
COOPER FIRST took up golf more than 30 years ago, when he was trying to give up his life as “the most functional alcoholic on the planet,” who never missed a show and “never slurred a word” onstage. “I have a totally addictive personality, [and] this game feeds itself,” he says. “I would hit bad shot, bad shot, bad shot … great shot — right down the middle, and it was perfect. And I would say, ‘I want to feel that again.’ Bad shot, bad shot, bad shot, great shot. Then I would realize I want to hit more great shots because I want that buzz.”
At the time, it wouldn’t have done much for Alice’s hard-rocking image to be outed as a golfer. “In the beginning, I had to be a closet golfer,” he admits. But as he and other rockers, including Lou Reed, played on, things changed. “We basically hijacked this game,” says Cooper.
His early golf obsession hasn’t let up. He plays at least five days a week. Actually, there are few activities Cooper signs on for that he doesn’t go at whole hog. He sleeps just four hours a night, and in addition to devoting time to his music, the radio show, golf, his family, and his hard-core shopping habit, Cooper runs the Christian-based Solid Rock Foundation, which is dedicated to helping Phoenix kids stay out of trouble.
I CONNECT with the ball after my backswing, and it’s a glorious moment. The ball sails out, as Cooper says, “100 yards down the middle, with a little hook on it.
“I can tell already you’re going to be addicted,” he adds. “Very few people can take a backswing and hit the ball [on their first time out].”
But, now that he’s confident that I’m hooked (and, somehow, I think it actually matters to him that I fell for his game of choice), Cooper has to leave. Ozzy is waiting. Yes, that Ozzy. Coop — now he’s Coop to me — has to cut through local traffic to record another conversation with Ozzy for his radio show. (“I told my producer, ‘You’ve got to give me at least a couple seconds’ delay so I can decipher what he’s saying,’ ” he says.)
So Coop the golfer changes back into the “Prince of Darkness” — maybe he’ll do a little sword sharpening later on. After all, a new tour’s about to begin. The dolls await.
Contributing editor JENNA SCHNUER found her arms as sore as all get-out after her golf lesson.