Quotes

I have never made fun of religion. Religion is something I don't even want to mess with, because I am really afraid of the clouds opening up and my being struck by lightning. Satanism is something else I don't mess with. I think that the heavy metal bands that do are playing with fire. I have never influenced people in a negative way, and I'm not about to start now.

The hippies wanted peace and love. We [the original Alice Cooper band] wanted Ferraris, blondes and switchblades.

[Regarding rock artists involved in the 2004 "Vote For Change" tour] When I was a kid and my parents started talking about politics, I'd run to my room and put on the Rolling Stones as loud as I could. So when I see all these rock stars up there talking politics, it makes me sick. If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.

To me that's treason. I call it treason against rock n' roll because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics. - criticizing the rock artists involved in the anti-Bush "Vote For Change" tour.

I didn't go to my senior prom, but I played it.

We'd found out that another band was called the Nazz. And I said, "We don't have anything to lose, let's do something that no one's going to relate to at all." I could have said "Jennifer Smith" or "Mary Truesdale", but it just happened that "Alice Cooper" came out. It was the very first name that came out too. There was something axe-murderish about "Alice Cooper". It reminded me of Lizzie Borden (Lizzie Andrew Borden). Alice Cooper - Lizzie Borden. That's got a What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) feeling to it. It was like feminine, but it wasn't feminine. It had some sort of ring to it, something disturbing.

The late sixties and early seventies were kind of a breeding ground for exciting new sounds because easy listening and folk were kind of taking over the airwaves. I think it was a natural next step to take that blissful, easygoing sound and strangle the life out of it.

On stage, I'm this figure, this actor, who does things that people aren't used to seeing and I relish in that reaction. In real life, though, I play golf, I shop and I walk around with no makeup on and my hair in a ponytail. I may not be the typical middle-aged Joe, but I'm closer to normal than you think.

On Frank Zappa: Throughout my life, there are four people I've met who were truly original people. The other three were Groucho Marx, Jim Morrison and Pablo Picasso.

Why be boring? Have some fun. Rock shows should be like movies: I don't go to a movie hoping it'll change my life. When I saw 'Jaws III' (Jaws 3-D (1983)), it wasn't a great movie, but it was worth the seven bucks to see the shark eat the helicopter. It was a wonderful waste of time.

[on the infamous "Chicken Killer Alice" incident] Now everywhere I go the ASPCA is there, "Now no killing chickens." Okay I promise I won't kill any chickens. Go tell that to Col. Sanders. He kills 7 million chickens a day. If I had barbecued the chicken it probably would have been okay.

[About Marilyn Manson] He took a girl's name as his first and wears a hell of a lot of makeup. I wish I'd thought of doing that.

Girls started talking to me and I got hooked on the limelight. That's why I went into rock 'n' roll, for fame and sex.

Everybody relates to trash. Kids get trashed in school, trashed by the cops, trashed at home. We live in a high-pressure era. It's a dangerous world, and trash is what it's all about.

I didn't really care about meeting Rod Stewart or Sonny and Cher. I wanted to meet Groucho Marx, Fred Astaire, Errol Flynn. I wanted to meet the guys that had invented me, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, the real stars.

Oh, I love to lie. That's one of my favorite things in the world, coming up to somebody, especially press people, and telling them some enormous lie that couldn't possibly be true.

I would say 50 per cent of the things you hear about Alice Cooper is urban legend. The same thing with Michael Jackson and Marilyn Manson. It's all partly legend. But everything you've heard about Keith Moon is true - and you've only heard 10 per cent of it! Every day was an event with Keith.

The thing about Keith (Keith Moon) is that I've seen everybody play in this business, and he's still the best drummer I've seen in my life. And that eccentricity showed up in his drumming so that there was nobody like him - Ginger Baker didn't drum like Keith, Mitch Mitchell didn't, Ringo (Ringo Starr) didn't. He was totally unique.

I like horror movies that are over-the-top gory, that's the essence of what I do. I like setting an audience up, giving them a good scare and a good laugh, but it's all based around the songs. Without the 14 top 40 hits, there'd be no cake to put the icing on.

Everyone likes to be scared a little bit.

I loved The Beatles because they wrote such simple songs, which is a really tough thing to do.

I've always thought if you can break the girl's heart by the second verse, it's a hit.

After I started having hits I saw lots of bands who'd been Alice Cooper-ised; KISS came out after us, even David Bowie before Alice Cooper was a mime and a folk singer. Then, when we broke down the barriers, we said you could do music and theatrics at the same time, which opened the door for acts like Marilyn Manson and Slipknot.

We don't use any animals in the shows now. Snakes catch pneumonia very easily. They become ill if you take them from a hot climate to a cold climate. I didn't want to put them through that any more. As long as a 15ft boa constrictor has been fed, they're like a kitten.

Put my head in a guillotine, fine, but put a needle near me and I'm passed out on the floor.

[2010] I'm 62 now and haven't had a drink for 30 years. Back when I was 30, I felt like I was 62 because of the drinking. It's like Benjamin Button. I finish a 90-minute show and feel great - it's the guys in my band in their forties who are panting.

Jesus spent half his time dealing with demons and throwing them out of people. I don't think you just float around when you die - there's judgment, you either go to heaven or hell.

I listen to those albums and I go, "What the hell was I thinking then?" It was a whole different time. There are three albums I don't remember doing. I don't remember doing Dada. I don't remember Special Forces, or Zipper Catches Skin. Those were three albums during my blackout period, and I listen back to them and I go, "Ha... there's some pretty cool stuff on there!".

The funny thing was that The Last Temptation really wasn't part of the trilogy. That was on its own. That was the first thing I wrote as a Christian. And then, it was six years before I wrote Brutal Planet. Brutal Planet was a whole different story. Brutal Planet was a story that was talking about, "What's the world like? Let's get a picture of the future 50 years from now, when all of the systems have failed, church, family, school, politics, every system has failed, and there's no God. Let's say that no one believes in God. Well, what have we got? Now we've got Brutal Planet this horrible place that nobody wants to be." That's what that album was about.

(2005, on quitting drinking) They tell you you're supposed to go to AA meetings, but I didn't go. Instead, I went directly to a bar and I ordered a Coca-Cola. Everybody around me was drinking alcohol and it never occurred to me to have some too. In the 23 years since, it's never been a temptation, and that's interesting because I have absolutely no will power. If I had a beer now, I wouldn't be able to stop and I'd be hiding five bottles of whiskey in my hotel room tonight. That's how volatile a hair trigger it is for me, so I sat in the bar and it was as if all my desire to drink had completely gone.

[on being inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame] It's like graduating because what happens is the guys that you learned from are the ones that vote on you. The Jaggers (Mick Jagger), the McCartneys (Paul McCartney), the Pete Townshends (Pete Townshend), the Jeff Becks (Jeff Beck). And you never feel like you're ever in their league. It just doesn't matter how many records you've sold or how many tickets you've sold, you always look up to those guys as being your big brothers, and you're never going to be quite in their league, which is good. It's not an ego thing, it's a humbling thing.

[on continuing to perform at 65] When people say "Why are you still touring?", I go "Because that's what I do.".

[on his memorabilia] I have a warehouse in L.A. that probably even ghost hunters wouldn't go into late at night. I'm sure the stuff that's living in that warehouse has been through a lot. Guillotines, gallows, electric chairs. Everything you can think of is in that warehouse and there should be a movie about it. I wouldn't stay in there late at night by myself.

You can't out-shock CNN.

In the early days of Pink Floyd, they at one point had run out of funds while touring in the L.A., so they stayed over at my place. One morning I get up and go downstairs to the kitchen, and there's Syd Barret at the breakfast table. He was wearing crushed purple velvet trousers and was staring at a box of corn flakes the same way you and I would watch television. He was looking at something we couldn't see.