Rock Singers

"Take these chances Place them in a box until a quieter time Lights down, you up and die."

"Crazy how it feels tonight Crazy how you make it all alright love You crush me with the things you do And I do for you anything too."

"Don't burn the day away."

"I’m telling you, the Devil is very smart. He’s not going to come out with the horns and the tail. He’s going to come in as the slickest car salesman you ever saw – and I’ve seen some pretty slick pastors on TV. Now that’s not to say they’re all like that. … But every time I hear something that goes a little left of center, I go, ‘What? What was that?’ You know, too much healing on TV, I don’t know about that. That’s showbiz I think."

"I’m understanding that there are cases of transgender, but I’m afraid that it’s also a fad, and I’m afraid there’s a lot of people claiming to be this just because they want to be that,” he said. “I find it wrong when you’ve got a six-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you’re confusing him telling him, ‘Yeah, you’re a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be.’"

"Well, before you are always self—you’re always self-centered. Everything is for you. Your self is God. And we make lousy gods. Humans make lousy gods, I think. We need to let God be God and us be what we are. I think that’s what changes: the focus on who you’re serving. You’re not serving you. You’re serving Christ."

"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."

"Sometimes I think that TV evangelism is one of Satan’s greatest weapons. They put these guys on a pedestal and all of a sudden they get caught with a prostitute, and every Christian I know then is under the gun. So you don’t think that’s kind of set up?"

"From the moment I leave my house or my hotel room, the public owns me. The public made Alice Cooper and I can't imagine ever turning my back on my fans."

"When you believe in God, you've got to believe in the all-powerful God. He's not just God, He's the all-powerful God and He has total control over everyone's life. The Devil, on the other hand, is a real character that's trying his hardest to tear your life apart. If you believe that this is just mythology, you're a prime target because you know that's exactly what Satan wants: To be a myth. But he's not a myth, of this I'm totally convinced. More than anything in the world, I'm convinced of that."

"The minute you step onstage, you get eight feet taller"

"It's so funny that people think I actually ran for President. I am maybe the most un-political person you're ever going to meet. When I put "Elected" out, it was definitely a satire ... "Alice Cooper for President" ... when everybody realized I was running against Nixon, you known, even on a joke level, I think I got a lot of write-in votes."

"I call it treason against rock 'n' roll because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics. ... 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."

"I'm very romantic, I'm extremely romantic. I date my wife. ... That's one thing guys don't understand. This is something that you would be very surprised that I understand, is that men are microwaves and women are pressure cookers. Men want sex, bang; women like romance. Guys, learn how to romance."

"To me, if you are in the same building with Peter Sellers or John Cleese, or any of those guys and holding your own making other people laugh, that’s a compliment."

"He has a woman's name and wears makeup. How original."

"I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing 'Til they got a hold of me. I opened doors for little old ladies, I helped the blind to see. I got no friends 'cause they read the papers. They can't be seen with me and I'm gettin' real shot down And I'm feeling mean. No more Mister Nice Guy, No more Mister Clean, No more Mister Nice Guy, They say he's sick, he's obscene."

"Man's got his woman to take his seed He's got the power — oh She's got the need She spends her life through pleasing up her man She feeds him dinner or anything she can. She cries alone at night too often He smokes and drinks and don't come home at all. Only women bleed..."

"Well we can't salute ya Can't find a flag If that don't suit ya That's a dragSchool's out for summer School's out forever School's been blown to pieces."

"Mistakes are part of the game. It's how well you recover from them, that's the mark of a great player."

"We can only take it so far, because man can only take it so far, lower self can only take it so far, and you have to realize that the public is only at a certain place. We won't see the day when the public accepts what we wanna project, even though they are accepting a lot now. By the time they're accepting it, maybe they'll be too old. ... If it's total freedom, I guess the ultimate thing you can go into is total silence between the audience and performer, with the performer projecting something he doesn't even have to play. A total silence trip is the ultimate. ... We do antagonize them psychologically. People look at us and react. They either go "Wow! Hey-hey-hey, baby!" and we say that's great. They're reacting and that's wonderful. It's better than them sitting there doing nothing. I say make them react — do whatever's in your power to move the audience, and if that's where it is, and there where it is with America, sex and violence, then I say project it."

"Nobody and nothing beats The Simpsons. Even after all this time, it's still the best satire since Monty Python. I haven't had an alcoholic drink in 22 years, but when I did drink I'd go for either Canadian whisky or Budweiser. Sometimes both. For a long time I used to think "Hey you, get off the floor!" was my name."

"I get onstage now with more attitude at fifty-seven than I had when I was twenty. When I was twenty, my attitude was kind of like, "Yeah, yeah…I'm a big rock star." Now, when I get onstage, I go up there, and I am the Moriarty of rock. I am the consummate villain. I am the Hannibal Lector of rock, and I play it like that. Alice just seems like an arrogant bastard or villain who is making the audience feel as though they are lucky to be there when in reality that is exactly the opposite of my personality. With Alice though…it is great to play him or portray him as an Alan Rickman type character who is very condescending. That’s what makes him fun to watch — he's Captain Hook."

"How old are you? Sixteen? S-seventeen? [asks security guard] Is seventeen legal?"

"People that haven't seen us yet are shocked because they think that Alice Cooper must be a female folksinger. They don't expect the whole thing. And the whole thing is a direct product of television and movies and America, 'cause that's where America's based. That's where their heart is from the sex and violence of TV and the movies, and that was our influence."

"If you confine it, you're confining a whole thing. If you make it spontaneous, so that anything can happen, like we don't want to confine or restrict anything. What we can do, whatever we can let happen, you just let it happen. ... we're taking sex, which is probably another half of American entertainment, sex and violence, and we're projecting it, and we're saying this is the way everything is right now. Biologically, everyone is male and female, so many male genes and so many female. And so what it is is we're saying "OK, what's the big deal. Why is everybody so up tight about sex?" About faggots, queers, things like that. That's the way they are. ... People don't accept that they are both male and female, and people are afraid to break out of their sex thing because that's a big insecurity that's doing that. Consequently, people will make fun of us. We don't mind that, that's making them accept more, making fun that we accept that. The thing is this is the way we are. We think it's a gas. ... We like reactions — a reaction is walking out on us, a reaction is throwing tomatoes at the stage, that's a healthy psychological reaction. Reaction's applauding, passing out or throwing up, and all of that is a reaction, and as much of that we can get, the better. I don't care how they react, as long as they react."

"In the early days when I was drinking ... I had a very blurry line about where those two were... but I mean, that happens when you drink twenty-two hours a day. I would just sit and drink. I didn’t know whether or not I was supposed to be Alice when I went out for dinner and was a little lit. Then there was the question about whether or not I should wear the make up because I didn’t really want to disappoint anyone. Was I supposed to get into trouble? Was I supposed to get arrested that night? All of those questions went through my mind. You have to remember though who my older brothers and sisters were though--guys like Jim Morrison and Keith Moon and all the people who were living that life. After they all died, I just sat there and went, “if one generation is going to learn from the next the truth is going to have to be that you don’t have to die to be your character.” I figured then that I had better be able to separate the two. When I go onstage as Alice to this day, I play Alice to the hilt — I play him for everything he is worth, but when I’m offstage, I never think about Alice Cooper. He never occurs to me. .. I walk off stage though and I turn away from the audience, I go back to being me again. Whenever I see an audience, that’s when I turn into Alice. If there was no audience there, there would be no reason to be Alice. … If I tried to be Alice Cooper all the time — I’d either be in an insane asylum or in jail or dead. Alice is just too intense, and you just can’t be Alice all the time. Jim Morrison couldn’t be Jim Morrison, so he died. Jimi Hendrix couldn’t be Jimi Hendrix, so he died. That’s really what killed Janis Joplin, Keith Moon and all the way down the line. They were all animated characters who couldn’t live up to their lifestyle, so I said that I needed to be able to separate the two — that’s why I’m still here."

"I can't save you from yourself, you gotta want it."

"How about a cheer For all those bad girls And all the boys That play that rock and roll? They love it Like you love Jesus. It does the same thing To their souls."

"But if you shoot at everyone you see, Can't be my friend 'cause you might shoot at me."

"I keep waking up all by myself, With a blue jay in my brain. Flappin' his wings, making me sing, it was just about to rain."

"There was Rock 'N' Roll across the dial. When I think of her, it makes me smile."

"And you may think it's all over. But there'll be more just like me Who won't give in; Who'll rise again. Can't stop a man from dreaming."

"There was no use in pretending, No magic left to hear. All the music gave me Was a craving for light beer."

"Last time through I hid my tracks. So well I could not get back. Yeah my way was hard to find. Can't sell your soul for peace of mind."

"One more night, God I've had to fight To keep my line of sight on what's real One more day I fear I've lost my way I don't know how to say what I feel."

"There goes the last DJ Who plays what he wants to play, And says what he wants to say. Hey, hey, hey. There goes your freedom of choice; There goes the last human voice. There goes the last DJ."

"And it's hard to say Who you are these days. But you run on anyway, Don't you baby?"

"Oh my love if I reveal Every secret I've concealed, How many thoughts would you steal, How much of my pain would you feel?"

"And I don't want to mean anything to you, I don't want to tempt you to be true."

"They say be careful who you believe, Be careful who you trust. Did you smile when you pulled the trigger That dropped me in the dust?"

"And I don't want to question or even celebrate All the joy you took and then gave back too late."

"Look deep in the eyes of love And find out what you were looking for."

"Redemption comes to those who wait, Forgiveness is the key."

"As we celebrate mediocrity, All the boys upstairs want to see How much you'll pay for What you used to get for free."

"I've got someone who loves me tonight. I've got over a thousand dollars in the bank, And I'm all right."

"I saw an angel, I saw my fate. I can only thank God it was not too late."

"Now I'm walkin' this street on my own, but she's with me wherever I go."

"Baby, you've got a heart so big, It could crush this town. But I can't hold out forever. Even walls fall down."

"You follow your feelings, you follow your dreams; You follow the leader into the trees. And what's in there waiting, neither one of us knows. You gotta keep one eye open the further you go."