ALICE COOPER: 'I Never Had A Struggle With Alcohol'

Amy Harris of CityBeat recently conducted an interview with legendary rocker Alice Cooper. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

CityBeat: I have interviewed many of your past guitarists, Jason Hook and Al Pitrelli and people that have toured with you and everybody always has spectacular things to say about you as a mentor and just to be around. One of my questions is how do you choose band members on your tours now?

Cooper: Honestly, I am very instinctive about guitar players. Of course, the guitar players are the gunslingers. They are the guys that you can sit and listen to and go, "When I quit singing, I want to hear something take over," and it better be a guitar that can take over what I'm doing when I step back, I want that guitar player to step up. So getting a Damon Johnson, when we first got Damon, every guitar player wants to stand back a little bit and I say, "No, no, no, when it is your solo, you take two steps forward into the light and let it go." A lot of times lead singers don't want their lead guitar player to share the limelight. I want everybody in that band to have their moment on stage where they are the star. So when you get (young Australian guitarist) Orianthi, who is a natural, she is a natural star up there. I mean the girl is such a great player.

CityBeat: Is she going to be with you?

Cooper: Yes, I mean she is such a great character for a Alice Cooper show. And you get Ryan Roxie on this tour and Ryan is a show unto himself. He has his own production going on over there which I really like because he really brings it every night. And Tommy, who I have in the middle as a rhythm guitar player, has got his own show going on. It's great to get guys to come out of their shells and just when you get on stage be a rock star. I don't want you to be a sideman.

CityBeat: I know you gave up drugs and alcohol a long time ago for good reasons. Is there still ever a struggle on the road to stay sober?

Cooper: No, never has been. I was literally healed from that. People say you are cured, I say no, it was much different. I never went to AA. I never had to do any of that. I came out of a hospital and it was gone. It was gone as if I had cancer and cancer was gone the next day. It was totally taken away from me. I never had a struggle with alcohol. When I came out of the hospital, I was absolutely straight as an arrow. I never had a desire or a craving for alcohol which even the doctors say is weird. I know because I have a lot of friends that are in AA and they struggle with it all the time. They say, "How do you do it?" and I say, "I am not an alcoholic anymore. I was one but I am not anymore." I wouldn't challenge myself. In other words, I wouldn't sit around and say, "Well I think I will take a drink of beer." Because I know that could be a trigger that takes me back to where I was. So I won't even approach that, but at the same time I don't have any desire to do that.

CityBeat: Are you working on any new music, maybe another album?

Cooper: The "Welcome 2 My Nightmare" album has been out for about a year now and that was our highest-charting album for quite a long time. So after this tour, we will go back in the studio again, Bob Ezrin and I will, but we were very, very happy with "Welcome 2 My Nightmare".

Read the entire interview from CityBeat.