Alice Cooper has great advice for you, whether you’re a golfer or a rocker: “Surround yourself with the most interesting and talented people you can – celebrities, pros. Whoever plays better than you. Whoever inspires you.”
For me, one of those people was Alice Cooper. In the early 1970s, Alice became, literally, my dream mentor, the person from whom I sought advice as I slept and dreamed. Dream: Alice and several other musicians were in my room at my parents’ house, sitting around jamming on guitars. I had a burning question I wanted to ask Alice. He was busy, and I could tell from his expression he didn’t really want to be bothered, but I asked him anyway. “For the past couple of years, for me, it’s always been Alice Cooper,” I said, “Now it’s Roxy Music.” I was troubled. I was asking if it made sense to him, because I felt a massive sea change coming on. Alice, my mentor, indicated that yes, it followed, it made sense. Alice inspired me.
And Alice certainly followed his own advice. While I lay in front of my parents’ stereo console in 1968 listening to Hendrix and Joplin and realizing that these were the only people who understood me, Alice was newly come to Los Angeles from Phoenix and actually hanging out with them, them and Jim Morrison, John Lennon (a big Alice fan), Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, all the best musicians of the day. Alice’s genius was recognized by people like Groucho Marx, who became a good friend. Alice was the only rocker ever honored by the Friar’s Club.
Alice Cooper, Golf Monster alternates chapters between Alice Cooper, the rocker, and Alice Cooper, the fanatical golfer. It tells a tale of coping with addiction, trading alcoholism for golf addiction. Though Alice admits he was as womanizing as the next guy in his early years, he married and has, by all accounts, been faithful to his wife of some decades. Now, normally, I would take any musician mentioning the word “faithful” with a grain of salt, but I was fortunate to meet Alice a couple of times in the eighties, and he made a point of letting people know he was married and faithful to his wife. He did it in kind of a perverted way, pulling out a gold handcuff and quipping that he won’t say where the other one is, but he did it, nonetheless.
Alice’s book will be hugely entertaining to you and offer plenty of celebrity anecdotes whether you are a rocker or a golfer, or something in between. Alice reveals himself to be a fascinatingly complex, driven, focused, hard-working and hard-playing individual. According to the book, a couple of SNL skits were likely written in the bathroom at his home. Although he never considered himself to be a hippie, when he and that amazing original Alice Cooper line-up arrived in L.A. from Phoenix, they were the longest hair in town. It’s just that some people can’t be confined to a classification. Alice Cooper is and always will be Alice Cooper. - Paula Brown
