By: Robert Cavuoto - Guitar International.com

Super Duper Alice Cooper is not just another run of the mill Rock Star Documentary, but rather its a very unique look into the life and story of a young man named Vincent Furnier, (Alice Cooper), who had a longing for rock ‘n’ roll stardom and a wanting to push the limits of excess both on stage and off.

Determined to strike fear in the hearts of people everywhere as the ultimate shock rock villain, Alice Cooper set out on a journey to take over the world with his macabre shock-show and his menacing look.

Super Duper Alice Cooper is a fascinating documentary that goes beyond the make-up and music with a deeper story of a teenage Dr. Jekyll, whose rock ‘n’ roll Mr. Hyde almost kills him. The focal point being how the Alice Cooper band got started and how an underdog who never was to amount to anything proved the world wrong.



Debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival this past April, Super Duper Alice Cooper is the first ever documentary on Alice where we see the logic of this mad genius along with old photos, archive film footage, and animation.

Robert Cavuoto of Guitar International.com had the immense pleasure of sitting down with Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer, Alice Cooper, about the his new documentary and to get the inside scoop on his new cover CD due out this summer.


Robert Cavuoto: I enjoyed the movie, Super Duper Alice Cooper. I learned a few things about you that I didn’t know. Was it difficult to encapsulate your entire career in an hour and a half?

Alice Cooper: There were so many stories left out, like the ones with Elvis, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones. It was basically about how the career took off. What happened and what wasn’t supposed to happen. We were the band least likely to make it commercially. We had records and a notorious stage show which people had to digest.


Robert: Was it difficult to see yourself so messed up and emaciated?

Alice Cooper: Like the interview with Tom Snyder, that was a little uncomfortable to watch. I have never ever talked about the drug abuse up until this point in 1000s of interviews. Everyone knew me as a happy alcoholic. Unlike Sherlock Holmes who always refers to himself as the functional psychopathic. I was the functional alcoholic. I never missed a show nor slurred a word. I would do talk shows like Johnny Carson and you would never know that I was a half a bottle of whiskey into it. But when it came to drugs, I always thought it was very uncool for Alice to fall into that trap.

Being an addictive personality, I didn’t have a chance. When the cocaine blizzard happened in California I was in the middle of it. I never talked about until this documentary.

Robert: As you mentioned about the additive personality, do you consider golf a healthy addiction to replace the drugs and alcohol?

Alice Cooper: For a person that tours six month out of the year, golf is the most perfect thing in the world. We didn’t get into it on the documentary because it happened later.
The deal was that when you go on stage at 10:00 pm on Tuesday in Wichita and you wake up at 8:00 am, what are you going to do, go to the mall again?
Most rock’ n rollers were athletes at a time in their life. The ones I introduced to golf got addicted to it. You can go play golf five times a week at five different golf courses and hang out with your buddies. Doesn’t matter if you’re any good, just that you go out and play.
Golf wasn’t a cure for me as I was already healed from the alcoholism. It was more of a spiritual thing that God took away for me. Golf helped kill the time that I didn’t know what to do with. I shot 74 by the way this morning! [Laughing]

Robert: You’ve had so many ups and downs in your career, is there any one period of time where things seemed the most hopeless?

Alice Cooper: There is that moment in anybody’s life especially a rock ‘n’ roll guy where you are living minute to minute and album to album. Even though you get really big this year, next year it doesn’t mean anything. You’re only as good as your last album.
I got to a point where we made three or four albums in a row that didn’t do anything. My real fans loved those albums, but they were so experimental and different from Billion Dollar Babies and School’s Out which were both #1 and Welcome to My Nightmare which was in the Top 5. Those were the albums that were huge. Then I had four albums and they were cool but non-existent.
I think in that period of time from a career point of view, I said I’m never going to make another hit album again. Trash came after that and it sold 5 million copies. As soon as I got sober all of a sudden things got okay again. It took me going into a hospital and getting sober before I made another hit album.

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