Alice Cooper
In the corona pandemic, the rocker remains optimistic
Alice Cooper has not been on tour since the beginning of March 2020.
© earMUSIC / Jenny Risher
Rock icon Alice Cooper looks back on the Corona period so far in an interview. 2020 is "the strangest year ever," he explains.
Alice Cooper (73, "Poison") became famous as a shock rocker who stages executions in gruesome stage shows and lets himself be tucked into straitjackets. Has the gentleness of old age struck him? In times of pandemics, the rocker is optimistic. Looking back on 2020, Cooper said in an interview with the news agency spot on news: "The world has pulled together in many places to help people who could not help themselves. I have seen a lot of cooperation."
"People who didn't want to wear masks wore masks. I was one of them – but I wore a mask," explains the rocker. "I think I've never washed my hands so often in my life. But I've seen the whole world do that and I said, 'Well, let's work together and beat this thing.'" 2020 will " go down in history as perhaps the strangest year ever ".
Alice Cooper played his last concerts before the lockdown in Germany
"When a tiny germ that nobody can see brings the world to a standstill, then you get a whole new view of the world," continues the 73-year-old. In the spring of last year, the rocker was shortly before the first lockdown in Berlin for the show "Rock Meets Classic". "When the show was over, we got the advice: 'If you are not out of Germany in the next 30 hours, we will close the borders,'" says Alice Cooper. "That was on March 7th and we haven't been on tour since then. That was a year ago. It's very strange."
In a way, you look back and think, "Well, maybe we took a year off," Cooper continues. "But I always look at it from the optimistic side: the families stayed together, had to stay at home and pull themselves together."
In the coronavirus pandemic, Alice Cooper gave his new song "Hanging On By A Thread (Don't Give Up)" a new text. The song was actually about suicide, but the rocker rewrote the second verse into a kind of hymn of hope. "And so I wrote the lines: 'Let's not surrender to the virus. Let's stop being victims of this virus. Let's face it like a tyrant and tell him we're human. We'll be here a lot longer than you. And you'll be gone. We'll still be here. '"
Cooper wanted to give the world population the chance "not to be the victim, but the aggressor". "Don't be the one who is being beaten up, but the one who is being beaten up by the virus," he continues.
"There is no more attitude than Alice Cooper, The Stooges or MC5"
Even before the corona pandemic, the rocker was working on a new album entitled "Detroit Stories", which will be released on February 26th. The album is not only about Detroit in terms of content, it was also recorded there, the songs were written there and all the musicians on the album come from there.
Cooper has a special bond with the city in the American Midwest: The 73-year-old was born there. "Detroit is one of those cities that are often the target of jokes," explains the rocker. "It's the worst place you can go – but that's not true. Detroit is a tough city. Most of the kids there, the rock and roll kids and their parents, work in the car factories and aren't like that cultured like the people in Los Angeles or New York. They don't like soft rock, they want hard rock and that their bands are very aggressive and have attitude. Look at the bands that come from there. More attitude than Alice Cooper, The Stooges or MC5 doesn't exist. "
Detroit is an "interesting, strange place" that Alice Cooper left when she was ten. "After that, I lived in Arizona and California. But when people ask me where I'm from, I say Detroit because, in a way, it makes me proud to have lived there and to be from there. It's a tough city, but it's a real music city. " Detroit is the "hard rock capital of the United States".