Episode 113: Alice Cooper

Pinball Profile·podcast_episode·12m 35s·analyzed·Mar 9, 2018

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.022

TL;DR

Alice Cooper discusses rock legacy and new Spooky Pinball machine release.

Summary

Jeff Teolis interviews Alice Cooper about his rock legacy, touring schedule, and the upcoming Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle pinball machine by Spooky Pinball. Cooper discusses his continued creative drive at age 70, collaborations with Bob Ezrin and other artists, his side project Hollywood Vampires with Johnny Depp and Joe Perry, and his upcoming role in Jesus Christ Superstar. The interview emphasizes Cooper's enthusiasm for the pinball machine release and his broader entertainment philosophy.

Key Claims

Alice Cooper just finished touring 105 cities at the end of last year and is scheduled for another month and a half of touring
high confidence · Alice Cooper states this directly in response to Jeff's opening question
Alice Cooper survived a fake nuclear attack in Hawaii and a head-on collision in Phoenix without injury
high confidence · Alice Cooper recounts these near-death experiences when discussing turning 70
Alice Cooper's mother is 93 years old and still active (likely cleaning the garage)
high confidence · Alice Cooper references his mother's age and philosophy about retirement
Alice Cooper has 47 years of recording history with producer Bob Ezrin
high confidence · Jeff Teolis states this figure when introducing the Paranormal album discussion
The Paranormal album features Larry Mullen Jr. (U2 drummer) and reunites the original band for three songs
high confidence · Alice Cooper describes the Paranormal album creation process in detail
Charlie Emery of Spooky Pinball sent Alice Cooper extensive scripts for pinball call-outs
high confidence · Jeff Teolis mentions this and Alice confirms he participated in the recording
Alice Cooper has seen the Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle pinball machine and describes it as 'really out there'
high confidence · Alice Cooper confirms he has seen the machine and provides positive assessment
Alice Cooper will play Herod in a live production of Jesus Christ Superstar on Easter Sunday with John Lennon playing Jesus
high confidence · Alice Cooper discusses upcoming Broadway/live production role

Notable Quotes

“For a guy who just turned 70, you're not slowing down.”
Jeff Teolis @ ~2:30 — Sets up Alice's discussion of his continued touring and creative drive despite age
“My mom is 93, and she's probably cleaning the garage right now. And her theory is if you retire, you expire.”
Alice Cooper @ ~3:00 — Explains Alice's philosophy on staying active and continuing to tour
“If you think you've written your best song and you think that you've done your best show, then you should retire. But I don't feel like I've done either one of those yet.”
Alice Cooper @ ~3:30 — Core statement of Alice's creative motivation and refusal to slow down
“When I told Johnny about this, I was doing Dark Shadows with him in London, and he said, well, it'd be great to put a band together and just do songs from all of our dead, drunk friends.”
Alice Cooper @ ~12:00 — Explains the origin story of Hollywood Vampires as a tribute project
“You know, I used to say that you know you've made it... If you're a joke on the Bob Hope Christmas special, if you're an answer on Jeopardy, or if you're a Pez dispenser, maybe now it's if you have a pinball machine named after you.”
Alice Cooper @ ~15:30 — Alice reflects on significance of having a pinball machine dedicated to him
“Pinball is maybe a lost art... It's a physical game. You get done playing pinball after about an hour and you tired because you standing up... You physically actually getting a workout.”
Alice Cooper @ ~17:00 — Alice endorses pinball as a legitimate form of entertainment and physical activity
“I got addicted to golf when I got unaddicted to alcohol and drugs. So I believe that if you're going to get addicted to drugs and alcohol, why can't you get addicted to something positive?”
Alice Cooper @ ~19:00 — Reveals Alice's personal philosophy on addiction and personal growth

Entities

Alice CooperpersonSpooky PinballcompanyAlice Cooper's Nightmare Castlegame Charlie Emeryperson Jeff TeolispersonBob EzrinpersonHollywood VampiresorganizationJohnny DepppersonJoe Perryperson

Signals

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community_signal: Alice Cooper expressing strong support for pinball as legitimate entertainment medium and endorsing the machine release
high · Alice: 'Pinball is maybe a lost art... It's a physical game... you physically actually getting a workout.' Jeff confirms: 'I don't have to sell me on pinball. I'm a huge, huge fan.'
?
community_signal: Spooky Pinball worked extensively with Alice Cooper on voice call-outs and scripts, demonstrating collaborative approach with celebrity licensor
high · Jeff: 'Charlie Emery of Spooky Pinball... sent you a ton of scripts for pinball call-outs.' Alice confirms: 'Yeah, I've seen it... we did that. That's what makes it really fun is that when you're playing it you actually get Alice talking to you.'
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announcement: Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle officially discussed as imminent release by Spooky Pinball; Alice confirms he has seen and approved the machine
high · Alice states: 'I've seen it' and describes it as 'really out there' and 'really a fun machine to play'; Jeff mentions it will be available at Texas Pinball Festival 'in a few weeks'
?
licensing_signal: Alice Cooper actively engaged with pinball machine development and appears genuinely enthusiastic about the collaboration with Spooky Pinball
high · Alice praises the machine, confirms participation in voice work, and positions the pinball machine as achievement marker: 'maybe now it's if you have a pinball machine named after you'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.038

0:00

It's time now for a special Pinball Profile. I'm your host Jeff Teels. You can find our group on Facebook. We're also on Twitter at Pinball Profile. Email us pinballprofile at gmail.com and please subscribe on either iTunes, Stitcher or Google Play.

0:30

School's out for summer No more Mr. Nice Guy No more Mr. Clean I've been waiting so long to sing my song You're poison running through my veins You're poison With 27 studio albums and millions and millions sold, he is a rock legend and a little pinball machine about to be released by Spooky Pinball. It's a thrill to be talking once again to Alice Cooper. Alice, how you doing? Thanks, Jeff. I am doing great. We just finished 105 cities at the end of last year, and we're going out for another month and a half on this one. And then I do Jesus Christ Superstar, and then I go out with the Vampires. It is a busy year. For a guy who just turned 70, you're not slowing down. And getting to 70 was a little scary for you, wasn't it? Yeah, it was, you know, being in a fake nuclear attack in Hawaii, and then a head-on collision in Phoenix, and somehow I walked out without a bruise. So, you know, my guardian angel is working overtime on me. Well, thank God for that. And I see some of your rock contemporaries doing some farewell tours. Elton John and Ozzy Osbourne doing another one, by the way. That's not you. You're not slowing down, are you? Not a bit. You know, my mom is 93, and she's probably cleaning the garage right now. And her theory is if you retire, you expire. So, you know, I've never felt better in my life. I'm in perfect condition, you know, so there's absolutely no reason to retire. I think if you think you've written your best song and you think that you've done your best show, then you should retire. But I don't feel like I've done either one of those yet. a lot of people say all the great songs have been written. And my idea is that if you think you've written your best song, if you think you've done your best show, then you should retire. You know, I don't really think I think I've still got my best songs in me. And I still think my show I can do better shows than I did before. I think that's what drives you. If you ask Paul McCartney right now, have you written your best song? He'd probably say, no, I'm still writing my best songs. So, you know, there you go. You have to stay, that's what drives you forward. Alice, last year you put out the album Paranormal and worked with Bob Ezrin once again. That 47 years of recording history with Bob Does time fly or what You know it so funny because I don really live in the past at all I not one of those guys that goes hey remember when When I talked to Bob Ezra it always about what next You know, we might refer to certain things that we did in the past. Like, they'll say, remember that song we did on, you know, Go to Hell? Yeah. Let's get something like that. But, you know, this version of it. Oh, yeah. Our reference points may go there, but we never really go back to what we did. And, you know, on Paranormal, it was more like, let's do stuff we haven't done. Getting Larry Mullen Jr. on drums was something that was really exciting for us because it was so different. It was so, you know, unpredictable to use U2's drummer. And he was perfect for what we were doing. It was so much fun to work with, a guy that's such an artistic drummer. and then bringing the original band back on for three songs. That was great. Billy Gibbons lent his guitar to one of the songs that we'll be doing tomorrow night in the show here. So everything just kind of worked out.

4:14

The whole idea behind this album was, let's write 12 songs that get this all off. And if these songs get us off, then it should be a pretty good album. Well, I look at your career, and music aside, some of the things you've done have blown me away. In fact, it is the 30th anniversary of when you ran for the wild party in Arizona to be the governor. Some might say you'd be better than certain politicians. Are you going to run again? No. I mean, I hate politics with every ounce of my body. When I run, it's always a satire, of course. And, you know, if you're going to be a politician, you have to have a certain amount of indictments. I just don't have that many indictments. My job is to take you as far away from the political arena as possible. you know i mean we all sit and we watch cnn and we go oh my gosh really really and then you go to an alice cooper concert you're not going to get any of that we're going to take you as far away from that as you can be for two hours so i kind of look at myself as a relief from what's going on in the world when i'm with the alice cooper band it's very theatrical you know it's very very produced and and rehearsed and it's like a it's like a broadway show almost except that it's alice Cooper and it's hard rock. When you're with the Vampires, it's much more of being like a bar band, you know, because you've got Joe Perry on guitar, you've got Johnny Depp on guitar, both of them are lead guitar players. And basically, anybody that yells something out from the audience, we could play it. So we're the world's most expensive bar band. And it's just really fun to not have to be Alice Cooper when I'm with the Vampires. You know, I talk to the audience. I don't necessarily play Alice the way I play Alice in my show. Well, from the stories I've heard, the Hollywood Vampires came from a kind of a drinking game in LA, isn't that correct? It was. Well, we would meet every night at the Rainbow Bar and Grill, and it would be me and Harry Nilsson and John Lennon and Keith Moon you know Mickey Dolan Bernie Taupin a bunch of guys that would meet there every night and drink And you know the bar kept they said well we only see you at night and you drink all night so you like vampires So we became the Hollywood Vampires When I told Johnny about this, I was doing Dark Shadows with him in London, and he said, well, it'd be great to put a band together and just do songs from all of our dead, drunk friends, all of the guys that we used to drink with that died. And I said, that's a great idea. So, I mean, it's just sort of a side project, but it ended up being bigger than that. It was great seeing you in Dark Shadows doing the Ballad of Dwight Frye and a lot of fun, too. I love seeing you in movies, and we'll get to Jesus Christ Superstar in a little bit. But you mentioned Joe Perry and Johnny Depp. You're about to have something in common with those two guys. They have pinball machines, and the Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle is about to be released in a few weeks. How fun is that to have a machine made after you? You know, and the cool thing is, is I've seen the machine, and it's really, really out there. You know, it's really a fun machine to play because it goes through the nightmare. You know, you have to get through Alice's nightmare. And really, really cool. You know, I used to say that you know you've made it. This was in the 70s. If you're a joke on the Bob Hope Christmas special, if you're an answer on Jeopardy, or if you're a Pez dispenser, maybe now it's if you have a pinball machine named after you. Well, you're discrediting the fact you were great on the Muppets too, but back to that pinball machine. I have wanted to see this pinball machine for so long. When ACDC came out and Metallica and other pinball games of rock legends, I thought Alice makes perfect sense because of all the possibilities that you can do. I see what you do on stage, being hung, the snakes, the guillotine, so much more. You should see the notes for our show, some of the things that we go, oh, that's a great idea, and then we go, let me see let's look at the logistics of that okay that might not be able to travel you know because you have to think about what's going to be able to get from louisville to st louis in one night and uh some of it you really can't do it unless you go into a theater and have a residency somewhere where you can set a theater up then it can work so and that's always a possibility too You know, I wouldn't mind going to Broadway and taking Welcome to My Nightmare and doing it as a Broadway show, you know, but not watering it down, making it as hard rock as it's ever been, you know, but putting it in one place so you can affect, you can do a lot more things. You can have the audience, you can even put a smell into the audience. You can put like little electric shocks in the seat, you know, just so they get a little jolt once in a while. You can do all kinds of things if you're set into a theater. whereas you can't do that when you're doing arenas every night. I talked with Charlie Emery of Spooky Pinball a few weeks ago and he said he sent you a ton of scripts for pinball call-outs. Was that fun to do and have you seen the game yet? Yeah, I've seen it. I've seen it and we did that.