Posted on 04/26/2016 8:01:53 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
He has been called the godfather of shock-rock, mixing elements of horror movies into acts that have included an unpalatable array of guillotines, fake blood, baby dolls and boa constrictors. Yet many would be surprised to learn of his Christian roots and his homecoming to the faith after sowing his oats as the ultimate prodigal.
“My father was a pastor and my grandfather was an evangelist, actually both were evangelists,” Cooper told the Harvest Show. “I grew up in the church and all my friends were church kids. I had so much fun. I was in church Sunday, Wednesday night, Friday night. All my social life was based around kids in the church.”
When the Beatles invaded the American music scene in the ’60s, Cooper (born Vincent Furnier) was captivated and formed a band called The Spiders among his classmates, mimicking the Beatles’ style. After a couple years of recording songs, he realized something was missing from the rock scene.
Alice Cooper record cover“I looked around and thought, ‘There’s no villains in rock and roll, why not create rock’s ultimate villain?’ Furnier created a character known as Alice Cooper, who appeared on stage as a debased female killer wearing tattered women’s clothing, with smeared deep, dark black eyeliner on his face.
At first, he didn’t think “playing” the role of an antihero on stage would affect his Christianity. “I didn’t think about how that might affect my faith at all. The Bible is full of villains. I thought, ‘I’ll be this villain.’”
“I gave Alice his perimeters, those areas he wouldn’t go past,” he told the Harvest Show. Eventually, the band adopted the same name as its infamous lead.
Their first big success came with the single “I’m Eighteen,” which reached number 21 on Billboard’s top 100 in early 1971.
Cooper’s 1971-72 tours featured a stage show with mock fights and gothic torture scenes, Cooper hugging a boa constrictor, chopping bloodied baby dolls, and a staged execution.
In 1972 their single “School’s Out” went into the Top 10 in the U.S. and to number one in the UK. The band horrified parents and outraged politicians in the U.K. A British Labor MP petitioned the home secretary to have the group banned from performing in the country and one of their songs was banned by the BBC.
Furnier aka Cooper was drawn into a self-destructive lifestyle and left his Christian roots behind. “The things you heard about us were pretty insane,” he told Mulatschag TV in Austria. “We were probably a threat to the pubic at the time. We were the ones who lived. Most of our friends died trying to be rock stars.”
Cooper counted among his friends Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Keith Moon. “I drank with these guys every night and I watched every one of them go down. The reason is that they tried to be their character off stage,” he recalls.
His heavy drinking began to exact a toll on his body. “I drank for a long time. I was throwing up blood every morning. I was really a bad alcoholic. I wasn’t cruel or mean, but I was definitely self-destructive,” he says. At its worst, reports said he was consuming two cases of Budweiser and a bottle of whisky every day.
Following his 1977 US tour, Cooper checked himself into a sanitarium for treatment of his alcoholism. Six years later, he was hospitalized for alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver.
“I had to go through the cure,” he told Mulatschag TV. “I came out of the hospital and it was a miracle. My alcoholism was gone. God took it away from me. It was an absolute miracle. In 30 years I have never once had a craving for alcohol. That doesn’t happen every day.”
After Cooper hit bottom and he saw God’s hand in his recovery, it forced him to reevaluate his faith. He reconciled with his estranged wife, Sheryl Goddard, a ballerina instructor and choreographer who had performed in his shows in the 1970s. Her father was a Baptist pastor.
The two began to attend church together in Phoenix. “There was a pastor in Phoenix who was hell-fire. There would be 6000 people there and he was talking to me, every Sunday. Of course he wasn’t, but he was, just nailing me. Every week I’d come out exhausted and I said, ‘I don’t want to go back.’ It was like torture, but I always came back.”
God had been wooing the heart of a prodigal to come home. “I finally decided I had to go to one side or the other. I had to make a decision because I was so convicted. The Lord really convicted me,” he says.
Alice Cooper returned to the Father’s house, and God met him with outstretched arms and the love reserved for every prodigal who comes home.
A God-shaped hole in Cooper’s heart was filled. “When that’s filled you’re really satisfied. That’s where I am right now. I’m very young in the faith even though I grew up in it, so I do a lot of Bible reading and Bible studies,” he says.
He and his wife attend “a good, strong, Bible-teaching church,” but I’m still a rock and roller going out on tour. “I don’t do it in the same spirit I used to do it in. I watch the songs lyrically. Some of the songs I used to do were way over the line.”
“Before I was self-centered. Everything was for me. Self was God. Humans make really lousy gods. We have to let God be God and let us be what we are. My focus changed. Instead of serving me I began to serve Christ.”
“I am the perfect example of the prodigal son.”
Source: ASSIST News Service, GodReports
No kidding! And you’re welcome, Salamander. When I saw the title I thought of you.
Turns out that the original title, real author’s name, original source, link and date of original publication were not used by the Poster here.
A blogger copied and pasted the entire article onto his blog and attributed the work he copied as his own. The blogger made up his own click-bait title which was then copied here.
You’re without question the first I thought of here!
There is one thing of no doubt.....Alice Cooper and Lou Reed at one time shared the best damned rock guitar duo I remember....man...two sorta understated and underrated virtuosos
Dick Wagner (rip) and Steve Hunter!
Thank you Bob Ezrin
Thank you Mitch Ryder
Rock and Roll Animal never slows down showcasing those guys....
The intro to Sweet Jane.....I think Hunter arranges the intro and solos it till you hear clapping as Lou walks on stage....then Dick drops in
That album changed my musical perspective at aged 17 and blasted Lou off from Velvet critically important but not really listenable....I mean Nico...bless her heart and rest her soul....singing?
Anyhow....I still listen to RNRA....my boys heard it first time loud....and were like damn that is remarkable
Again, thank you SO much.
“Click bait” = “Nearly sudden cardiac death”, sometimes.
;D
[accursed bloggers!]
LOL
You have no idea how touching it is, to know that people actually have a heart for me, here.
:)
He dumped Raquel for wife-to-be Sheryl.
What that did to Raquel’s ego can only be imagined.
:D
Well of course!
It’s not something I’m used to, in ‘real life’ so it matters an awful lot.
:)
Killer album tour, lead on bands were Eagles and Chech and Chong. The Denver Barn-o-see-um.
Killer album tour, lead on bands were Eagles and Chech and Chong. The Denver Barn-o-see-um.
Never cared much for his music except a couple of the early songs. He used top notch musicians though, Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter rank right at the top of guitar players.
Blackie Lawless for sure
Oh, and Brian Welch and Fieldy from Korn also.
Mark Stein of Vanilla Fudge became a practicing Jew, returning to his childhood faith.
Mitch Ryder: we were playing in FL when our guitarist abruptly quit. I forget how, but we had a contact for Mitch’s guitarist Jim McCarty (he played the famous line in “Devil With a Blue Dress On”), who had just quit “Cactus.”
He flew to FL and we played together for 3 nights. Turns out we weren’t auditioning him, he was auditioning us.
Hey Salamander, whats up? Long time no see.
Rock’n’Roll Animal is in my top five live albums, just a fantastic guitar driven frenzy of rock. Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter play duel lead guitar, and later went on to join the Alice Cooper band. I could never get into the Velvet era or his solo studio albums. Supposedly Velvet fans don’t dig it too much and Lou Reed himself came out and said he wasn’t a fan of it. Maybe it wasn’t whiny or brooding enough.
Freegards
Alice’s story about fleeing from a first-and-last date with an overly-aggressive Raquel Welch is pretty funny.
He absconded!
I agree! I think he is also the one who said; am I am paraphrasing here, “If you rely on some Hollywood celebrity for advice on who to vote for, then you are a bigger moron than they are.”
Bfl
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