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
Yet another reason to like him.
L
'sokay, he is also still breathing.
Yes, all that is true. I am a huge Type O fan, mainstream folks really missed out. Black Sabbath meets the Beatles.
But come on, I am Catholic. I know what some of his crap was about, he was actually a smart avowed atheist, it was brought up in almost every interview. He wrote about it, just so many lbs of meat, right? I never expected him to come back, but he did.
Freegards
I thought of you reading that headline posted here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXpdJZP7cEs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqNnL07_SEQ
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen him sing ‘Vengeance Is Mine’ atop a 20 foot ladder, and at the end of the song, he points at the audience and screams “REPENT”.
It was epic.
I am limp.
:D
That was my first thought, as well.
I know he’s sponsored a youth ministry for teens for a while now.
I think he was kidding himself.
Several of his songs dealt with his mother’s ongoing suffering agony and in my opinion, that is where his “atheism” laid.
Not true atheism, frustration over not being able to help her.
The most poignant song would be “It’s Never Enough”.
Not gonna post a link here as it really a man screaming at God for not easing his mom’s pain.
And he was a total momma’s boy.
Read the lyrics to “Nettie”.
I never bought into his oh-so-rebellious atheist drivel.
I don’t believe he did, either.
He was just mad at God.
http://alicecoopersolidrock.com/
Most ironic and funny, he’s a Sunday school teacher at his church.
[does he say “School’s out” every time it’s over?]
That title scared me
bump
I met him in the early 1970’s. He was a genuine, down to earth person then. Not a prick, not arrogant, not “too good” to mingle with “common folk.” The stage act is pure act. Glad to read about his faith.
My Dad said the same thing. He ended up being seated next to him on a cross-country plane flight in the Seventies. At first he cringed, wondering what was going to happen sitting next to a shock rocker, but my Dad told us that Cooper turned out to be a very nice person and they talked together for most of the flight. Cooper told him straight out that the whole shock rock thing was an act and he wasn’t like that in real life.
Scared me too. So glad he saw the light. God bless him....;)
You had the paddles charged up, I hope?
:D
Not a bad golfer either.
Unlike other bands [AXL/DC *cough cough*] when their front man died, they did not replace him with some also-ran.
There will never be another voice like his.
Although The Bronx casket Crew singer is passable.
Imagine my reaction.
o.0
I see the Admins changed it, thank Mod.
[too late for *some* of us, though] >.<
We’d had have FReepers dropping like flies, all night.
:D
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