Rock wildman Alice Cooper has paid tribute to Mary Whitehouse – and claimed she HELPED his career.
The moral activist begged the government to ban him from setting foot on British soil in the 1970s. She claimed his shocking stage show – with stunts using fake blood – would corrupt young fans. But instead the publicity helped the American rocker pocket a fortune in album sales and gig tickets.
Alice, 75, said: “She was our greatest ally. Her campaign helped get me two million record sales. You must remember one thing, there was no internet or social media at that time – it was all urban legend. You have this guy called Alice Cooper who has snakes, baby dolls chopped up all over the stage and a guillotine or electric chair to execute him at the end of the show.
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“It was like this American Frankenstein coming to take over the youth. Well, the youth were the ones who got it. They said, ‘This is funny, this is good, my parents hate it but I love it’. There was nothing in my show that was ban-able. There was no nudity or bad language. It was just this character who was definable – and that’s what scared everybody.”
Alice – real name Vincent Damon Furnier – features in the new book from BBC Radio Scotland presenter Billy Sloan. In One Love, One Life, the writer and broadcaster shares “stories from the stars” that he has met in his illustrious career. He was in the audience when Alice defied the Mary Whitehouse campaign to play his first UK show in Glasgow in 1972.
Billy said: “He performed with a 20ft long boa constrictor named Eva Marie Snake wrapped around his body. At the end of the show, an executioner led him to the gallows to be hung by the neck. The Glasgow crowd went crazy. We’d never seen anything like it.”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
