Alice Cooper Defends War On Terrorism, Drinks Blood of Eviscerated Rat

Weird. I was just watching VH-1's 100 Greatest Hard Rock Bands, and I was really digging Alice Cooper (whose music I don't know at all, apart from the fun "School's Out" and lame "I'm Eighteen," which didn't even appeal to me when I was about to turn eighteen).

I'm always surprised by rock guys who are 1) smart 2) articulate 3) actually polite and nice-seeming. Dave Navarro is another guy like this. Actually, he's sickeningly nice, but still, likeable enough.

And now Alice Cooper, generous and interesting in his praise for other rock acts, says he enjoys the heavy metal thunder we're delivering to terrorists:

INTERVIEWER: A lot of people in rock and roll, it's very fashionable to despise George W. Bush. That's not a view you subscribe to, is it?

ALICE COOPER: Well, I think if you're in a war, you don't want a poodle in there, you want a pit bull. I don't think that you want a guy in there going, "Gee, I don't know. Maybe. Could be." I think you want a guy in there who's either going to win it or lose it.

...

INTERVIEWER: It doesn't worry you, the false connection that was made between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, all that stuff that's been shown?

ALICE COOPER: No. It doesn't bother me because I honestly think it's all connected.

INTERVIEWER: The one thing we do know about 9/11 is that nobody involved in it actually came from Iraq. That's probably the one thing we absolutely know.

ALICE COOPER: Well, it's probably true, but I can't see them going, "Oh, gosh." The guys in Iraq going, "Gee, how horrible for America." I think there's a general feeling in that world that if America falls they'll be in a much better state, so we have to view those people in the same boat. I don't see much difference between the al-Qaeda and Iraq - not the people, I'm talking about the governments. The people, the poor people, are the victims.

INTERVIEWER: Saddam and Osama bin Laden actually hated each other.

ALICE COOPER: Hated each other a lot, I'll bet. They traded Rolls Royces. You don't think there was a cigar going around when that happened at 9/11. I'll bet you there was.

For a dunderheaded genre of music, there seem to be a lot of fairly intelligent people in heavy metal/hard rock. (And an awful lot of ninnies in more "sophisticated" genres.)

And hard-rockers/heavy metal-ists skew more conservative than any other performers (outside of country music, of course).

Bonus: He's a Christian?

Not being religious, that doesn't mean I appreciate his words more (or less), I just think it's interesting.

Wasn't this guy vaguely Satanic or something? If not Satanic per se (as other hard rock bands were overtly), he was definitely macabre, anti-social, and into shocking the straights.

Ah well. I guess you can justify a lot under the pretext of "showmanship."

posted by Ace at 03:55 PM

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