Alice Cooper has already lived thousands of lives, if you count them by the number of times the shock-rock pioneer has guillotined himself onstage. In his new book, Devil on My Shoulder: A Memoir, due Oct. 6, the singer, 78, promises to reflect only on his one singular life.
The singer’s publisher is promising the book will be the “definitive autobiography,” a notable distinction since he’s published his life story twice already, in Me, Alice (1976) and Golf Monster (2007). This book will explore not only the creation of the Alice Cooper character, which the singer (real name: Vincent Furnier) developed in the late Sixties with his bandmates, but the dichotomy between his onstage life, as the “Godfather of Shock Rock,” and what his publisher describes as the “deeply religious sober man behind the mask.”
“I’ve written this book to track Alice’s ‘evilution’, and how I’ve tamed him at last,” the artist said in a statement. “Just as he and I became almost fatally intertwined, the story of Alice Cooper after over 30 records and 60-plus years has become a tangle of embellishments, elaborations and outright fabrications, and I think it’s time to sort reality from myth.”
Cooper is also promising revealing stories about the many other artists he’s encountered in his life, among them Salvador Dalí, Bob Hope, John Lennon, Groucho Marx, Vincent Price, Frank Sinatra, Erroll Flynn, Bette Davis, Jim Hendrix, Gerald Ford, Andy Warhol, and Tiger Woods. He also promises to discuss some of his most famous stage props, including the guillotine, “Cold Ethyl,” dead babies, and the snake.
“And I want to talk about God,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna bang you on the head with a Bible, I just want to describe how it is that I found Him dwelling in me. Alice, that inveterate liar, was a voice in my ear for so long, whispering lies and sweet nothings, pretending to be my better conscience and my inspiration, pretending to be me, that I think it’s only right to present both sides of the story: the angel on one shoulder, the devil on the other.”
Cooper released seven albums with the original Alice Cooper band from the late Sixties until their split in the mid-Seventies, and another, The Revenge of Alice Cooper, last year. Since putting out his first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare, he has released an additional 21 solo albums. He has dozens of tour dates lined up for the spring and a tour with his supergroup, the Hollywood Vampires, set for the summer.
