Robert Baird

So there I am, sitting eating my lunch, watching the news on TV, waiting like the slavering dog that I am for more Mel goes Mad, when none other than Alice Cooper a.k.a. Vince Furnier, he of the large pearly whites and the exquisitely died hair, comes on CNN and begins batting his bright eyes and cheerfully expounding on his new youth center in Phoenix.

Now, I consider the whole reformed rock star become prostelitizing anti-drug crusader thing to be fairly pitiful and Cooper is no exception. I'm not saying keep getting loaded. Just stop talking about when you did. And when you didn't. Course what else are Steven Tyler and Vince gonna do these days. Write songs?

Anyway, with his new center, Vince says he hopes to take gangbangers and make them into artists. Okay, no flights of fancy there. It's in every kid you just have to find it, he said his eyes a twinklin'. Give the guy some credit though. It is a noble goal. And he says he's gonna help raise corporate cash for it. It's actually not that funny, the thought of Alice in a boardroom. Remember this is the same guy whose house has been in Architectural Digest. And who's a scratch golfer.

Amid a flurry of questions from the bimbo anchor who called him "Coop" (a little homework please), he also mentioned that alcohol was his drug of choice, that he's been sober for 25 years and that he only picked booze because it was easy to get and legal. He also said he and Jimmy Hendrix were friends which I'm thinking may be something of a stretch to say the least.

For a taste of the reality of records and days gone by, I slid my copy of Killer into the transport as aperitif. Schools Out and Billion Dollar Babies were the main course. Those mid career Warner records are cheesy but tuneful as hell. The production jobs by Bob Ezrin you either love or hate. Not metal by any stretch, that music, when I hear it again now, always surprises me because it's so much lighter textured than I remember.