Alice Cooper reveals that drug use once blurred the boundaries of his own personality and stage persona

Alice Cooper, real name Vincent Furnier, is known for his strong theatrical style on stage and in his music. In a recent interview with Classic Rock, Cooper, who shocked his career with horror theatre, says that the line between his personality and his stage persona once became blurred because of drug use.

“No, I can turn Alice on and off at will. I used to be a lot different, when I drank and took drugs I didn’t know where I began and Alice ended”, Cooper says and continues:

“So I was living in that chaos for quite a while. When I got sober I could separate the two; I could be talking about a movie when the curtain goes up, and in the time I turn from left to right I become Alice. It’s a different posture, brain, look, everything.

“When the curtain comes back down and the audience isn’t there any more, I’ll go right back into talking about the movie as myself. I can turn the character on and off. That’s something I had to learn to do.”

Cooper recently said he was also looking after the livelihoods of his tour staff by putting money aside to help them cope with the pandemic.