Alice Cooper focused on his image as the villain of rock and roll during his recent interview with the Rock Classics Radio with Jenn podcast and explained why he wanted to take this title after The Doors’ late frontman Jim Morrison.
As you probably know, Jim Morrison gained great popularity and success as The Doors frontman. He is considered one of the most influential artists of all time. Morrison became the symbol of rebellion with his wild, rebellious, and strange personality. Even after he passed away on July 3, 1971, he continued to influence both his contemporaries and younger musicians.
Along with being a famous rock star, Morrison was also defined as the villain of rock and roll. However, his friend Alice Cooper, who had the chance to get to know Morrison while Alice Cooper the band was opening for The Doors, thinks it wasn’t a suitable role for him. Cooper stated that a villain must be threatening, and Morrison wasn’t like that.
Therefore, Alice realized rock and roll, which was full of heroes, needed a villain, and he was willing to accept the role of the villain of rock and roll which was given to Jim Morrison even though he was just an outlaw obsessed with death. Cooper created his stage persona as a villain who is both threatening and gentleman by claiming that it was the right thing to do for the sake of true rock and roll.
Cooper said in his interview that:
“Rock ‘n’ roll needed a villain. True rock ‘n’ roll didn’t have a villain. We had all these Peter Pans… no Captain Hook and… I looked around and went, ‘I will gladly be that villain.’ Jim Morrison, maybe it was the closest thing to it. He was at the dark outlaw, kind of everything was about death, but he wasn’t threatening.
I wanted Alice to be threatening and yet funny at the same time, you know? I wanted that combination of not exactly knowing what he was going to do, but you know, he may… he may slit your throat, but he would never swear at you… Know what I mean?
He was a gentleman villain and arrogant and condescending, and yet I didn’t mind him slipping on a banana peel once in a while for the laugh. You know, there’s nothing funnier than a guy like that, blowing it in front of an audience and then having to recover.”
Alice Cooper added that although he snatched the villain of rock and roll role from the rebellious rock star Jim Morrison after his early death, he wanted to create a different kind of villain that could frighten and make people laugh at the same time.
