Alice Cooper will spend two days in New York next month talking about the man behind the character, with three public appearances to launch his memoir, “Devil On My Shoulder“.
The book is published in the United States on October 6 by Da Capo, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The New York events follow over the next two days:
- Oct 7, 12 p.m. – Barnes & Noble, Fifth Avenue, moderated by Anthony DeCurtis
- Oct 7, 7 p.m. – The Strand
- Oct 8 – New York Comic Con, moderated by Stevie Van Zandt
Tickets are limited and come bundled with a pre-signed copy of the book, sold through AliceCooper.com.
“Devil On My Shoulder” was written with Daniel Richler. It reaches the UK two days after the American release, on October 8 through Ebury Spotlight, and Cooper follows it with an eight-date British book tour running from October 11 at the New Theatre in Cardiff to October 20 at Wolverhampton Civic Hall.
Cooper, who turned 78 in February, set out what the book covers when it was announced.
“In the beginning, Alice Cooper was the name of a rock group. Then my stage name. And then a monster. Now I’ve written a book that tracks Alice‘s evilution, how he and I became almost fatally intertwined, and how I’ve tamed him at last. After over thirty records and sixty-plus years, the story of Alice Cooper has become a tangle of embellishments, elaborations and outright fabrications, that I think it’s time to sort reality from myth: the slaughtered chickens, the bans and record burnings, the evangelical terrors, Ouija boards and poltergeists, resurrections and revenge from the grave, the cross-dressers, thieves, drug addicts and hopeless alcoholics, the house fires and car crashes — all will be revealed for what they really were.”
“I’m also coming clean about the extent of my addictions, my blackout years, the creative process fuelled by alcohol, drugs and round-the-clock TV, my scramble to the top of the pile and the terrible slide back down. I want to talk about the origin of Cold Ethyl, the guillotine and the dead babies, the best and worst of my reviews, my feelings of guilt and regret after people got hurt or died, what life was like on the road until the wheels came off the bus, what a romantic I am at heart and how I’ve stayed married for half a century even after my wife came at me with a frying pan.”
“And I want to talk about God. 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.”
The split he describes began with a name. Alice Cooper started as the name of the band fronted by Vincent Damon Furnier in the late 1960s. As he built the character on stage, it became his stage name, and at the height of the band’s success he changed his name to it legally.
“I was born Vincent Damon Furnier but, seduced by my character’s reputation, changed my name legally to Alice Cooper, and in the process lost sight of who I really was. The mild-mannered, all-American boy I’d once been became a monster and a mortal danger to himself.”
He is clear that one of the two is still working.
“Alice is still on tour around the world today, a proper senile delinquent playing hundreds of gigs every year, while I myself am reformed. And with the benefit of hindsight and a certain maturity, I’d like to describe our journey to Hell and back together, because it’s not only rock stars who can lose their way.”
The book includes stories involving Salvador Dalí, Bob Hope, John Lennon, Groucho Marx, Vincent Price, Frank Sinatra, Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Gerald Ford, Andy Warhol and Tiger Woods. Cooper said the aim is to separate what happened from what has been said about it.
“Me and Alice were getting creative with the truth long before the age of ‘fake news’. Now, after over thirty records and sixty-plus years of fibs and fabrications, I think it’s time to sort the truth from the rumors and lies.”
Cooper received a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame in 2003 and was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2011. Billion Dollar Babies reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 1973. In 2025 he released The Revenge Of Alice Cooper, which brought the surviving members of the original band, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith, back together on record.
