Alice Cooper has once again said he has no plans to retire, explaining that his stage character has stayed the same age for more than five decades.
The 78-year-old singer, born Vincent Damon Furnier, was asked about retirement in a new interview with Mick Brown of The Telegraph. He said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “Of course, Alice is a fictitious character, so he doesn’t have an age. I don’t know how old Alice is, but on stage, he’s the same age he was in 1973. And, and if I ever look different, if I ever gain 100 pounds, I would never play Alice. If I can’t do the show with the same energy that I did then, then same thing. I’m never gonna phone it in because it wouldn’t be Alice then. I’m certainly not gonna be on a cruise ship, [singing] ‘I’m 18. And I don’t…’ It’ll be, ‘I’m 80, and I can’t find my shoes.'”
He added: “Rock ‘n’ rollers now — Paul McCartney, The [Rolling] Stones, Rod Stewart — we were lifers. And we’re gonna do this till we can’t do it, ’cause I can’t think of a better job.”
Cooper made similar comments in November 2025 on SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk“, when he was asked whether he would ever play a farewell tour. He said at the time: “Retirement’s not even in my vocabulary. There’s a group of guys out there that I call lifers, and that’s [Paul] McCartney and Ringo [Starr] and Mick [Jagger] and Keith [Richards] and Ronnie [Wood], and Rod Stewart, people that are doing it — not because they need to pay the bills. We could have retired 30 years ago, financially. It’s the fact that that’s what we do.”
He added: “I read an article about Bob Dylan who does 200 shows a year, And they said, ‘Well, why are you doing it?’ And he goes, ‘That’s what I do. I write songs and I sing ’em in front of an audience.’ And I went, ‘It’s that simple.’ That’s what I really enjoy doing. In fact, when COVID was going on, we were just getting antsy as could be, ’cause we’re used to touring at least 150 shows a year. And when all of a sudden that rug is pulled out from under you and you’re going, ‘Wait a minute. It’s been 18 months now.’ It was a shock to the system. When I finally told the band that, ‘Okay, it’s a go, and we’re gonna start rehearsing,’ it was like saying, ‘We’re going to Disneyland.’ It was, like, ‘Yeah, yeah. We could do it.’ Everybody couldn’t wait to get back on stage. And if it’s in you, if it’s part of you, that’s what you have to do. And to me, that’s what I do. That’s what I’ll do till I can’t do it anymore.”
In the same interview, Cooper said he has never lost his voice because he sings in his middle range, and credited his health on the road to giving up drinking and drugs in the early 1980s, never smoking, long-distance running and his 50-year marriage to Sheryl Cooper, who still performs in his show.
Speaking to Rock Candy magazine in 2023, Cooper also said he could still be performing at 90 if he stayed in good enough shape, naming Mick Jagger as his model for a long career.
Cooper‘s new memoir, “Devil On My Shoulder“, will be published in the United States on October 6 by Da Capo. He will mark its release with three events in New York on October 7 and 8, including an appearance at New York Comic Con.
Cooper married Sheryl Goddard in 1976. She joined his stage show as a dancer in the mid-1970s and has performed with him on tour for decades.
