CHICAGO — Alice Cooper, the former Vincent Furnier, former high school track star, former resident of Detroit and Chicago, did not die this week at 75. Despite a half-century of horrifyingly playful onstage executions, he was not hanged, beheaded, impaled or electrocuted. He just released “Road,” his 22nd solo album, and plays in Tinley Park on Friday, and when we spoke the other day, he said, though he was 75, he has no plans to retire and can perform these days “with more energy than I had in the ’70s. I was held back then by alcoholism, but I am in the best shape of my life right now. My kids are all grown and have kids. I have no stress in my life. I have been married to my wife of 47 years, and every single thing is in order — my spiritual life and financial life. There is nothing wrong with me.”
Not now.
But it seems appropriately ghoulish to note: Even Alice Cooper, who secured his place in pop music infamy with such songs as “Dead Babies” and “I Love the Dead,” will die.
Certainly, he can still shock.
Less than 48 hours after we spoke, he was trending on Twitter because he told an interviewer for the online music blog Stereogum that, despite being an early rock voice in support of broad sexual expression, he was concerned transgender identities were becoming “a fad” and children were being encouraged to transition before they understood who they were sexually. Like many Twitter outrages, the shock came and went, though if it feels significant, that’s because Alice Cooper, an provocative pioneer of gender fluidity in mainstream culture, sounded sincerely confused by the subject now.
Indeed, when I asked if the man once synonymous with shock would even get noticed today, he replied: “No, the audience is shock proof now.” If Alice Cooper is shocked by anything, it’s “that we’re not shocked by these daily mass shootings. It’s not healthy.”