In a decade where some heavy-metal bands are abandoning theatrics, and others are accused of inciting their fans to violence or suicide, Alice Cooper - the pioneer of nastiness - has no intention of mending his ways.
And he wants to make one thing clear: He doesn't think music was to blame for the trampling deaths of three youths at an AC-DC concert at the Salt Palace earlier this year, nor does he think music can lead a person to suicide."I think it's amazing, especially in the cases of suicide, that the first thing they do is look to see what the kid was listening to," Cooper said in an interview prior to his scheduled concert at the Salt Palace July 9. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Where were the parents? That's what I want to know. I think that's the important thing.
"You get much more violence on the news than at the Alice Cooper show. Besides, the violence at my show is choreographed, and it does have a sense of humor."
Far from being a kinder, gentler Alice of the '90s, Cooper promises to unveil a host of newly created visual effects when he comes to the Salt Palace. Salt Lake City is the first stop on a summer-long nationwide head-banging tour that features Cooper, Judas Priest, Motorhead, Dangerous Toys and Metal Church.
He won't reveal much about the new show, except to say that Cooper no longer is a victim on stage. He no longer gets his head lopped off by a guillotine. Instead, he's assuming the role of a villain. He just might lop off someone else's head.
"It's more fun to play Alice today," he said, referring, as he always does, to his on-stage persona in the third person. "I don't want to give too much away, but we have a new song called `Feed my Frankenstein.' That's one of the special effects we're working on. You can imagine what that is - an operating table up to the sky."
But Alice Cooper believes he has a tougher job than most hard-rock performers these days. He has to live up to his own reputation.
A pioneer of shocking, ghoulish, theatrical concert performances, Cooper - now in his mid-40s - still plays to audiences that range in age from 15 to 25, just as he did in the early 1970s.
The difference is those people aren't as easily impressed today as their parents were 20 years ago. They also have read about how Cooper pioneered many of the antics now used by other bands, and they expect more from him.
"You can't shock an audience anymore," Cooper said. "These are people who have seen `Terminator 2' and Freddy Krueger. They've just seen a world war on TV. When people come out of my shows now, I want them to be more like, `Hey, how did they do that?"'
Cooper won't let middle-age slow him. He believes he is more in focus than many of his older fans remember him. He has gone nine years without alcohol, and says he has a lot more energy because of it. He may retire some day - but only if he's too old and feeble to keep up the frenetic pace.
"I don't think I have the same situation as Bob Dylan where I can get on stage and do acoustic guitar versions of my songs."
Cooper insists the pretend violence and gore is all in fun. It always has been. Despite all the rumors that have circulated through the years - many of them started by Cooper himself - he wasn't told to change his name by a Ouija Board or by the apparition of a 16th-century witch. The man who started life as Vincent Damon Furnier simply decided adults would be upset if he adopted a sweet-sounding female name.
The whole idea was to cash in on the counter-culture of the day.
"They would be expecting a blond folk singer and what they got was a `Clockwork Orange'-type of figure," he said. "But no one was gay in the band. We didn't do drugs. And we didn't totally believe in peace and love like everybody did then."
He also believes that the type of horror he feasts on in his shows is markedly different from Satanism. The son of an evangelical preacher, Cooper said he attends a Christian church every Sunday.
"The worst thing you could ever do is call me a Satan worshiper," he said. "You never hear bad language on my stage. You never see nudity. When you come to my show you're coming to a roller-coaster ride."