![Alice Cooper: Only One Rock Musician Calls Me by My Birth Name](https://townsquare.media/site/366/files/2021/03/alice_cooper.jpg?w=980&q=75)
Alice Cooper: Only One Rock Musician Calls Me by My Birth Name
Legendary shock rocker Alice Cooper was born Vincent Damon Furnier, but as he revealed in a recent interview with The Sun, only one person calls him by the name he was given when he entered this world on Feb. 4, 1948.
"The only person who calls me Vince is Keith Richards," said Cooper, singling out the Rolling Stones guitarist.
The frontman further relayed, "He’ll say, ‘Vinnie, Vinnie, how long has it been since you had a drink?' And I’ll reply, 'More than 30 years.' And he goes, 'Ah, begs the question, why???'"
Cooper, who has been sober for 38 years now, also spoke about moments in his early career in which he struggled to distinguish the onstage, professional persona of the Alice Cooper character and his identity outside of the band.
"There was a long time when I couldn’t separate the two. When I was drinking and drugging, I didn’t know if I was supposed to leave the house with make-up on. I felt I was going to disappoint people if I walked out without a snake around my neck," said Cooper.
With sobriety came clarity as the rocker continued, "When I got sober, I went, ‘Okay, I have to co-exist with this guy’. I mean, Alice is my favorite rock star but he stays onstage and I go back up to my normal life. That’s why I can speak about Alice in the third person. Somebody will bring in a costume and I’ll go, ‘No, Alice would never wear that!’"
"It’s actually a very organized schizophrenia," Cooper concluded. "I don’t know what age Alice is. He could be 18, he could be 23, he could be 30."
Elsewhere in the interview, in reference to his latest album, Detroit Stories, which came out earlier this year, the icon spoke about some of the major players in the Detroit hard rock scene of the late '60s and early '70s.
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