Yes, Alice Cooper hit me with a bottle!
Yes, Alice Cooper hit me with a bottle!
We were at his house in the Hollywood Hills, LA, and then he hit me on my head!
I bent down as instructed and signed my name inside the telephone box when Alice Cooper hit me with a glass bottle straight on the top of my head. The glass seemed to go everywhere. This was beyond bizarre. Yes, that’s right. Alice Cooper had just hit me with a bottle, and he then stood there blocking my exit and laughing at me. What the fuck was going on? Was I dreaming this? I thought to myself, do I hit him and fight my way out of his house? So, I just stood there, looking at him and thinking for a second or two, trying to make sense of this madness.
So, let me roll things back a bit to earlier in the day. This was June 1980. I was living in Santa Monica, in Los Angeles. I had been asked to go and meet Alice Cooper at his house to talk about me working with him. I had met him before, as I had shot him for a UK-based music paper. My day began around 11 am when I got up, had a shower, got dressed and quietly navigated my way past the drunk, dangerous and angry excuse of a human that I shared the apartment with. My roommate, for want of a better expression, was sitting in ‘his’ comfortable chair, drinking one of his beloved Coors beers. As usual, he was staring at the TV. Not speaking to me or even acknowledging that I was there. He was holding his beer in a way that made me think he had a problem with alcohol. I mean, both hands on it, and it was held right in front of his face like it was his prized possession. The beer was neatly placed in a cooler. That was a rubber cover that surrounded his beer to help maintain the cold temperature whilst he drank it. All in all, he was one strange puppy! It was only mid-morning, but there were already a few empty cans next to him. I guess he had started drinking early that day. He took great pleasure in crushing the empty cans and stacking them on top of each other as he daydreamed and drank.
Let me give you a little idea of what my wonderful roommate was like. His name was Marcel. He was a big guy, around six foot two, and big built. He definitely had the personality of a loner and a bully. He had no friends that I had ever seen or heard about. He worked at LAX (the airport) in air freight, and he hated his job along with hating almost everything else. He weirdly claimed to be Dutch. He had never been there and probably didn’t have a clue where The Netherlands were. However, like many people that I met back in those days in the US, once they heard my English accent, they would often say, oh, I am Italian, German, Scottish or whatever. They all sounded pretty much American to me. What they all meant was that their ancestors, two or three generations or so back, came from another country. So, they identified as an immigrant. Marcel was born and bred in LA, as were his parents, but he was still convinced he was Dutch. He was more of a dickhead than he was Dutch. So, a few months before I moved into this apartment, he had apparently lost his temper and reacted in a rather dangerous way. He was very annoyed one evening at the noise coming from the apartment directly above ours. So, he banged on the ceiling to shut them up. He then heard them banging back on their floor. So, Marcel got his gun and shot a hole in the ceiling. Apparently, it stopped the noise. I only found this out a month or so after I had moved in when I asked him why there was a hole and plastic bag taped over part of the ceiling; he then gave me his version of what had happened. I later had it confirmed by the nice young and timid couple who lived upstairs. Incidentally, they were terrified of him, and that is why they didn’t call the cops. Obviously, I wasn’t happy living with this trigger-happy idiot. So, I found out how to sabotage his gun, which I did. Well, I hope I did. Fortunately, I never had to find out if it worked again or not.
On this particular day, I swiftly walked out through the front door. And up our driveway to the road. It still felt like I was on holiday there in Los Angeles. I had been there on and off since 1978, but it was so different from my native London that it was taking a long time for life in the sun to be the norm for me. When I got to the end of our drive and onto the pavement, I could smell the citrus fruits growing in the gardens that I passed, which was so nice. I walked along 11th Street as a gentle breeze temporarily cooled me down in the hot California sunshine. At the next corner, I turned left on Ashland and walked down the hill towards Lincoln Boulevard. This was the main drag that ran straight through Santa Monica and was actually part of Route 1 and Pacific Coast Highway. I could see the sign ahead of me for my local Denny’s. It was not the highest class of diner, but at least one I could afford to eat in. I was very short of money in those days, and I was excited to be having an American breakfast. Funnily enough, going out for breakfast in America is something I still love to this day and is probably my favourite meal of the day. After breakfast, I walked back up Ashland to my apartment and in through the front door. Marcel was still in the same seat, staring at the TV and drinking more cans of beer. I said hello to Marcel, but not a word came back. I walked into my room and picked up my camera bag, grabbed my car keys, and, as I left, I said goodbye to Marcel and no response! I would always try and chat with him, but he rarely responded. I would often be singing the Talking Heads song, ‘Psycho Killer’ when around Marcel, either out loud or in my head. It’s a great song, and I thought it was very appropriate. What I mean is he would have made a great serial killer if anyone was looking for one!
I got in my car and headed from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills on Sunset Boulevard. It’s a very pretty road that twists and turns, with massive homes all along the way. Once in Beverly Hills, I turned left just before the pink Beverly Hills Hotel and drove up Benedict Canyon. I was now heading up the hill in the direction of Mulholland Highway. That’s the road that runs along to the top of the Hollywood Hills. When you are up at the top on Mulholland, you have Hollywood and Beverly Hills down to one side and the San Fernando Valley to the other. I didn’t go up as far as Mulholland as I took a right turn that meandered up through the stunning winding little roads of the Hollywood Hills. The houses were difficult to see from the road, as they often had large gates and fences to keep them private, with just a street number on the gate. I was following directions given to me a few days before and guessed that most houses up there were multi-million-pound palaces owned by the rich and famous. It wasn’t long before I arrived at Alice Cooper's home. I parked up and rang the intercom outside. Then a voice said hello, and I told them my name, and then the gates opened. I drove in and parked near the main house, by a small roundabout with a fountain in the middle of it. A minute or so later, the enormous front door opened, and there he was, Alice Bloody Cooper. He was expecting me and shouted, come on in. This is the man who released ‘Schools Out’ when I was actually at school. Now, should I call him Vincent or Alice? So, I asked him as I walked in. He said he didn’t care either way. I had met him briefly a few times before, and whilst we were not friends, he was very friendly. I was there to start working a bit with him, and it was his idea for us to meet up and get to know each other a bit.
As I walked in, I thought this was one hell of a house. I mean, it was as you would expect; after all, it is a real ‘Rock Star’s’ house. We carried on through part of the house, and I was guided outside and onto the large patio by a spectacular pool. The view from there was breathtaking. Well, it would be, as we were high up in the hills and overlooking Beverly Hills and the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles. Moments later, a delightful and smiley housekeeper came over and asked us if I would like some refreshments. Refreshments soon arrived, and Alice and I sat there under a large umbrella and chatted. He is such a nice guy, and very funny too. He wanted to find out more about me and who I had been working with, and clearly just sussing me out. I guess he knew what my photography was like, and I assume he liked it. After all, that is why I was invited to his house. As we sat there chatting, I was thinking that he wasn’t looking too healthy. I mean, he was painfully thin, but it was none of my business. it was hard not to think that he had a problem of some kind. We were chatting away, and I asked him if he liked living up here. He said it's great, and I have great neighbours too. He said that Groucho Marx, who had recently died, used to live next door to him on one side and on the other side, he had Elton John. For a split second, I thought about how different our worlds were. I live with a lunatic and a few timid, scared people upstairs. Anyway, I am a young photographer, and he was Alice Cooper! Our lives are in no way comparable, but I still thought about it. He then told me how Groucho was a bit of an insomniac, and he would call me up all hours of the day or night. “He would say, ‘Coop’, I can't sleep, can you come round? Which he did”. They would sit together and watch TV or something until Groucho would fall asleep, and Alice would head back next door to his own house. It was now mid-afternoon, and Alice said follow me, as we walked through his house and we walked into one of his many rooms. This was rather different, though. It was full of weird and wonderful things. Among them was the statutory Juke Box, as well as lots of strange-looking things, including gold and platinum discs and lots of music industry memorabilia. I saw a big red British telephone box. He said, “Hey Danny, come over here and sign your name inside the telephone box”. I glanced inside, it was covered in signatures. I thought, why would he want mine? Anyway, he handed me a pen and said go ahead; I asked everyone who came to my house to sign it, so why don’t you sign it down there as he pointed out the spot. I said okay, and I turned around and leant down inside the telephone box and signed my name where he had pointed to. As I slowly turned and started to stand up, bang, he hit me over my head with a big glass bottle. I stood there and thought, do I hit him, fight my way out of his? He was laughing very loudly, and as he stood there, I didn’t feel any pain, nor did I see any blood. Suddenly, I realised it was a theatrical bottle made of sugar glass. (0h, what a joker!) the reality of the situation sank in, I unclenched my fist and joined him in laughing at the situation. We walked back out to the pool area and continued our chat. I was then thinking he was going to do something else and put a live snake up my trousers or something. He kept telling me to relax, and he thought I was tense, which I wasn’t. I was just more aware of his antics and wondered what was to come next from ‘Alice, the Joker’! We finally wrapped the discussions up, and it was finally time for me to leave his home. He ran inside and got a photo of himself. I have no idea who took it or what this was about, but he signed it and wrote on it something that I find hard to understand, but it's something like ‘Daniel, Tense!! And he signed it! I left his house and headed back to Santa Monica.
A few days later, I was with Alice at the Greek Theatre. I got to spend quite a bit of time with him during that year, which was lovely. A few years later, I moved back to London.
My girlfriend (now my wife) and I were walking down Beauchamp Place in the Knightsbridge, London, around 1990, on our way to have dinner at one of our favourite Italian restaurants, San Lorenzo. As we approached the door, a very healthy-looking Alice walked out with a friend or two. I said to Lyn, look, here is Alice. As we got right up to each other and face to face, I said, hi Vince, or shall I call you Alice? It's me, Danny Clifford. He looked at me and more or less said I am sorry, I don’t know you and walked off. I stood there and laughed and thought bloody hell, he actually completely forgot me. About 26 years after the event at his house, I was shooting Monsters of Rock or something like that at Milton Keynes,in the UK and he was one of the performers.
Suddenly, backstage, I see him; he walks over to me and says hey Danny, how are you? So, I hit him over the head with a beer bottle. Only joking; I didn’t, really! We had a realy lovely catch up. It’s a crazy old word, isn’t it?
Excellent.. Will you be turning all this into a book!?