By Martin H. Rots

No, this isn't about Alice Cooper joining the navy or anything ludicrous like that.  The Admiral I'm referring to was an old transient motel on Gratiot (pronounced Gra-shit), just south of Mount Clemens, Michigan.  The Alice Cooper band was living at the Admiral Motel that long, hot summer of 1970.  It wasn't like they each had rooms at the motel or were sharing a suite, the whole band was living in one room, sharing the beds and floor.  It was all they could afford on struggling rock band wages. 

The Clem as we called it, had a small tight-knit longhair community during that period and the AC band fit right in with the crowd.  They had been in LA before they came to the Clem.  In Los Angeles the audiences were throwing garbage at them on stage.  In Detroit, the audiences appreciated what they were doing and instead of throwing garbage, they packed their shows at the small venues the band was playing locally.

This was before all the special effects and gadgets worked their way into the AC stage show.  It was still pretty low key compared to what it would evolve into in later years.  My favorite effect from that era was the rising sun behind the band as they opened their set with the song Sun Arise.  I wasn't alone, the audience was always hushed as the song started.  The studio version on Love it to Death didn't do Sun Arise justice, it lacked the drama and tension of the stage presentation. 

It wasn't that Sun Arise was great music, because it hasn't stood the test of time well.  What it was, was a sneak preview of what was to come.  Cooper was about to take rock music in a new direction, but none of us knew it at the time.  What we did know was that these guys were different.  We all had long hair, but the AC band had taken it to the extreme.  All of them were painfully thin and had hair almost to their waists.  They might not have made it yet, but they looked the part of rock stars that long ago summer of 1970. 

My friend, Norm Liberman, put on a weekly concert at a group of geodesic structures known as the Dancing Domes on the north edge of town that summer.  It was a great place to showcase his band, the Früt, and it provided another venue for local bands like the Stooges and Alice Cooper to play.  The night Alice Cooper played at the Domes, I helped one of the roadies carry in a fish tank filled with small mouthed bass.  Evidently, Cooper had been fishing on Lake Saint Clair that day and caught his limit.  When I asked what they were for, the guy just shrugged his shoulders and muttered, "Don't know.  He just said to put it onstage...up front, by the edge."

That night, about half way through their set, Cooper took out a fencing foil, plunged it into the fish tank and came up with an impaled fish, wriggling at the end of the slender sword.  He raised it in the air and with the sword in one hand and mike in the other, he finished the song waving the fish around for emphasis.  The audience of maybe a hundred, didn't know what to make of it and were pretty quiet, but no one threw garbage at the band or called the SPCA.

I had a chance to sit and talk with Vince (Alice) not too long after that concert.  We talked for awhile and I remarked that he seemed to be a pretty normal guy, and that I hadn't known how to take him at first.  Off stage he was relaxed, there was no makeup or stage costumes.  There was no pretension.  Vince was down to earth, intelligent and friendly. 

He was one of the guys.

As I recall, he told me, "You gotta understand, right now, I'm Vince, but when I walk out on that stage, that's when I become Alice."  He took a swig of his Budweiser, smiled and continued, "I'm going to turn rock and roll into high drama."

That fall, the band released Love it to Death which included their breakout hit, I'm Eighteen.  The guys didn't live at the Admiral anymore and we didn't see them around Mount Clemens after that.  Someone said they were holed up at a hilltop farm north of Detroit and rehearsing in the barn.  You could see the farm from I-75 and for years, I thought of them every time I drove past it on my way north.  Eventually, over decades, the suburbs reached it and a very large office building sits on the site today.

It wasn't long before I saw Vince's picture on the cover of Creem magazine.  He was leaning against a Rolls Royce with a hot babe under each arm.  In the background, in the hills above him, sat the HOLLYWOOD sign.  He was in full stage make-up, a leering smile on his painted face.  I was happy for him, he wasn't living at the Admiral and he certainly wasn't Vince anymore, either.

He was truly Alice now.