One of the most famous songs released by Alice Cooper, when they were still a band back in 1972 was “Elected”, featured on their album “Billion Dollar Babies”. The lyrics criticizes politicians and the everything that surrounds the political campaigns. For decades, every year the presidential election happens in the United States, Alice Cooper announces he is a candidate in order to promote the classic track.
In an interview with 96.1 KLPX (Transcribed by Blabbermouth), the musician explained why he hates politics.
Alice Cooper explains why he hates politics
“I am extremely nonpolitical. I would only do this as because the song was a hit — ‘Elected’ was a huge hit. It was John Lennon’s favorite song, ‘Elected’ was, because it was such a great satire on politics. But you’re never gonna see anything political in my show. I just hate politics. But in an election year, yeah, you have to do it. You have to do the satire on the whole situation. I’m telling you, we’re living in such a Kurt Vonnegut world right now, where everything is so absurd. For a person like me or a comedian, it’s writing itself,” Alice Cooper said.
During the same interview he noted that he doesn’t try to shock audiences anymore like he did in the past. But also that the theatrical side of his shows continue to be fun to do it.
“It’s so funny because it used to be easy to shock an audience in the ’70s. Now nobody’s really trying — we’re not really trying to shock an audience. I don’t think anybody is ‘shock rock’ anymore, but those elements still remain in the show because they’re fun to watch. It’s still fun to watch the guillotine and the fact that you really buy in to it because of what happens before that”.
He continued:
“You’re really concerned about this character Alice up there, what happens. And that’s what I like about it. I want the audience to get involved in the show. We don’t do a lot of lasers. We don’t do things like that, because I want the emphasis to be on the character Alice, what happens to him and what exactly he’s doing.”
“But all that happens during all these songs that everybody knows — ‘Feed My Frankenstein’ and ‘Poison’ and ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’ and, of course, ‘School’s Out’ at the end,” Alice Cooper said.