An arranged encounter between rock legend Alice Cooper and the surrealist Salvador Dali had the singer looking normal in comparison.
The out-there frontman behind hits like School’s Out and Poison met with the artist after Dali asked to meet him. Dali had seen one of Cooper’s shows in 1973 and told the Godfather of Shock Rock’s management that the performance was “like seeing one of his paintings come to life”. He would go on to ask whether Cooper was open to collaborating on a project. A meeting at King Cole Bar in New York City followed, and the entrance Dali made left Cooper stunned.
Cooper explained: “DalÃ’s people rang my manager and explained that he’d seen one of my stadium shows. He said it was like seeing one of his paintings come to life, and that he wanted us to work together.
“All of a sudden, these five androgynous nymphs in pink chiffon floated in. They were followed by Gala (DalÃ’s wife), who was dressed in a man’s tuxedo, top hat and tails, and carrying a silver cane. Then came DalÃ. He was wearing a giraffe-skin vest, gold Aladdin shoes, a blue velvet jacket and sparkly purple socks given to him by Elvis.
“Me and my manager looked at each other in amazement. I realised at that point that everything was about DalÃ. The world revolved around him. I wasn’t meeting him. I was entering his orbit. With DalÃ, everything was a performance.
“Each night we would go to Studio 54 or to see Andy Warhol at the Factory. Dalà always travelled with lots of bizarre characters, so I was happy just to sit back and take it all in. I wasn’t going to try and talk to him about art, because he was always using this funny language. I was in the presence of the master.”
Cooper would later go on to call the experiences with Dali as similar to meeting Elvis Presley or The Beatles. He said: “Dalà was a character who was so mythical, you didn’t really want to say anything. For me, it was like meeting Elvis or The Beatles. It was obvious that he’d looked at me and seen what he wanted. All I did was say: ‘Tell me what you want me to do.’”
The Godfather of Shock Rock would meet Presley, too, in a bizarre encounter in Las Vegas. Speaking of his encounter with Presley, Cooper said: “I met Elvis in 1970. I got a thing that said ‘Elvis wants to meet you.’
“I got to the Hilton Hotel. The elevator opened up and it was me, Liza Minnelli, Chubby Checker, and Linda Lovelace. He invited those four people that night. So we went up and they searched us for guns, which was kind of silly because there were guns everywhere once you got in.
“When he came in the room, he was Elvis. He wasn’t the fat Elvis. He was Elvis. He was the guy. He goes, ‘Hey, man, you’re the cat with the snake, ain’t ya?'” The conversation soon turned to disarming armed men, with Cooper given a .38 snub revolver by The King.
The Poison hitmaker recalled: “[Elvis] said, ‘I’m gonna show you how to take this gun out of someone’s hand.’ The little Devil here on my shoulder says ‘Shoot him’. The little angel on my shoulder says ‘Don’t kill him, just wound him.’ But before I could decide what to do, I was on the floor and he had his boot in my throat.”
