Rock singer Alice Cooper says Jesus Christ, not his famous stage character, stands at the center of his life.
“He’s the core of everything. He’s life itself,” Cooper said of Jesus in a conversation Harvest Church senior pastor and Harvest Crusades founder Greg Laurie.
Cooper had already built a career around making audiences look twice. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted the original Alice Cooper band in 2011, recognizing a group that paired hard-edged music with elaborate theatrical performances.
His official biography traces the band’s beginnings to high school in Phoenix and describes a stage style drawing on horror movies, vaudeville and garage rock. But in the interview, Cooper looked past the spectacle to the drinking he says he once thought he could control.
He recalled growing up around Christian friends and spending Wednesday nights, Friday nights and Sundays at church. When the band’s career took off, he moved away from those roots and eventually found that he could not stop drinking as easily as the people around him. He recalled realizing that he no longer liked the taste of alcohol, but still felt he had to have it.
Cooper entered a treatment institution to stop drinking and later credited God with taking away the compulsion.
“God literally took it away from me,” he explained.
He described his recovery in spiritual terms and said he did not return to alcohol or drugs after leaving treatment.
For Cooper, the point of revisiting that painful history is the chance to reach young people who might otherwise dismiss his warnings.
“I can speak from experience now,” he explained.
That concern for young people also takes shape through Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock Teen Centers, a Christ-centered nonprofit its official history says Alice and his wife, Sheryl Cooper, founded. The organization offers music, arts and vocational training, describing its work as helping teens discover purpose through creativity, fellowship and practical skills.
His songwriting gives him another way to express his faith without leaving rock music behind: “When I write, I always try to have some lyric pointing towards Christ.”
Cooper also draws a distinction between his theatrical character and his own struggles offstage, saying, “Alice wasn’t the problem. I was the problem.”
Asked about the priorities ahead of his career, Cooper puts his relationship with Christ first and also speaks about his family.
“The priority is that I’m a child of God,” he emphasized.
When Laurie asks what redemption means to him, Cooper pointed to Christ’s death on the cross rather than anything he could earn.
“He was the perfect sacrifice,” Cooper said. For the singer, the story he wants to share reaches beyond a career turnaround to the Savior he credits with changing his life.
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