Music

Alice Cooper tells Woodsie about the 'real him', who loves golf and has an incredible handicap

Syn: He looks "so out of place" on the golf course, but is the "opposite" of his stage persona.

Vincent Damon Furnier, better known as Alice Cooper, talked to our very own Woodsie about what it's like transforming into a daunting on-stage character when the real him is a laid-back golf lover.

Furnier told Woodsie he created the Alice character to strike fear into the hearts of mums and dads everywhere.

"[He's] this vampiric phantom with the makeup and the snakes and all these things that were going to upset every parent in America and all over the world," the 75-year-old musician said. "And it was easy to shock an audience back then."

"That character is sort of this aristocratic and condescending villain. But I make him vulnerable enough to slip on a banana peel once in a while because there's nothing funnier than that: to have a guy that's that aristocratic blow it in front of the audience."

But, he added, that wild persona could not be further from the true Vincent Furnier.

"He owns that stage and he wants everybody to know it. That's his character, which is nothing like me. But it's fun to play a character that as you jump into his skin, that's an opposite character of who you are."

If he's not making music or being a menacing on-stage figure, the man is on the golf course.

"I play six days a week," he told Woodsie. "I play every morning. And if you do anything every single day, you're going to get good at it. I've maintained a four handicap now for maybe twenty years."

"Such a good sport. Such a lot of fun. I look so out of place on the golf course."

Alice has a new solo album titled 'Road' that's just been released, and he did promise Woodsie he'll be touring New Zealand again soon.