 I'd like to introduce to you our first guest. He's known as Mr. Alice Cooper's executioner. Let's give a nice round of applause for the fantabulous magician known as Mr. James Rendee. And before we introduce our next guest, I've been given permission, I've been given the greatest permission to read an excerpt from the upcoming book, A Magician in the Laboratory, as written by Mr. James. That's laboratory, not laboratory, and if you're wondering. Laboratory, how's that? Very good. All right. This is from his words. Years ago, I toured the USA in several foreign markets as part of the Alice Cooper rock show, The Billion Dollar Babies episode. My job was to chop Coop's head off with a guillotine every single night, hopefully without actually doing him any harm. It worked for more than three months and during that period of time, I had the nightly opportunity of seeing a rather unique phenomenon. Coop and I were always the last to leave the dressing room to begin the show because I had to equip him with two handheld mechanisms that enabled him to throw long flames from his fingertips. These were semi-dangerous. Who ever heard of semi-dangerous? Semi-dangerous? These were a semi-dangerous devices which he'd only take it to his hands at the very last moment. When the stage manager would poke his head in the door and announce two minutes, I would watch Vincent Feniri. Funier. Funier. Well, close enough. Yeah, him too. Coop's original name rapidly and almost magically changed from a reasonably normal young man into the show biz monster that his audience expected him to be. He adopted the character by simply putting it on like a pullover. His walk, his facial expression, his entire demeanor changed. And a moment later, as he were totter up the stairs, Frankenstein monster-like into the spotlight, Vincent would become Alice Cooper. Two hours later, when he retired from the stage dressed in white satin tails and top hat, he again became Vincent as soon as he hit the lights of the dressing room. I always admired that in him, his ability to step into fantasy and then shed it so easily. It's a talent we might all try to acquire. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Feniri. Vincent de Mon-Fernier. And by the way, Randy actually looked like this in 1956. And I have pictures of him as a baby. He looked just like this. It's amazing. My apologies for bastardizing your last name. I never studied French. But it's a wonderful name nonetheless. Folks, as you know, like I said once before, this is our billion dollar babies tour 1973. So this discussion is gonna mainly focused on that. I'm sure many of you may have a few questions, but we're gonna listen to these gentlemen chat. And I have, I guess, the start of this question. Mr. Cooper, how in fact did you find this man? Well, you know, the idea was we had already basically decided that rock and roll needed another dimension. And rock and roll didn't have a villain. Rock and roll had was full of of heroes, but there was no villain. And I would gladly be Captain Hook to all the Peter Pan's out there. You know, I was I was born to be the villain. And so we decided that Alice Cooper, I mean, I would definitely be the Basil Rathbone of rock and rock and roll. And when we finally got that, we pretty much alienated every organization in America and thought, let's take it one step further and bring illusion into it now. The most dangerous thing in the world was to give Alice Cooper money, you know, because we were making our own props and we would find things backstage. And that would be the prop for the night. We actually had money now because schools out did very well. And then all of a sudden billion dollar babies was the number one record and we could afford the best guy in the business. So we said, well, let's get Randy and let's start adding illusion to the show. And that's when we came up with the, you know, the guillotine and things like that. And I really wasn't really wasn't willing to put my head in a guillotine without somebody that really knew what they were doing. Wise, wise decision. Yeah. I must tell you how I heard about it. I don't know whether you know this story, Coop. I was in the magic shop of all places on 34th Street one afternoon with some of the other magicians sitting around. We were telling one of their stories, some of them true. And the phone rang and the proprietor picked up the phone and said that he put his hand over the phone. He said a fellow connected with an Alice Cooper. I hadn't heard the name, frankly, I must admit, I had and he hadn't heard either. He said he wants to talk to a magician who will travel with a rock show. And I put up my hand. I said, I'll do it if he pays me $100 just to talk to him. He went back to the phone. He said he'll pay it. $100 at that time was a lot more than $100 today. I can assure you I got out of there. I burned the stairs as they went down. And I showed up at the Alive Enterprises office. You weren't there. No. And but chef was and several other people. I think Joe Gannon might have been there. Joe Gannon, yes. And I noticed something about the decor. This is great. They had potted plants all over the place, all dead. This is a live enterprises, remember? All the potted plants hadn't been watered. They were all dead. I thought that was a good touch. And I said, Oh, these are my kind of people, by the way. And they talked to me and we made a deal. And I ended up working for the billion dollar baby show. Yeah, he was the perfect. I think the perfect foil for Alice. It was a, you know, it was the first time anybody had seen this kind of show anyways. So when you're adding another dimension to it, all of a sudden you're doing, Alice would be over here and Randy would say, Now, when you go over there, we're going to switch this over here. And, you know, you're directing the audience. And it's all stuff that we wanted to do, but didn't know how to do. And that's when we brought Randy in. He was the guy that really knew how to do all that stuff. Which if I could interject, which was an amazing thing about that, because this was live. We were what back in 73, what Rosemary's baby, things of that nature kind of horror genre was, you know, movie, special effects, theatrics and that way, this was live, could not be messed up, could not be full, could not be tricked the whole nine yards you brought in the amazing Randy to chop your head off. And obviously it succeeded because you went on a few other locations after that to carry out those same tricks, I do believe every night, he would be back the next morning alive. And I couldn't figure it out. I chopped his head off. Come on. He doesn't seem to take chopping very seriously. We did another bit called, it was Unfinished Suite. And the story behind this was we would, the guy would go to a dentist's office and he would get under gas and he would have this dream that he was a super spy. So one guitar would be playing the Man from Uncle theme. One guitar would be playing I spy. And the other thing, the James Bond theme, now if you put them all together, they actually all work together. But I would be in the dentist chair and Randy would come out as the mad dentist. And he had a drill that was bigger than him. And it came down, it was all lit up and he would start drilling my teeth. And then he would take it down to my crotch and start drilling my crotch. I don't remember rehearsing that part. I think that's very true. I made it up. You improvised that part. Yeah. And it was, you know, when you see film of this right now, it really, it's very Vaudevillian. But that was the charm of it, I think, was the fact that everything was trying to be high tech. And we went back to the Vaudevillian kind of attitude of rock and roll, which drew people like, you know, Groucho Marx and Mae West. Groucho Marx would come to the show and bring Mae West, Fred Astaire, Jack Benny, George Burns. They would be standing on the side watching the show. The audience was cringing in horror at what was going on. And they were standing there going, ah, 1923, Gracie and I did that. Toledo, we are in Toledo. And we accept the snake he had wasn't as big as that snake. But they were not in the least bit alarmed at anything we were doing, because it was Vaudeville to them. They grew up in Vaudeville. So our show had this Vaudevillian flavor to it. It was sort of also like that show that at the carnival that you didn't want to go to, but you really wanted to go to, you know, there's the big tent. And then there's that show on the right over here that that was the creepy kind of, really, do I want to go in there? You know, that was our show, you know, and we did, my audience was not the Crosby Stills and Nash audience. I was in charge of the lunatic fringe, which you, well, never mind. Did you know all about that? So we were we were in charge of all these sort of outcasts and people that didn't quite fit in. But there were millions of them, you know? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember Baltimore. Well, I remember Baltimore, it's still there, I think. Yes, I believe so. Yes. But I think this, if I'm wrong on this, this is the senility creeping in again. But at one point, I remember the chef called a meeting of us all in panic. He said, Oh, something really bad has happened. I thought, what now? And you were there. And I think you were a bit puzzled. And he made the announcement. He said that the mayor of Baltimore had given you the key to the city. Do you remember that? Oh, I remember that. Yes. And he said, we don't want that. We want the parents to absolutely despise Alice, you see, so that they'll forbid the kids to go, which means the kids have to go. This is a way of forcing the audience to be there. And we got over it somehow. Yeah, I don't, we had to insult somebody in order to not get the key to the city. Something like that. But we managed it. Yeah, we went out of our way to not try to get those accolades. They came later on, you know, when you're young and dangerous, now I'm sort of old and treacherous now. And lovable, though. And by doing what you did by wanting, you know, that type of audience to appreciate that, you know, well, here we are. Well, yes. And like I said, there are millions of you out there. And do you remember when you came to me and said that your mother was going to be in the audience? Yeah. Now this was in Phoenix, was it? No, my mother's probably the most dangerous person you'll ever meet. You have to understand that. You know, I mean, she is, she doesn't flinch at anything. She's just like, you know. Well, Coop came to me and he said he was he was a little worried about it. He said, would you mind sitting with my mother should be in the fourth row? We got reserved seats there. Because she's never really seen the act. She doesn't know what I do. And I thought, well, this is going to be a shock for this lady. I can assure everybody of that. And he was pretty sure of it too. I sat with her. And when Coop walked on stage in the torn costume, tearing up a doll or whatever he was doing at that moment, not a chicken, not a chicken, I swear. And his mother sat there and said, Oh, why is Vincent's costume torn? I can fix that. And I just patted her on the arm. I was trying to be very, very soft and gentle with it. And I said, no, this is all part of the act. Wait could you see? And then she started to warm up a little bit, but I had to leave and go and do another part backstage. And when I came back to see her, she was hooping on her, she was, she was with it at that point. She suddenly realized what the gag was and who you were and what you were doing and why. Yeah. And she was, you know, she was one of those ones that said, you know, not enough blood. You know, I was expecting a little more blood than that in the show. I don't think when the head comes off, the artery shoots out far enough in the audience. My mom and dad both got the show. My dad was a pastor. And, you know, he was one of those guys that as an example, he would, he'd be shaving, you know, and I would pick open the Bible up and I'd say Ezekiel 3, 17. He said, and the Lord says unto me, you know, and he would quote it. I said, okay, I'd open it up again. I'd say, okay, Matthew 5, 12. And he says, and Jesus said unto them, you know, wow, this guy's good. You know, and I'd say, who plays bass for the animals? He was Chaz Chandler. See, the guy was really good. I mean, he, and he really liked the music. He liked what we were doing. He got the fact that I wasn't satanic. You know, he got the fact that was my sense of humor. And I was creating a character that I was going to play. Of course, which was misinterpreted by a lot of people, but you know, it was funny that my parents, I never had a problem with my parents. I wrote all these songs about parents being the problem, whereas my parents were never the problem. I had the same thing with Schools Out. I wrote all these songs about, you know, how horrible school was. I was, you know, I was like, I owned my school. And, you know, it was one of those things where like, I had no problem in school. I had girlfriends doing my homework. I was in a band. I was on the cross-country team. And you know, I was Mr. Personality, you know. So, you know, it was funny. I wrote all these things about things that never happened to me. And I was invited to Coop's recent birthday party. Shall we name the number? Oh, sure, 60. I was 60. I earned all 64 years. Yes. And I was invited to the birthday party. And so many old faces were there. It was a wonderful get together of the old gang. And I met his mother. And I sat with her at her table and she said, you know, when you join me in the audience there, I didn't know who you were. And I didn't know what Vincent was doing up on stage. But you made it very much easier for me. I want to thank you for that. And she remembered the event very, very well. She's sharp as the tack. My mom is still, she's 87, and she's just, you know, sharp as can be. Someone older than I? I don't believe that. I know, I know. I'm only 84. You know, we were talking about how back then you were trying to alienate. When we lived in Los Angeles, we got to a point where we were pretty much going to be run out of LA. Because, you know, it was like, people would come to our show to leave. They would go to the show so they can say they left in the middle of the show. Which attracted Zappa. That's what attracted Frank Zappa to us, is that. But at one point, Shep says, I have this idea. We're going to go on stage in clear plastic suits with nothing on underneath. And I'm going to call the police and get you arrested. Because it'll be great. It'll be great publicity that Alice Cooper gets arrested. So, of course, you know, we're on stage playing. He calls the police. The police show up. By the time we get there now, the clear plastic suits had heated up. And you couldn't see anything. Because it was all, you know, it was all, you know, like, and the police, I don't see anything wrong with this. We couldn't get arrested. We literally understood at that point we could not get arrested in LA. So we moved to Detroit, you know. But we figured we could get arrested in Detroit. You should tell them the story about when the semis didn't arrive with the stage. What city was that in? Oh, man, I don't know. It was dead winter. The gas shortage, right? Did it happen during that time? It was the gas shortage during that time. Well, yeah, I don't know what it was, but the semis, the big trucks, didn't arrive at the stage. The stage was monstrous and beautiful. Made out of what, inch and a half for plexiglass? Yeah, everything you'd step on this, it would light up. I mean, it was really good. Yeah, it was a beautiful stage. I think one of the best stages I have ever, certainly seen in my life, it was so versatile and so electronified. I mean, really, it did react. It was like Busby Berkeley, you know, on Electros. Exactly. And it didn't arrive, and we had to go out in trucks and pick up used Christmas trees, you imagine, with some tinsel still hanging on them and arrange them. We only had to do that for one night. But everybody in the crew, myself, everybody, we all went out and picked up old Christmas trees and spray-painted them and put them around the stage. I don't think the kids knew the difference. No, it was, you know, I mean, in fact, that's the show I would have wanted to be at, because it would have been a one-off show. Exactly. Yeah, a lot of times you had to improvise. One night, you know, the snake was a very big part of the show. I mean, it was only on stage for maybe three minutes or so. But I go to get the snake, and I had it in the bathroom. I liked to swim at night in the bathtub, and it was gone. And I realized we were in a brand new hotel that didn't have lids on the toilets. So it went down into the toilet, into the plumbing of the hotel. This is a snake this big around. Yeah, yeah. Her name was Yvonne. That was our big snake. Yvonne the snake, yeah. We had Boa Derrick. We had Julia Squeezer. You know, little Boa Peep. We had, it was a small one. But this one was our biggest snake, and she's gone. So Randy, all of us are tearing the walls apart in this hotel trying to find the snake. It came up two weeks later in Charlie Pride's toilet. Now, I didn't ask Charlie. Charlie was chasing me at the time. The Grammys with an axe, I think he was, you know. And I didn't ask him if he was sitting on the toilet at the time, or if he was shaving and just kind of looked over and this snake comes up out of the toilet, you know, like in a horror movie. This snake wouldn't hurt anybody. It was like, you know, it was a gentle giant. But I could imagine if you were sitting on the toilet and this thing came up between your legs, it would get your attention. That would get your attention. It would get your attention. You'd say the least. Yes, indeed. Yeah. But you, handling that big snake, you could barely walk when you had that snake around your neck. That one was big. She was, she was really big, but she was, uh, uh, she was probably 12 feet long. Oh yeah, yeah. 60 pounds. I mean, I weighed 90. You know, so the snake weighed as much as I did. And all coiled around you. Yeah. Constantly fighting the snake off, not fiercely or anything like that. He was just sort of trying to arrange it so that he could move around and still move his mouth. Yeah. And that thing was huge. It was really, really a big snake. But, um, you know, the snake thing was always great. It was always one of those things that, uh, and everybody finally on the tour got so used to the snake that nobody, even if you had a fear of snakes, you didn't, it didn't bother you anymore. You know, uh, in fact, the one that I left in here was in the front row on the floor somewhere in there. I don't see it. Oh, here it is. Oh, never mind. Okay. Um, if I could ask a personal question here, and you told me it was pretty okay to, to touch into anything and everything, um, Mr. Randy, you were originally a Canadian citizen. And one time? Yes. From what I understand, because of this man sitting next to you, I'm, I'm assuming, I like to hear you part of it, you have an, are, now, or had been an American citizen due to an incident with the, well, that's the Mounties, the Canadian Mounties. Yeah, that's the trigger that set it off. We did Niagara Falls. You remember Niagara Falls? Yes. Oh, yes. Okay. We had a, a large, a room full of lockers. It was, I think, the football team's locker room or something, uh, where we could set up the props and so it was at a school. And, uh, I had several parts to play during the show. And, uh, I did the opening act and whatnot, went to the dressing room and tried to get in. And there was an RCMP, that's Royal Canadian Monter Police, that's the Canadian equivalent of the FBI, the federal police. And, uh, he wanted to know where I was going. I said, into the dressing room, I got to get my costume changed and I got to get some props. I was looking a little hesitant at this time, I guess. And, uh, he said, okay, and he opened the door. And I walked inside. The RCMP was trashing that locker room. They were very angry because they had come in looking for narcotics, didn't find any, and they decided that they would make a big fuss and they trashed the room. They were taking doors off lockers and, and taking stuff out of the lockers. They had clipped off a lot of the padlocks on the lockers that belonged to the students in the school, from the sports team. And, uh, I looked around and I saw that my props were pretty well destroyed and I'd have to improvise somehow. And when I left that room, that's the time when I made a decision saying, what the hell do I need Canada for? You've been very good to me, thank you, but no longer I'm going to become an American citizen and I set out to do it at that very moment. And I, I've never regretted the, uh, the decision. Well, the, the odd thing I guess at the time was the fact that we had a very good reputation for not being druggies. Exactly. You know, we were, we drank beer. You know, I mean that was, we lived on beer, come to think of it, you know. We, we kind of proved that you could live forever on beer if you were in your 20s. And so we had a very good reputation for never, ever having, and the reason was, was because the band that opened for us in 1971 was Cheech and Chong. You go over the border with Cheech and Chong in 71. They took everything in our possessions apart. I mean it was just like unbelievable and of course we never had anything, you know, uh, beer cans as well, the thing they could find and we did finally get a good reputation. Now I don't know if somebody decided that they were going to make an example of us in, in Niagara Falls or not, but I think after that we, we just went right through the border back and forth with ever, out, ever changing. Now it was, funny thing was bands like Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath and groups like that, we, we all drank beer. The Mamas and the Papas, James Taylor, the Monkeys, you know, all had heavy drug problems. I mean all the, all the, all the groups, you know, that were like the squeaky clean 16 magazine bands were the ones that were all into that stuff and we'd sit there going, I don't want to get involved in that, you know. And as, as a layman, as not a, a rock and roll person myself, into this, into this ambiance here that I was suddenly plunged into by being hired to chop the man's head off every night and a few other things, I was very sensitive to that. I thought, oh boy, I'm going to see a lot of doper. I didn't see any trace of it whatsoever. Pot, I could smell pot. Most of that was coming from the audience. Oh yeah. Yes. No, if you went to Canada by the third song you're going, I kill for a Dorito right now, you know, in the middle of a song and you're going, anybody have any Oreos? Dian up here. All you had to do was breathe. I don't know what the big deal was at the border because once you got over there was everywhere, you know. Yeah, oh yeah. So, but, but anyways that was really that, that was the peak of our drug existence was that, you know. Now, you know, drugs for me are like, you know, synex, you know, pepsidacy. And they can have us in earth. Yeah, hey, you want some of this? Yeah, this is really good stuff. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. But, you know, by the way, I don't think the monkeys were into hard drugs. Come to think of it, they were drinkers too. But, you know, a lot of the really squeaky clean bands that, that were, you know, above approach were all into the hard drugs and it was just the opposite of what you would think. Yeah, exactly. But Coop had a very good principle and I was very happy to hear this read at the very, very first performance. He would carry a can of beer around on the stage usually, but he never took more than one sip out of any open can of beer. It would come open. He would take a sip from it, put it down. A prop man would come and get it and replace it with a fresh can right away because he was deathly afraid and rightly so that somebody might drop something into that can of beer that could be harmful to him. That was a wise decision. Early in our career we did shows with the Grateful Dead. Who felt that it was their obligation to turn everybody on to LSD in 1968 and I mean, I would sit there with my hand over my beer like this, you know, because the last thing you want to do is be on stage as Alice Cooper and then come on to LSD. I mean, that would be the, you're in the guillotine going, wait a minute, what am I doing? So anyways, we never got into psychedelics, you know, at least I didn't, you know, and our show was crazy enough where you didn't really want to be involved in anything like that and I never drank on stage. When I finally quit drinking, which was like 30 years ago, I went in and my psychiatrist said, well, he says now, he says, how much do you drink on stage? I went, I never drink on stage. He says, well, when you're doing a movie, how much do you drink when you, I said, I never drink when I'm acting on the movie. He says, let me get this straight, Alice doesn't drink. I said, yeah, and he says, but you do. He said, yeah. He goes, so Alice is not the alcoholic here, is he? You know, because I kept blaming everything on Alice, you know, because he was an easy scapegoat while I do it because of Alice, you know, and realize that actually Dr. Jekyll was much, much worse than Mr. Hyde and that's when I really realized that when I did work, I was never drunk or I had to actually make it look like I was drunk because people wanted me to look like that, you know, but I never drank when I was actually working, performing. It was the other 22 hours, you know, that, so, I mean, that was a revelation to me, you know. And do you remember when we hit, what was it? It wasn't Phoenix. No, it was, I'm sorry, you'll come up with the city in a moment for me when you realize what I'm about to say. I, we checked into a hotel and I went out on the balcony at the back, had a beautiful view of the parking lot and I looked over to the adjacent balcony and here's Coop standing there and Coop points down into the parking lot and says, what the hell is that? A big white bam with a jet motor on the top of it, yeah, like from an electroplane and it had written on the side of it, now there'll be some recognition here, I think, Domesticon was written down the side of it in big black letters and I said, I don't know what he said, I don't know either, what is it? It's a weird device anyway, so we retired, went to bed. The next morning I was supposed to be in Time Magazine, that was a Monday morning and Time Magazine comes out on the stands on a Monday morning and I was down at the newsstand and I said, is Time Magazine out yet? And the lady at the counter said, no, not yet, but this gentleman is waiting for it too and I looked over and here is Woody Allen standing there and I had met him before, I went over and reintroduced myself and he remembered me vaguely, I'm sure, and he said, what are you doing in the hotel there? And I said, well, I'm the Al Scooper group. He said, is Alice in the hotel? And I said, yeah, I took a piece of paper and I said, this is a secret and I wrote down your room number and gave it to him. Later on that night when I walked into the arena, he comes rushing over to me, he says, you sent Woody Allen to my room and I thought I'm going to get it now and he said, oh wonderful, he embraced me, wonderful, wonderful, I'm in his new movie. And he is in Sleeper. Yes, Sleeper, he's standing at the side of the highway, not in makeup or anything like that, and he's just standing hitching a ride from the domestic con. That was the big white van that contained the servants that had the thing plugged into their mouth and whatnot. You may remember, if you remember the movie Sleeper, they're all going to go order copies of it right now, of course. And that's where they had the McDonald's sign where it said, so many sold and the figure went all the way down along the desert, no, into infinity. It was 0000 all the way along it. And so you actually got into the movie. Yeah, Woody was actually, I was a reference in two or three movies in Annie Hall. Oh yeah, yeah. He had a joke about me in Annie Hall and there was another one in Celebrity where he was talking about this rock star that had snakes up in the room and everything like that. So there was a little bit of, I was a big Woody Allen fan, I thought I'll take the money and run some of the funny movies. Was that the first time that you met Woody Allen? Actually it was, it was. But I, you know, living in New York, I seen him at Elaine's, you know, and bumped into him a few times. But it was, I didn't really realize that he was very, pretty much an Alice Cooper fan. Oh yes, he was. Yeah, so it was really nice. He did that when I said that. Yeah, it was, it was an easy, unique character, very, I just saw his new movie. It's actually very good to roam with love or whatever. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of wish he'd go back to the, you know, the early Woody Allen movies. I thought those were really, really hysterically funny. He's in a different phase, I suppose now. Yeah. But the movies are very clever. They're very good. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You guys have such incredible chemistry together with each other. And yet you've only. Not illegally, either. That's just legal chemistry. I know alcohol only. I got that with us already. But basically, Mr. Randy, you've only worked with Mr. Cooper on One Tour, which was Billion Dollar Babies, correct? One tour, and I say it was 90 days, but it went a bit longer than that because we went to Brazil. Right. And we, where did we go in Europe? I mean, in other countries. Yeah. Well, we went all over Europe now, but the Brazil trip wasn't, this was a good one. Oh yeah. Okay. So they'd never had a rock concert in Brazil. Ever. And we're talking about Rio de Janeiro, and a huge, huge city. Yeah. So we're playing, I saw Apollo, 38 million people. And Alice Cooper shows up down there. 158,000 people indoors. You set a record. It was the largest indoor attendance ever. Guinness Book of Records is, you know, they placed there was eight times the size of Madison Square Garden. You couldn't see the end of it, could you? You couldn't with binoculars. You couldn't see the end. Now, if you take 158,000 Brazilians, and they all go at once, it's deafening. 158,000 drunk, stoned Brazilians at the top of their lungs. And I'm standing this close to a wall of amps the size of this wall. I can't hear a thing. Yeah. And the thing that I remember most about it, the next morning I get up and there's the newspaper, front page, the whole picture. And it's a picture of me with a snake around, and a sword, and the blood, and everything. And it just says, macumba. Because you realize that 70 or 80 percent of people under the equator believe in macumba, which is a little bit of voodoo, Catholicism, this, that, and that. And so I walked down the street and people were like, you know, hiding their children. It's kind of good, you know. I started going. You had to be. He enjoyed every minute of it. I was a macumba God, you know. It was really a great kind of feeling that people were like shunning like that. And I said, this, I love being the villain. This even fed my villainous appetite even better. But I'm sure you remember that the stage was very, very high. Yeah. Very high. And it was so high that we almost had a disaster there. The crowd, this mass of people, was all pushing in. They're all standing, you see. There are no chairs for them standing. And they were, we had to reach down and the roadies had to hold us by the ankles and march out when they could to haul the kids up because they were getting crushed by the crowd behind them. They could have died. Yeah. It was, well, the way there were three births during the concert. And you're not responsible for anyone. I'm not responsible for anyone who was. Okay. I think there were three people died of old age. It was a city. 158,000 people in a city. So it was like, you know, what would happen at a city? No, when you looked at that crowd, it was, it just went off to the horizon in this year. Yeah. It was a monstrous. And it was indoors. It wasn't the biggest outdoor, but it was the biggest indoor audience. Now kids came in after that and did 144. So we still have the record. We still have the record. Tell me the story. I don't have many of the details where Chef, Chef Curtin used some ingenious, we all know that. He used really ingenious ways in and out of problems of all kinds. And I think we were in Holland. I, my memory doesn't serve me well in this respect. And we knew that the count of heads was wrong. And there were some 8 by 10 cameras there that took pictures of the audience. And Chef held up the show until they had prints and could put pinholes through every head in the audience, every face that we could see there counting them up as we went and we had been short changed by something like 30 percent on the head count in the audience. But that's how Chef Curtin thought. He thought so well, so efficiently. Well, you know, he was, he's still my manager 43 years later. Chef and I are still together. We don't have a contract with each other. We've never had a, you know, it's all been on a handshake. So Chef is still blasting away, putting the new show together right now actually in Hawaii. And so one of the strangest things that happened early, early on in the career was the Toronto show with the chicken. Okay. Now, we had no idea. This was just going to be a big hundred and I think there was maybe 100,000 people in Toronto. I was going to go on between the doors and John Lennon and John and Yoko. And Chef put this whole thing together for these Canadian guys and they were going to pay him and he said, I don't want to be paid. I want Alice to go on between these two acts at the prime time. That was his payment. That's how managers think, you know. Good managers. Yeah. So we're up there on stage and at the very end of our show we used to open pillows up. Feather pillow. One feather pillow would fill this room with CO2 cartridges. It would look like a snowstorm. We had five feather pillows up there and they're like and Jim Morrison's over here in the doors and they're going, yeah, this is great. John Lennon is going, yes, this is wonderful and all of a sudden I looked down and there's a chicken on stage and I went, well, I didn't bring it. You know, it's appropriate because it's a white chicken and, you know, being from Detroit, I had never been on a farm in my life. You know, I figured, well, it's got wings, it's got feathers, it should fly, you know. So I picked it up nicely and just kind of chucked it into the audience. I figured, well, somebody's going to get a great souvenir. Now, they didn't, they don't fly as much as they plummet into the audience and the audience tears it to pieces. This was called the Toronto Peace Festival. A piece of this, a piece of that, a piece of this and they throw the rest of it back on stage. Now it's this mutilated chicken, you know, next day in the paper, of course, that Alice Cooper kills chicken and drinks blood and you know, and if you saw Alice, you would go, okay, I believe that, you know, because, I mean, you would see this character and think, well, that's what happened. The kicker to the story is the first five rows were all in wheelchairs. So, you know, it was the people in wheelchairs that killed the chicken. To this day, I'm thinking, just take it back to the basics. Let me see, I got my keys, I got my wall, I got my tickets, I got my chicken. Who brings a chicken to an Alice Cooper concert, you know? And then I thought the only person that could have brought the chicken is Shep, knowing this was going to happen. You know, knowing that it was going to, you know, Frank Zappa called me the next day, said, did you kill a chicken on stage last night? I went, no. And he said, well, don't tell anybody, they love it. I went, okay, you know, next thing when people would say, did you kill a chicken? I went, no, I don't want to talk about that, you know. And to this day, I go into a city and it's the ASPCA is there. Are you going to kill chickens? I went, no, I'm not going to kill a chicken. In the reality, I never would kill any animal ever, you know. But that was the reputation we got then. To this day of chicken, they never mentioned Colonel Sanders, who was like, killed billions of chickens, you know, one chicken. It's like, you know, eat one missionary and you're accountable, right? And not a very smart chicken. Rest of your life. Oh my God, what the hell am I here for? Anyway, we can segue into more blood and guts and that kind of carnage. Mr. Randy, can you explain to me how you came up with the idea of the guillotine? And in fact, how did you set up Mr. Cooper to have his head removed every concert? Well, first of all, the guillotine was that's the French pronunciation, you see, the guillotine. Yes, the guillotine was invented by a man named guillotine. Figures, doesn't it? In France, many, many years ago, before the French Revolution, and it was used to decapitate the sheep and such, a very small one, of course, you see. And it was later adopted by the revolutionaries. It sounded a very good way to chop off the heads of aristocrats. But the guillotine trick that I used was not designed by me. I've never taken credit for that. It was designed by a fellow named Will Rock, R. O. C. K., an ancient magician who came up with an idea of how to do the thing in such a way that the head that fell into the basket was the head of the artist, actually, and that's what it was. It's a damn clever idea. I'm not going to go into any more details on that. You'll just have to wonder about it. And you'll look it up on Google and you'll probably find it, but it'll probably be a lie I warn you in advance. Well, thank you very much. One, I've never seen a one. You know, can you imagine now I'm coming to rehearsal and I don't think everybody kind of just kept it from me, the whole idea, you know, and I get there and I look over at that and I went, what is that? You know, it's a guillotine. Funny you should ask. And you know, I'm not stupid. My brain's going click, click, click. I may be drunk, but I wasn't stupid. You know, and it's so, yeah. In a previous year, you had been hanged. I'd been hanged, but I'd never been guillotined. You know, and of course, I'm looking at the blade and I go, well, it's foam rubber, you know. No, it's a 40 pound blade. And I take a piece of paper and I go, okay. So it's a real guillotine. Because with a dull blade, you'd suffer, you see. If it was going to cut my head off, it was going to be, you know, if you were at that concert, you got to see it. And he's explained to me how it works and I'm going, I'm not putting my head in there. Pretty soon they got me to put my head in. They showed me how the device worked, you know, and I went. So if I do this wrong, my head comes off. For real. Yeah, I went. Okay. I just said maybe. In every bit that we did, there was an element of danger. There was actually a moment if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time where you could be decapitated or you could be hung. If the device didn't work correctly, if this didn't work, the rope was going to go around my neck and I was, I was taught, my hands were tied. I liked the idea that that was part of it. I liked the idea that when I went to the circus, when the guy was on the trapeze up there and I looked down, I went, if he misses, he's going to die. I liked the element of that in it. I wanted the audience to be part of knowing that this is, it could be fatal. Well, I've got a wonderful souvenir at home. It's a picture of me dressed in a poncho, I'm trying to get this stuff out of the way. You're working for me, but no thanks. Something to show you. Addressed in the poncho, I was at the place where the artist made your head. And you had to have, what did they use? No, they had to do, I had to do the cast. In those days, you had to actually do, it's the most claustrophobic thing you'll ever do in your life where they actually have to make a cast of your head. So all your senses are cut off for about 10 minutes. Yeah, and it feels, I've gone through the procedure and it's not a lot of fun, but I have a surprise for you, oh no. I have the original Alice Cooper head that was cast at that time and there it is, ladies and gentlemen. It's in plastic, we got a hole in the back of it. Yeah, let me get shot. We were having a fight over it, of course, yes. But this is the original Alice Cooper head and from this one, the other ones were emboldened. How many did you make? Oh, they had to make five or six of them and the one we use now is still from that cast. Is it? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So you hold on to that. But I'm going to ask you to autograph this. Oh, absolutely. When the time comes, we need a special autographing pen for this, of course. And this is the original, the very first one. I wasn't there when the thing was being cast on your face, but I was there when they were finishing it off afterwards and I still got a couple souvenir pictures of that that are mementos of my wasted youth. But that is the original, ladies and gentlemen. That is amazing. The makeup isn't too great. I didn't know you had that. That's great. No, I didn't put that makeup on someone else's. So there you go. That's really good. You know, I think I've got to tell you a great story about Randy. Uh-oh. Randy is carries a check in his wallet. He used to. Do you have it now? No, I don't carry the check anymore because we don't do business that way. That's old. You take credit now? That's what old folks would do. Okay. Yeah. To debunk anybody that could prove that Uri Geller could was psychic. Or any psychic is psychic. Any psychic of that matter, yeah. Uri Geller happened to be the guy, the hot guy at the time. At the time. Yeah. It was really a unique thing because everybody was into psychics. Everybody wanted to believe in this and here was Randy going against the flow going, no. He says, uh, you got to prove that to me. Well, I had a display table outside. We actually have million dollar checks signed by me, but it says right there in small type that this is not a valid check for, I don't know, et cetera, et cetera. But there was a time when you did have a check that was- Oh, yeah. I had $10,000. $10,000. A $10,000 check. And that was the initial, I would sacrifice that immediately if somebody did something really psychic. Yeah. That's an amazing thing, you know, that somebody would go against the flow of everybody wanting to believe in this to go the other way. Well, the thing is these so-called psychics are doing a lot of damage to a younger generation. They're getting them thinking in the wrong way. I don't deny that there are psychic phenomena, phenomena, pardon me, happening. I don't deny that because I can't prove a negative of that sort. But I offer the million dollars. It's not mine. It belongs to the foundation that I represent. A million dollars is a huge carrot to hang out. They're even in today's inflation. It still is a good sum of money to offer as a prize to anyone who can prove that they have psychic powers. They should be lined up outside this hotel right now waiting to claim the million dollars because there are tens of thousands of them all over the world. We get applications for it all the time. But the only applications that come in are not from Marie Geller or Sylvia Brown or other people like John Edward. None of these people don't apply for it. Oh, I'm not interested. They're very interested in a million dollars and particularly to make me look like some sort of a fool. But the ones we get them from are from people who genuinely believe they have psychic powers. And we test them every year in Las Vegas and all the way through the year and around the world through other experts, other scientists who can handle that sort of thing for us. And I never sit in on it. You know why? Because the psychics have adopted an attitude not, no, if James Randi is there, he'll put out negative vibrations so I can't be psychic. So when I did a test with the BBC for a homeopathy, they said, well, we'll call you in. I said, no, no, no, I want you to 48 hours after the tests are all done, all tabulated in the computer insight, then tell me that the experiment has been done. And that's exactly what they do. And of course, homeopathy didn't work either. But that prize, that check, I did carry it around for $10,000. Yeah, for a long time. For a long time. Now, see, I went to claim the check because I thought he said psychos. And I said, well. And you would have won. I would have won that money. Certainly. So I had this great idea, and I was going to bring it to you for a reality show about, when they were trying to catch bin Laden, I said, why don't they put 10 psychics and a helicopter over Afghanistan? At Push the Monk. You know, and. No, he put them up over the. And they can find a little girl buried, you know, in Idaho behind a barn by looking at a dress or something. And I'm going, why can't they find this guy? So I said, put these guys on there, the 10 top psychics, put them over Afghanistan. Thank you. And the guy, the guy that comes up with the least each week gets voted off the helicopter. You know. He said, don't worry. You should have known this was coming. Number seven. Number seven, stand a step forward, please. Over to the door. So, and if you win, it's $25 million. I mean, you catch the guy. We're going to get $25 million. Well, they were going to pay $25 million to whoever caught bin Laden, right? So if they do win, it's win-win. Of course, of course, of course. We get the guy, right? Wow. So it never came to fruition. Nobody wanted to do it. But I was going to call you and say, I was going to put you in charge of this. Oh, thank you. Because you would have been perfect for that. Yeah, think of the mail I'd get. Oh, boy. All right, so. Ladies and gentlemen, we come to the close of our panel. I know it's only been, yeah, I know. We have to do this. I'm so sorry. But on a good note, immediately following this panel, Mr. Cooper will be doing autographs at 6 p.m. Not immediately following this panel, but at 6 p.m. in room 208 in the Hilton. Room 208. Wait, 208. 208. Yeah, you knew that was coming. Getting something there for a second. I'll make a note for you. Room 208 in the Hilton. Actually, all weekend long. Mr. Randy will be everywhere. I just don't know much of what to say about you two. You guys have been fantabulous. Incredible. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. You gel so well together. So without any further ado, this is only Friday. It's only the first day. You will see these gentlemen all weekend long. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr.