Alice Cooper: "Elvis Told Me To Shoot Him"

Cooper reveals moment of near-history and tells how he used to hide from Keith Moon for fear of drinking sessions

Alice Cooper once found himself in a hotel penthouse holding a gun to Elvis Presley’s head – with the King ordering him to pull the trigger.

The shock-rocker took a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet one of his all-time heroes in 1971, but could never have imagined how it would pan out.

Cooper tells the Mirror: “This was when he was at the top of his game. I’d always been a fan as a kid so I jumped at the chance to go upstairs and meet him.

“They frisked me for guns at the door. I don’t know why they bothered – when I got inside the place was full of guns.

“Elvis took took me into the kitchen, opened a drawer, pulled out a loaded pistol and told me to put it to his head. I didn’t know what to do. I was expecting one of his security men to come in any second, see me holding a gun and shoot me dead.

“But a little voice in my ear was telling me, ‘Go on – this is history. You’ll always be the guy who killed Elvis.’ In my other ear was a voice saying, ‘You can’t kill Elvis. Wound him and you’ll only get a few years.’

“A fraction of a second later Elvis did a flying kick on the gun, tripped me and pinned me by my neck, announcing: ‘That’s how you stop a man with a gun’.”

Cooper also recalls heavy drinking sessions with his club known as the Hollywood Vampires, including ex-Beatles John Lennon and Ringo Star alongside Who drummer Keith Moon, in the legendary Rainbow Bar and Grill in LA.

He says: “Those guys could drink. When you party with Keith Moon your body really knows about it. One time he stayed with me for a week and I literally wasn’t allowed to sleep for seven days.

“It got to the stage where I’d hear he was in town and I’d hide somewhere because I couldn’t face another bender.”

Moon died in 1978 as he was trying to fight off his alcoholism, at which time Cooper was locked in a sanitarium as he attempted to deal with his own demons.

“I watched as my friends, one at a time, died as a result of the rock’n'roll situation,” says Cooper. “I realised I had to stop or I’d die. People like me are still working now because we stopped just in time.”

He took his last drink in 1979.