Alice Cooper on Loving Lady Gaga and His Broadway "Nightmare"

Secret girl-pop fan alert: Alice Cooper is down with Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, Pink and Katy Perry. "I think sometimes rock bands forget to have fun," he said at a pre-launch party in New York Thursday night for free music site Guvera. "They get so involved in everything else, and I think all the girls are stealing the show at this point! We need more guys to get back into the show biz part of it, you know? The guys are just going, 'Uhh.' "

It's not just the costumes and the theatricality that Cooper enjoys — although he asserts that "rock should be more vaudevillian." "If Gaga were just a costume queen, it would be different," he said. "But she can definitely sing. She sat down and played with Elton John [at the Grammys], and he doesn't do that with just anybody, you know?"

Above all, Cooper says he admires these female stars' spirit. Ke$ha — who told Rolling Stone that meeting the rock icon was a highlight for her — "looked like she was having fun out there," Cooper said, "so I told her, 'Great, just keep doing that.' "

If Ke$ha wants more Cooper, she's in luck. Not only is he bringing his Theatre of Death tour stateside (after stints in Europe and Australia), starting with Harris, Michigan, on July 9th and 10th, but he's also in talks to develop a Broadway show. One of the ideas is to redo the concept from the 1975 album and tour for Welcome to My Nightmare.

"Do it in a set show, do it all out rock," he said, "so you're in a concert. You can do so much more if you're not traveling. You can set things up, put people in the audience that are in the show, so the guy sitting next to you might fly up in the air. I love the idea of an insane asylum, of being in an insane asylum, where you walk in, they lock the doors, and then they stand there, so you're in. The claustrophobia thing is good."

If a straight recreation doesn't pan out, there's also the back story behind the original Alice Cooper Band, which he said resembled the story of the Four Seasons as told in Jersey Boys. "We're actually talking about a lot of these things right now," Cooper said, "but it's always the back story that drives the thing: 'He and his wife were married for 34 years.' We probably have the strongest marriage in the whole [music] business. And it's very romantic, and that would give it heart. You have this total monster up there, who's totally in love with the girl, a monster with a heart of gold. I would like to do that show."

Another show he'd like to see on Broadway? "Twenty years from now, there's going to be a show called Gaga," he predicted. "It would be a total costume ball."

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Song Stories

“Youth Knows No Pain”

Lykke Li | 2011

“Like on 'Youth Knows No Pain' — we are the ones that should demonstrate, because we can take it,” Likke Li said. “We can pierce ourselves, take Ecstasy, dance all night and still go to work at our McDonald's jobs.” Despite the hedonistic sentiment in the song, the Swedish singer also admitted in hindsight her youth had repercussions. “I remember when I was 18-19 and feeling that I know it all,” Li said. “I always feel that I know it all. But that song is about realizing you don’t, and reflecting, ‘Boy, if I only knew what would follow.’”

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