John Lennon made a lot of friends over the years while he was in the music industry. In the 1970s he started hanging out with Detroit-based singer and rock icon Alice Cooper while they both lived in Hollywood. The pair would often go out drinking nightly and blow off some steam. But The Beatles star never discussed music.
Cooper revealed in a new interview that he and Lennon would meet up with the rest of The Hollywood Vampires – Cooper’s band comprised of famous artists – every night at the Rainbow Bar and Grill. He explained their meetings were an “escape” from music. There was no pressure to talk about their day jobs.
Cooper explained how Lennon and musician Harry Nilsson would often get into arguments about politics, forcing him to step in and break up any disagreements. “John was great,” he recalled. “You had all these guys that would just like to drink. And Harry [Nilsson] and John, after they drank five or six drinks… It was one of those things, I’d have to sit between them.” (Via BBC Sounds)
This was where Lennon tried to bring Cooper into his way of thinking.
Cooper recalled: “If John said ‘black,’ Harry would say ‘white.’ If Harry would say ‘Republican,’ John would say ‘Democrat.’ And they did it on purpose because they loved to fight with each other. And I’d have to sit them both down and go ‘Stop, stop, stop.'”
He said of The Beatles star’s affinity for politics: “The one thing about John was, he always tried to get me more into politics.” But Cooper was not interested in it at all. Instead, he rejected the member of the Fab Four in the most comedic way he could.
READ MORE: John Lennon changed The Beatles’ music after listening to iconic star
Cooper added that, no matter how “scary” his music got, his producer would “never” let him release a song that wasn’t a real song. He said: “It wasn’t just a riff with a bunch of lyrics on it. It had to be a song with a verse, a B section, and a chorus to it. Because that’s what The Beatles did. Now, we could twist it into an Alice Cooper song, we learned how to write listening to McCartney and Lennon.”
Cooper has also built a strong relationship with another member of the band, Paul McCartney.
Cooper said he had known McCartney “for quite a while” and reminisced about going to the star’s studio in Scotland. He said this experience was a different beast altogether, however. “It’s different knowing Paul, who’s the nicest person in the world, and actually being in the studio, working on a track singing with him,” he said. “That’s a whole different thing. Because now, you’re in his world, even though that’s what you’ve done all your life. It’s still his studio. That’s Paul McCartney up there. And everybody there kind of bows their head to that.”
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