Alice Cooper On How He Foresaw Jim Morrison’s Loss of life

Alice Cooper revealed during a recent interview with Classic Rock that he anticipated the death of Jim Morrison as someone who had a bond with the late rocker.

Recalling his feelings when he first met Morrison, The Godfather of Shock Rock started his words:

“There are certain people you meet, and you just know they won’t be around forever, and Jim was one of those people. The guy was a genius, and I don’t throw that word around very often, but he did not treat himself very well.”

He then shared how Morrison’s lifestyle had been:

“He would eat pills like you might eat Skittles, and he was a big drinker. He could have died 100 times. He was a risk taker, fearless. You’d be at a party and see him standing on the edge of a 300-foot-high building, balancing himself with a whisky bottle in each hand: that was a normal day for him.”

In the later part of the conversation, Cooper reflected on his reaction upon learning about the Doors frontman’s death:

“I’ll be honest, when I heard that Jim had died in Paris, aged 27, I told people that I was more surprised that he’d made it to 27. But I’ll say this: I never saw him out of control on stage or in the studio. He believed that it was perfectly fine to get high, as long as when it came time to do what you do for a living, you were focused. It was the other 22 hours of the day that he needed someone to watch over him.”

During a March interview with UCR, the singer also spoke about the Doors’ musical influence on him. In his early days, he wanted to have a distinct ‘Alice Cooper sound,’ just like Morrison had created for the Doors. So, he took them as an example to set his own style.