When the perpetually cool Alice Cooper sat down with Fuse's Dan Brown at Bonnaroo 2012 to talk about his horror-themed stage show—check out our eye-witness account of his Bonnaroo set here—he let us know that not all the blood on his tour is fake.
"I tell guys when they get in the [tour] van, I can guarantee you three things: You're going to get paid, you're going to see the world, and you're going to get stitches," Cooper says. "I don't use rubber knives and swords, and if you're in the way, every once in a while you get a little [makes cutting noise]."
Cooper also contrasted his stage show to Iron Maiden's (he's set to tour with the metal gods as their special guest starting on June 21). "It's their show, so they're going to out-elaborate us," Cooper says. "Iron Maiden… is based on spectacle, but our show is much more vaudevillian. Everything revolves around this central, villainous character. Everything happens to him or he instigates what happens.
"We don't use pyro, we don't use lasers… Everything we use looks like it comes from Alice: If it's swords, blood, fog, it seems like Alice is control of all of these things onstage. The character I play, the Alice character, seems to be this mystical character that controls everything around him."
Cooper also talks about having pop singer Ke$ha play a "seductive devil" on his recent album Welcome 2 My Nightmare. "Ke$ha would rather be a rock singer than a 'Tik Tok' singer... she'd rather be Robert Plant. She's got rock in her," Cooper says. "I always like putting people on the album that don't necessarily belong."
For the full interview—including Alice's quip after someone loudly knocks over something off camera—click the video above. And head over here for our complete coverage of Bonnaroo 2012, including interviews with performers, photo highlights and festival news.