Alice Cooper Is Alienating a Lot of People This Week

Alice Cooper has always been something of a contradictory figure. He’s a musician associated with glam rock and plenty of shocking onstage activities; he’s also a devout Christian, which tends to make people’s heads spin the first time they hear it. Cooper has a new album out this week and has also been touring this year with the band Hollywood Vampires (where his bandmates include Joe Perry and Johnny Depp — more on that shortly). So it’s not surprising to see Cooper at the center of plenty of interviews this week. It’s what he’s said in them where things get troubling.

In an interview with Brady Gerber for Vulture, Cooper discussed touring with Depp in the wake of the Depp v. Heard defamation case. Gerber asked Cooper if he and Depp had ever discussed the tour; Cooper responded in the negative. “I don’t think it was ever mentioned on the tour because nobody cared,” Cooper said. “I never watched a moment of the trials. It was so blown out of proportion. It was such a Hollywood thing.” (Elsewhere in the interview, Cooper suggests that Depp and Heard star in a remake of The War of the Roses, which…no. For so many reasons.)

It’s in his interview with Rachel Brodsky for Stereogum that Cooper made statements that have cost him at least one professional relationship. Brodsky brought up the phenomenon of a number of glam-associated artists expressing skepticism over children receiving gender-affirming care. “I’m understanding that there are cases of transgender, but I’m afraid that it’s also a fad, and I’m afraid there’s a lot of people claiming to be this just because they want to be that,” Cooper replied.

Things got more frustrating from there. “A lot of times, I look at it this way, the logical way: If you have these genitals, you’re a boy. If you have those genitals, you’re a girl,” he said — which leads to him implying that the existence of transgender men is impossible.

Cooper then went on to cite long-debunked arguments about men committing crimes in women’s rooms. “A guy can walk into a woman’s bathroom at any time and just say, ‘I just feel like I’m a woman today’ and have the time of his life in there,” he told Brodsky.

As The Daily Beast reported, a cosmetics company that began working with Cooper earlier this month has ended their professional relationship with him as a result of the interview. Vampyre Cosmetics released a statement announcing the cancellation of a planned collaboration with the musician. “In light of recent statements by Alice Cooper we will no longer be doing a makeup collaboration,” the company wrote, adding that they would be refunding money received for pre-orders of the aforementioned collaboration.

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It’s worth mentioning that in the past, Cooper has held off on weighing in on political matters. He also isn’t the only veteran musician to frustrate a lot of people with his position on transgender issues this week. Carlos Santana, at least, seems to have reconsidered his earlier comments.