In saving the Hollywood sign, Alice Cooper is “Mr.” nice man?’

Alice Cooper is known for his extensive catalog of songs such as “School’s Out”, “No More Mr. Nice Guy”, and “Only Women Bleed”. Perhaps what’s less known about him: he worked behind the scenes rebuilding the Hollywood Sign in the late 1970s.

“The sign was falling down the hill,” Cooper explains. “It sounded like something out of a terrible movie. We went to the Chamber of Commerce and I just said, ‘How much does each one of these letters cost?’ And they said, ‘Well, it’s $27,000.’ And I said, ‘Okay, I’ll buy Groucho’s first ‘O.’” (Marx.)’ I said, ‘At least when people look at the first ‘O’ there, they’ll think of Groucho.”

Cooper and Marks became friends when he and his band moved to Los Angeles, pursuing their rock ‘n’ roll dreams. Their shared love of vaudeville and early Hollywood cinema bonded them.

“(Groucho) saw it as a stage play because he was a stage man. We were going to do a show, and I was looking at the wings on the side and there was Groucho. George Burns and Jack Benny. Then the next time I looked the other way, there was Mae West, and all the vaudeville people were showing up to see the show. “They were not shocked at all about what we were doing.”

But the rest of America at that time, He was I was shocked by his antics on stage.

“I was the scourge of rock ‘n’ roll. They were burning my albums at the 700 Club,” Cooper explains. “But I mean it was right because as long as the parents hated us, the kids would love us.”

With an upcoming 150-date tour, Cooper, now 75, has managed to weather his critics and look back on his turbulent early days with fondness.

“Everybody wanted to go to Hollywood and become a star, you know? Well, we didn’t do that in movies. We did that in rock ‘n’ roll. I always felt a responsibility to Fred Astaires and Errol Flynn and all those people who made those great movies that I lived in, And that we have a chance to do something about it.