Alice Cooper Wants Big Bands To Support Their Crew Through Pandemic

When the pandemic started, a lot of people lost their jobs. When the concerts and shows stopped, the staff working for the productions and all the crew behind the artists lost their income too. That’s why the godfather of Shock Rock Alice Cooper decided to “put money aside” for his team who works backstage and on the road. He encourages other artists to the same.

“When we saw this coming, we put money aside for our crew,”

Cooper told Forbes in a recent interview.

“We could see that it was… something. So we put money aside as a backup for them. Because we knew that their unemployment would run out, you know? And then they’d have something to go to. I think all responsible bands did that. Hopefully.”

And added,

“Because these are people we live with. We work with them every day. The guys that run the stage are as important as the guys that play guitar. So we made sure that everybody was covered. And that was really important. Hey, we thought this thing was gonna last a month! 18 months?! Unreal.”

“Absolutely unusual.” is how Cooper recounts the sudden downtime, he said,

“I’ve been touring for 55 years. And we usually average 100 to 200 shows a year… We’re so used to being on stage that 18 months off was like insane!”

And now, everything is slowly returning back to normal. Artists are getting back to rehearsals with their shows finally scheduled and it makes them feel “giddy” as what Cooper describes it saying,

“We didn’t know if there was going to be an end to this! Maybe it was all over? Now people are out doing shows again – it’s back to the grind. And we love the grind!”