“Keith most definitely was the maniac of all. You know, there was no such thing as a dare he wouldn’t take. I tell people like this… I say, ‘Look, 35 percent of what you’ve heard about Alice Cooper is true. Okay? The urban legends, I mean, I hear the urban legends every day. I still hear them in every town I go into. Same thing with Ozzy. Same thing with Rob Zombie or Marilyn Manson. Every single thing you’ve heard about Keith Moon is true. And you’ve only heard a tenth of it. A night with Keith Moon was an experience. Honestly, 25 things could’ve happened that night. So anytime I hear a Keith Moon story I go, ‘Yeah. Oh yeah. I totally get it.’

“Not only was he the best drummer in rock ‘n’ roll, but he truly was the epitome of rock ‘n’ roll insanity.”

Cooper has even been on the wrong end of some craziness himself, albeit accidentally, as country crooner Charley Pride surely will tell you if given the chance.

“It was a brand new hotel,” he says. “And it was in Knoxville, Tennessee. I remember exactly what it was. It was a Knoxville Holiday Inn. No, it might have been Hyatt House. And I had this snake, maybe 12 feet long and about four inches thick. I mean, it was a big snake. And I needed to put her in the bathtub at night because she liked to swim. And I went, ‘Okay.’ So I filled up the bathtub, closed the door, and went to sleep.

“I woke up the next morning, opened up the bathroom door, and she was gone. She couldn’t have gotten out under the door. I mean, this thing is way too thick. Then I realize it was a brand new hotel and they hadn’t put the lids on the toilets yet. And she went down into the toilet, into the plumbing, and stayed there for two weeks. There were probably rats in there and she had a great time. But when she came up, she came up in Charley Pride’s toilet.

“I never got around to asking Charley if he was, like, sitting on the toilet at the time. Or if he was shaving and he just happened to look over. I mean, this [snake’s] head was as big as my hand. It was no little snake. It was a big, big snake.”

But aside from the odd escaping snake, Cooper traditionally kept his antics on stage, despite what a recent TV-throwing Sony commercial might imply.

“We shot that in Jackson, Michigan on a day off. It really is a funny commercial. But the very funny thing about that is that I never did throw TVs out of windows. Every rock star from the ’70s had the reputation for throwing televisions out the window. My best friend was the television. I don’t mind throwing somebody else’s television out the window, but not mine.

“Now, the champion of all champions, even more than Keith Moon, for wrecking hotel rooms, was the Small Faces. They were the heavyweight champions. It might have had something to do with the fact that they were all 3′8”. They could wreck a hotel room better than anybody.”

Cooper toured with Steve Marriott’s ultra-mod band early in his career, before the British singer left to form Humble Pie. And they became close, even though Cooper didn’t share their penchant for trashing his temporary abodes.

“The Small Faces came to the stage and we got to be really good friends. I mean, they could wipe out a room pretty quickly. They were good at throwing TVs out. But honestly, I was not a hotel wrecker. I would walk into hotel rooms that were totally destroyed, of course, be standing there and everybody’s like, ‘Well, it’s Alice.’ But we were not hotel wreckers at all. That was not in our repertoire. We were stage wreckers.”

Many of the stages they wrecked were with Iggy and the Stooges back in the heyday of Detroit rock.

“We grew up with the Stooges. I mean, the Stooges and the MC5. We played every weekend with them… the Amboy Dukes and the Frost and Brownsville Station. I mean all those great Detroit bands. We all played the Grande [Ballroom] and the Eastown [Theater] together. It is one of the great rock audiences of all time. Detroit audiences will kill you if you are not loud enough.”

And loud is a lesson Cooper has definitely learned, in every respect, be it in the volume of his band, the notoriety of his concerts, or the echo of his legacy. And, thank hell, the roar shows no signs of abating anytime soon either.

This Halloween, Coop and company will find themselves spooking it out at Harrah’s Rincon Casino and Resort in Valley Center, California; then they jet off to Slovakia, date one of the European leg of the “Theatre of Death” tour. But even if you’re not down San Diego way when the ghosts, goblins, and witches come to play on Cooper’s stage, you can still pick up the screaming single and celebrate the holiday Cooper-style. Just remember, slapping on eye-liner and playing to the crowd isn’t optional.

Watch: “Keepin’ Halloween Alice” [at youtube.com]