How I wound up backstage with Canada’s horror master and America’s shock-rock king

kevin statham photo

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON FEB. 7, 2012

By Steve Newton

I haven’t done a lot of traveling, but back in ’86 I did make it out to Australia for my little sister’s wedding. I spent five-and-a-half weeks down there, mostly on the beach between Frankston (a nice little seaside town outside Melbourne) and up the coast to Coff’s Harbour.

A few things I remember most fondly about the trip were the drive-in bottle shops, the 24-packs of Toohey’s Draft (or I as I liked to call them, “White Rockets”), seeing Midnight Oil in a pub, and the numerous sightings of white pointers (look it up).

I also have vivid memories of the paperback I took with me, Headhunter, the 1984 debut novel by Vancouver author Michael Slade (which at the time was the pen name for three people, criminal lawyer Jay Clarke being the predominant voice).

Headhunter was a riveting read, a really awesome whodunnit, which was made extra special because it was mostly set in B.C. It was also quite horrifying. Its cover featured a blurb from one of my fave authors of all time, Robert Bloch, who called it one of the most gruesome things he’d ever read.

When I got back to Van I quickly hunted down Slade’s second novel, 1987’s Ghoul, which was equally entrancing, and also sported a heavy-metal-based plot. I was interviewing horror-rock legend Alice Cooper on the phone that year–he was coming to town on his Constrictor tour–and when I asked him if he’d read any good scary books lately he started raving about Ghoul.

Clarke caught wind of Cooper’s quote, ended up contacting him, and next thing you know we’re all backstage together at the Pacific Coliseum, hanging out like three horror-loving nerds.

Funny how things work out sometimes.

To hear the full audio of my interviews with Alice Cooper from 1986, 1987, and 1989 subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 500 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with the legends of rock since 1982.