When Alice Cooper Promoted ‘Trash’ From a Garbage Truck
Trash gave Alice Cooper his biggest hit in more than a decade after arriving on July 25, 1989. Cooper added a personal touch while promoting the record, going to radio stations to deliver the album. And in keeping with the title, he showed up in a garbage truck.
"You know, we did the entire country," he told UCR. "We did every major station by delivering the record in a garbage truck. That’s pure Alice Cooper. I mean, we believe in the Hollywood stunt more than anything else. There’s a funny side to this: We finally get to Texas, we’re going to go into Houston or Dallas, one of the stations. And you know, we’d have to rent a garbage truck. I always figured, 'Well, it will just be there.' I don’t figure, 'How are we going to get a garbage truck?'”
But Cooper's controversial past came back to haunt him. "They went to rent the garbage truck and the guy that was going to rent it said, 'Well, we don’t really want Alice Cooper representing us, because it will give us a bad name.' The other guy said, 'It’s a garbage truck!' [Laughs] What kind of name do you have? What are you talking about? It’s a garbage truck!'
"I laughed so hard," Cooper added. "I said, 'That’s the best story of the whole tour is that the garbage truck, they wouldn’t rent us one because they were afraid of getting a bad name.'"
Watch Alice Cooper Talk About 'Trash'
In Canada, Cooper was the subject of a one-hour special on Toronto's MuchMusic station, where he argued from the driver's seat of the garbage truck that the album's title was a source of pride.
"All good rock n' roll is trash. Every good band I've ever known started in a garage where trash is, and that's why Trash is trash," he said. "Look around right now at the bands that are trashed out. The [Rolling] Stones are trashing out, Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, Alice Cooper. All the real trash bands are out on the road. "
Alice Cooper Continues a Discussion on 'Trash'