Alice Cooper thinks his shock rock concerts "opened that door" for David Bowie to perform as Ziggy Stardust.
The ‘Poison’ singer remembers the late music legend – who tragically died last month after losing his battle with cancer – coming to one of his early shows, long before he called himself David Bowie and invented his alter-ego Ziggy.
Alice, 67, is certain the gig that Bowie – then known as David Jones – attended showed him what could be achieved if music was mixed with theatre.
He recalled: "I remember him coming to one of our shows early, early on, before he was David Bowie. He was David Jones then, and he was a mime then. He came to one of our shows when Alice was really notorious and banned in England. He probably had it in his mind already to be Ziggy Stardust, but this kind of opened that door, because he saw what it could be."
Alice – who performed under his real name Damon Furnier in The Spiders in the 60s before undergoing his transformation -has nothing but respect for what Bowie did as his alter ego Ziggy in the early 70s, and readily admits he "admired" his music.
When asked if he ever had a rivalry with Bowie, Alice told Rolling Stone magazine: "He created an entirely new character. I was pushing that. I was hoping more people would jump into the theatrical part of it and create characters, so there was no animosity between Bowie and myself. If anything, I really admired what he was doing. And I think he liked Alice, what Alice was doing. It was a true admiration. It was like, ‘How far are you going to take this?’ "
Alice Cooper believes he helped inspire David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust
