I’m riding with Alice Cooper in the limousine which will take us to his plane, when a blues song by Howlin’ Wolf comeson the radio. “Oh, shit, “he groans. “Get that crap off! God, I hate blues.”

I suggest that he do a blues album someday. Drinking muddy water and sleeping in a hollow log are not so very different, after all, from some of the other humiliations his stage persona’s endured. “Yeah,” he says, and begins improvising a 12-bar deathless right on the spot: “ ‘I scraped out my underwear...’ ”

Once in the air, however, he brightens up considerably. Slipping on his 77 Sunset Strip horn-rimmed shades, he pops open another Budweiser, asks to be dealt in at blackjack, and says, “Wow, do I feel great today. Like Gardner McKay in Adventures in Paradise.”

“What’s that?” asks Suzi Quatro.

“A TV show from the late Fifties. Gardner McKay played this guy who had a yacht and just went sailing all around the Polynesian islands, having these terrific adventures.”