LOCKPORT —
Rock’n roll legend Alice Cooper paid a special visit to the Lock City on Friday morning.
“Coop” and his guitar player for the past seven years, Damen Johnson, played 18 holes at the Lockport Town & Country Club, along with two members of the LT&CC who also have vast musical backgrounds, veteran drummers Dan Stoll and Kevin Roth.
The fantastic foursome had plenty of laughs and shared stories throughout the morning. Later that day, Cooper played a concert in Buffalo and Stoll and Roth, along with their wives, were given tickets to the show and invited backstage where they met up again before Cooper left town.
“He’s a really nice guy — just an easy-going guy to be around, a regular guy,” said Stoll, a local favorite as a member of Lockport’s legendary Stoll Brothers Band for four decades. Roth is a veteran Lockport percussionist who performs frequently at the Palace Theater and as a member of Jelly Jar, a Buffalo blues band.
“We had a lot of good conversations and a lot of laughs. It was just a lot of fun. He really enjoyed playing here.”
Stoll said he knew of plans to play golf with Cooper several weeks ago, but the outing had been kept hush-hush for many reasons — most importantly, privacy.
“He’s sponsored by Calloway Golf and the local representative from Calloway is a friend at Ed Borek, the country club’s golf pro,” Stoll said of Cooper, an avid golfer for the past 30 years.
“He said, ‘Alice Cooper will be in town and he’d love to play Lockport. Can you hook him up? And if a couple of your members want to play, that would be great, too.’ ”
“Ed said the first guy he thought of was me, being an old rock’n roller, and Kevin, who’s also a drummer here in town and because Kevin and I are both members, he said, ‘Why don’t you guys play with him?’”
The rock’n foursome went out at about 8 a.m. on Friday.
“He had some great stories. We talked a lot of about golf, but he was an open book. We could talk about anything,” Stoll said.
“When he first showed up, I said to him, ‘It looks like you drew the short straw.’ He said, ‘No, I think you might have drawn the short one.’”
Asked what they should call him, Cooper told the Lockport pair, “Call me Coop, but call me Alice if I hit a short putt.”
Cooper was a fair golfer, firing a round of 76 at the rolling, LT&CC course, “with a couple of rock star mulligans thrown in,” Stoll said.
“But he was steady all day long. He hit his tee shots 230 to 240 yards dead straight all day long.”
Cooper, born Vincent Damon Furnier on Feb. 4, 1948, left the LT&CC immediately after the golf outing to record a radio show and to do his syndicated weekly radio show. He owns restaurants in Phoenix (“Cooper’s Town”) and in Maui.
Sports
Locals golf with Alice Cooper
Dan Stoll and Kevin Roth hit the links with rock legend Friday at the LT&CC.
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