snagged from another site I frequent:
["His four decades of shock-rock music with snakes slithering across his shoulders, fake blood and macabre black makeup would not suggest Alice Cooper entertains thoughts about providing a haven of activities for teens on a Christian college campus.
But the Valley music icon and the Solid Rock Foundation he leads are beating their drums to raise $7.3 million to create The Rock, a Christian youth center at Baptist-based Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. The 29,450-square-foot center would include sports facilities, a concert hall, recording studios and sound room, coffeehouse, computer lab, a rock-climbing wall, game room, dancing space, skateboard area and other amenities. They believe it can be the model for teen centers across the U.S., tapping into youth's desire to hear and perform music and hang out in a place with alluring activities.
In The Rock's music studio, future stars might be nurtured and inspired.
Cooper, a recovering alcoholic and son and grandson of Christian pastors, often says his ghoulish music and concerts are entertainment, farce and satire � and not the real him. The singer, whose albums have included "Alice Cooper Goes to Hell," "Lace to Whiskey" and "Prince of Darkness," repeatedly says he wants teens to have a place to be safe from drugs, gangs and guns. The man who recorded "Welcome to My Nightmare" is dreaming that Valley teenagers will make the center a kind of school of rock 'n' roll.
Today, Cooper and his band are winding up the 17-day Australian leg of the Psycho-Drama Tour. The world tour resumes in August in the U.S. for at least 35 dates through October. After the tour, the 59-year-old singer will be ready for the annual Alice Cooper's Christmas Pudding that will raise additional funds for the foundation and The Rock. Add to that the annual Alice Cooper Celebrity Am Golf Tournament. Both events draw richly from the singer's friends in the music industry and sports.
"We do Christmas Pudding about the second week in December," said his wife of 31 years, Sheryl Cooper, owner and choreographer of Destiny Dance International studio in Phoenix. One day, she hopes she and a team can teach dance at The Rock. "I'll call it 'West Side Story' and bring in hip-hop, bring in break dancing, ballet, salsa, mongo, tango and partner dancing," she said. "The common denominator is music."
It was the early 1990s when Alice Cooper and Chuck Savale, both fathers of first-graders at Hopi Elementary School in the Scottsdale Unified School District, met at a parents event and quickly became friends. Savale's wife, Lisa, and Sheryl Cooper clicked, "and we found a whole lot of things in common," said Savale, a one-time pastor at Camelback Bible Church in Paradise Valley where both couples regularly attend. The two wives teamed to start an aerobics program at Camelback.
Savale, who worked for four years there as youth pastor and 12 years with Young Life in Dallas, said he came to know and understand youth. So when he met Alice Cooper, they freely shared their concerns about teen challenges. In 1995, they founded the Solid Rock Foundation, with Alice Cooper as president and Savale as executive director. Its primary mission has been to "honor Christ by helping to meet the spiritual, economical, physical and social needs of teenagers and children." To date more than $1.2 million has been raised and given to such groups as Phoenix Rescue Mission, Hurricane Katrina relief, Grand Canyon University scholarships, Harvest and Women's Choice Pregnancy Clinic.
"We have been blessed to have three amazing children (daughter Calico, 26, an actress and singer; Dashiel, 22, member of the band Runaway: and daughter Sonora, 14), and I just see the needs," Sheryl Cooper said. "They will come home with all kinds of horror stories and just say, 'You know, Mom and Dad, there is no such thing as a teenager who is not at risk.'"
"I don't care if you have the privilege of living in an affluent community, or you are almost on the street, everyone is at risk," she said.
Cooper's team toured several teen centers, including Christian singer Michael W. Smith's 40,000-square-foot teen club, Rocketown, built in 2003 in Nashville, Tenn.
"Ours will be sort of unique as we learn from all the others," Savale said. Music will be the centerpiece. A concert hall for 1,000 standing teens can be expanded for 1,800 by using a sports court. Outside bands will play, and there will be open mike nights for teens to sing, play instruments, read poetry or engage in other forms of expression.
"Alice really wants to teach kids to write lyrics, which he has already done," Savale said. "He wants to bring in professionals to teach how to play guitar, bass, drums or whatever instruments they want." Lighting, staging, sound, backstage, design, recording, mixing and other production skills will be developed. "Maybe we'll get four or five of them onstage" for a full show that could involve as many as 75 teens, he said.
Area teens have been helping to shape the center's plans, said Jeff Moore, director of business development. They have been saying they want adults there "because they don't have parents they can talk to," he said. Some have appealed for a nursery so that teen moms can come and have a place to get child care while they see friends at the center or do homework. A teen advisory board will be set up to help ensure that activities are relevant to teens. Grand Canyon University students will be invited to provide ministry outreach.
"We are excited," Savale said. "Without beating up anybody up with the Bible, we really want to create a place where adults, volunteers and college students will create an atmosphere of caring for and loving kids and allow them to see Christianity in action."
"I'm a big believer in the soft sell, and I think very often in society today, religion has taken on a position of comfort and what it can mean in their lives," said Solid Rock board member Bart Steiner. "But beating them over the head with the Bible isn't going to get them here." Instead, it will be in exhibiting genuine love, providing an inviting setting where they want to be.
The foundation has launched a "one-foot-at-a-time drive," where a square foot can be purchased for $248. About $2.5 million has been raised to date, with tentative goals of breaking ground next spring and opening six months later.
"It's a co-labor of love," said Sheryl Cooper. She says that she and Alice "are pretty much bonded at the hip, and we don't do well without the other."
They are united on the spiritual importance for what is informally being called Alice Cooper's Sanctuary for Kids.
"We believe that we have been saved by Christ in order to serve," she said. "We are called out of darkness into his light, and we are called to be salt and light to a very dark and hungry searching generation that feels like probably they don't have any choice other than to sell drugs, join a gang or succumb to peer pressure."
Information
Mailing address: Solid Rock Foundation, 4350 E. Camelback Road, Suite K270, Phoenix, AZ 85018; phone: (602) 522-9200; or srfrock.org. "]
If only more folks shared this sort of vision an acknowledged the problems that his group has...
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"Oh man, I need TV? When I got T Rex"
Subject: Reason 156-B :Why ALICE COOPER is so cool!! 
Mon Jul 23, 2007 4:57 pm
