Every so often, an Alice Cooper show will still be protested by self-described Christians in small, conservative communities.

Because Alice Cooper shows tend to feature nooses, simulated decapitations and sprays of fake blood, some folks come to the conclusion that Cooper must in league with Satan.

The truth is more wonderfully complicated than that.

Cooper performs May 19 at the Foellinger Theatre.

First of all, when you call Alice Cooper on the phone, you end up talking to a guy named Vincent Damon Furnier.

Furnier is a health nut, an avid golfer, a devoted family man, a devout Christian, a non-drinker and an evident Republican (although he really doesn’t like to talk about politics).

The shocking plot twist here is that Furnier is Cooper.

Cooper is a character Furnier plays. Furnier often refers to Cooper in the third person as if he is someone in the next room.

It wasn’t always so. Furnier has been around long enough to have socialized with some of the late greats of 20^th century rock. He calls them his big brothers and sisters and what he learned from them is that he had to split his personality.

“I used to drink with Jimi Hendrix,” he said in a phone interview. “I used to drink with Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. Every single one of the ones that died at 27 years old. I realized that they were trying to live their image.

“That’s what kind of taught me that if I was going to be Alice Cooper, I had to be two people,” Furnier said. “I had to be the character on stage and not the character off stage. That’s the thing they never learned. That’s what killed them. Trying to live up to that image all the time. You have to fuel that with something.”

Furnier was born in Detroit and grew up in Phoenix but he says Cooper’s sound is pure Detroit.

“It’s always guitar rock,” he said. “It’s always going to be hard. 90% of the show is hard rock all the way and then we make it special by adding the icing on the cake.”

The icing to which he refers is composed of theatrical elements inspired by horror films.

Cooper came up at a time when many rock acts were mounting elaborately theatrical shows. Nobody does that anymore, really, but Cooper never stopped.

Furnier said the Cooper character was based on two of the unlikeliest sources imaginable: the soft-core sci-fi film, “Barbarella,” and the camp classic, “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”

Cooper’s outfit is inspired by the shocking-then-and-shocking-now getup that Anita Pallenberg wore while playing the Black Queen of Sogo. His makeup was inspired by Bette Davis’ smeared face in the latter film.

At first, Furnier said, the Cooper character was an outcast.

“He was sort of society’s victim,” he said. “He was always getting beat up. He was sort of the poster child for the outcasts and every kid that was on the outside. The ones that were getting bullied. Fans who’d had similar experiences saw Alice as their hero.”

Eventually he evolved into a villain, but one who had more in common with Captain Hook than Hannibal Lector.

“When I quit drinking,” he said, “I decided that Alice needs to be a villain. Alice needs to be like rock’s villain. And with that comes comedy. It’s fun to be the villain. You have to have some fun with it. The villains in anything I’ve seen always have the best lines. They were always the most fun guys in the whole movie.”

Whatever antics and shenanigans Cooper got up to on stage, they never went beyond what Furnier could condone in real life.

“If people look at the lyrics – there was never anything satanic,” he said. “There was never anything satanic in anything Alice ever did. There was never anything where they could ban Alice Cooper. I kept within the boundaries of everything. No, I really don’t have any problem playing Alice Cooper and being a Christian.”

In some senses, Cooper may be the most ingratiating villain in the history of entertainment.

Longtime local media personality Chilly Addams said Cooper’s meet-and-greets – those post-concert opportunities for contest winners and VIPs to meet their idols – were notable for the musician’s enthusiasm.

“I’ve been to meet and greets before where it was kind of a cattle call situation,” he said. “But before [Cooper] was completely out of the room he was coming out of, it was like, ‘Hey you guys! How you doing? Was that a great show or what?’”

WXKE disk jockey J.J. Fabini tells a similar tale.

“Every conversation he had [with fans] wasn’t about him,” he said. “It was about them. He wouldn’t just sit and let them ask him questions. He started the conversation: ‘Hi! How are you? What’s your name? What do you do? Tell me about your family. How long have you listened to rock and roll? What kind of bands do you like?’ He is controlling the conversation and steering it right back at the person he is talking to.”

Since James Brown is no longer with us, Furnier may be the new “hardest working man in show business.”

To stay that way, he said, he must follow a meticulous health and fitness regimen.

“I actually am in better shape now, at 68, then I was at 38,” Furnier said. “When I was 38, I was a mess. At 68 – I do 4 or 5 shows a week – I come off stage and I’m the only one not breathing hard.”

Last year, Cooper did something that not many 68-year-old rockers get to do: he formed a supergroup.

It’s called Hollywood Vampires. Other members include actor Johnny Depp and Journey guitarist Joe Perry.

Furnier said that the band “pays tribute to all of our dead, drunk friends.”

Pretty much everything about this is a surprise, but the most surprising thing is that Depp has been able to show Perry a few things on guitar that Perry did not know.

“That’s how good Johnny is,” Furnier said. “Johnny is a killer guitar player. Everybody knows him as a great actor – he’s an Academy Award-caliber actor – but you put a guitar in the guy’s hand and he can play with Eric Clapton or he can play with anybody.

“If he weren’t an actor and I saw him auditioning for a band, I would go, ‘I want that guy right there,’” he said. “When I do reference points – like if I say, ‘You know there was this Yardbirds song that went like this – he’ll go, ‘Oh yeah, yeah. I know which one it is’ and play it back to me.’ And it’s always exactly the sound I was thinking of.”

Furnier said he hopes a protégé takes on the Alice Cooper persona after he’s gone (a la the “Dread Pirate Roberts”), although he plans to live “for another 100 years.”

If anyone ever produces a movie about his life, Furnier said Johnny Depp would be able to play him “if he were just better looking.”