Contrary to the song, he really is a Mr. Nice Guy … and he’s here in Rio Rancho Friday night

You want some high energy?

It’ll be here Friday evening, Oct. 20, in the Rio Rancho Events Center.

Exactly one month after the appearance of legendary performer Ringo Starr, none other than another legend, shock-rocker Alice Cooper, takes the stage — and, hopefully, doesn’t take a nasty fall like Ringo did.

Of course, Alice is “only” 75 — eight years younger than the former Beatles drummer.

A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 2011, Cooper has been performing for more than 50 years — and this show, “Too Close for Comfort,” is his first in the Land of Enchantment since August 2017, when he appeared with Deep Purple (“Smoke on the Water”) at Isleta Amphitheater.

More than 50 years in the business, and he’s still recording; “Road” is his latest album; “White Line Frankenstein” is the most-played cut.

The secret to his success, Cooper (aka Vincent Damon Furnier) said on an online interview, was because “the more people hated us, the more kids loved us.”

He is on record as saying he picked the stage name “Alice Cooper” because of its shock value, also considering “Lizzie Borden,” who once took an ax and gave her mother 40 whacks, or “Baby Jane,” before thinking, “Why not Alice Cooper?”

Unlike one of his best-known hits, “No More Mister Nice Guy,” Cooper really is a nice guy. What people see on stage — the shock part of this former jock (he ran cross-country while in high school, and once had a 2 handicap as a golfer) is on stage — he’s reflective and soft-spoken off stage.

The son of a minister and grandson of an evangelist, he was born in Detroit, but the family moved to Phoenix when he was young.

Then what happened, you may be asking yourself.

“I grew up in the church, then I went as far away as I could,” he says on an interview found on the internet. “I was the poster boy for everything wrong.”

Many years later, about to see his drug habit end his marriage — his wife was also the offspring of a preacher — he flushed what was left of his cocaine supply “down the toilet, (and) went to bed for three days.”

That ended that nasty habit, and now, Cooper says, “I’m a Christian that does rock.”

It took a while, but he said, “I realized hell was not getting high with Jim Morrison,” and following that return to faith, “I always referred to myself as the real prodigal son.”

Rock has been the constant

At age 16, Cooper gathered his cross-country teammates to make up a band for the Letterman’s Club variety show.

“We were the Earwigs then,” he told Johnny Carson on a June 1977 appearance on that popular TV show. “I got kicked out seven times my senior year for my hair.”

His classmates may have gotten an early inkling of what he would become; his yearbook wish was to be a million-record seller.

Among the funny stories found online is the one in which Cooper talks about his band auditioning in Los Angeles for another rock legend, the late Frank Zappa.

The band did six songs, each two minutes or shorter in length.

“Zappa said, ‘I don’t get it,’” Cooper recalled, asking if the band was from San Francisco. No, Cooper replied, they were from Phoenix.

“I still don’t get it,” he said was Zappa’s reply, but the band got a three-album deal.

Imagine going from performing in the Valley of the Sun to performing around the world, including before a crowd of 148,000 people at an indoor venue in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

In the 1990s, Cooper said, he had gotten to so good playing golf that he thought about joining a golf tour instead of a rock tour, only to realize, “If you can’t shoot 68 every day, you shouldn’t be out there.”

Yeah, he’s been “out there.”

The original band also made an appearance in the movie “Diary of a Mad Housewife” in 1979, filmed the full-length feature film “Good to See You Again Alice Cooper,” and he appeared in a 1972 episode of “The Snoop Sisters.“

Alice’s solo career skyrocketed in the late 1970s, with a succession of hit singles, including “You & Me,” and classic albums, including “Lace and Whiskey” and “From the Inside,” and bigger and even more elaborate concert tours. In the ’80s, he explored different sounds, recording melodic hard rock album “Trash,” which featured the massive hit single “Poison” and became his biggest selling album and single worldwide.â¯â¯

He was still on the big screen then, appearing in the horror films “Monster Dog” and John Carpenter’s “Prince of Darkness,” and recorded songs for the soundtracks to “Roadie,” “Class of 1984,” “Friday the 13 Part VI:â¯â¯Jason Lives” and Wes Craven’s “Shocker.”

His most-memorable appearance may have been when he played himself in “Wayne’s World” in 1991; he also, appropriately, played Freddy Krueger’s wicked stepfather in “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare” and appeared on Gene Wilder’s TV series, “Something Wilder” and on “â¯That ’70s Show.”

Tickets are still available at ticketmaster.com.