‘Trash’ From Cooper

“Sex, sex and more sex.”

That was Alice Cooper’s blunt description of his million-selling album “Trash,” which has resurrected the singer’s career.

While talking about “Trash,” Cooper, who appears tonight at the Pantages Theatre, Sunday at the Riverside Convention Center and Thursday at the California Theatre in San Diego, had one eye on the TV set in his West Hollywood hotel room, keeping track of a Lakers game.

Cooper, 42, the long-haired, slender sultan of shock-rock, admitted that the album’s sexy songs like “Poison” and “Bed of Nails” were part of a campaign to expand his audience, which had been mostly male.

“Young girls like songs about sex,” explained Cooper, who recruited red-hot rock composer-producer Desmond Child to write the music and arrangements for “Trash” and to give it a sound that would generate radio play.

“I wanted to reach that female audience that Bon Jovi showed was there for hard rock and metal,” said Cooper. “Now my shows have an audience of about 60% males and about 40% females. The audience used to be all 16-year-old guys in black leather.”

What these female teens don’t like is the kind of blood-splattered theatrical extravaganzas that Cooper has been notorious for since he burst onto the rock scene 20 years ago. To attract more females, Cooper has cleaned up his act.

“I had to give up the hard-core splatter because girls don’t like the blood baths,” he explained. “Some splatter is still there--just real toned-down.”

After being one of rock’s big stars in the ‘70s, Cooper was silent through most of the ‘80s, launching a comeback at the end of the decade. In the mid-’80s he took a four-year break, partly to kick a monster alcohol-abuse habit.

“I had to quit the booze because it was killing me, like drugs and booze killed friends of mine like Jim Morrison, Keith Moon and Jimi Hendrix. I’d like to be a legend like those guys, but not a dead legend.”