Jul 3, 2012 at 4:00 PM | Music News | By Rock Square

Alice Cooper may have risen to popularity portraying the kind of hard-living image that makes parents cringe, but the musician also has a socially responsible side. Recently the rocker opened a teen center in Phoenix, Arizona. A creative center for at-risk teens between the ages of 13-20, the organization has been a passion project for Cooper, who has been raising funds with an annual Christmas Pudding variety show.

“We look at it this way,” he said of the center to the Arizona Republic. “If a 13-year-old kid right now is living in an area where the majority of the people are in gangs or into drugs or things like that, this kid doesn’t have much of a chance because he’s born into it. A lot of guys in gangs that I know don’t want their younger brothers or sisters involved in that world. They would rather have them doing something else because, you know, it ends up either dead or in jail… That’s basically what that life is going to be. So if you can learn bass or guitar or piano, whatever it is, at least it’s an option. And that’s what we believe in, giving them an option.”

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