Nobody is more excited for Arizona's new White Castle than Detroit rocker Alice Cooper

When Scottsdale, Arizona, got its first White Castle last week, people lined up for hours.

And one lifelong craver, former Detroiter and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Alice Cooper, is really excited about the news.

According to local reports, the fast food chain served nearly 50,000 sliders in the first 20 hours of service in Scottsdale. That's a lot of dedicated tiny burger fans, many of them sure to be former Midwesterners.

The burger development, Cooper says, "is a big deal."

Cooper, who lives in Arizona, was in town this week to record a new album and participate in a fundraiser for the Kirk Gibson Foundation for Parkinson's at the Shinola Hotel. There, he sat down with The Detroit News to chat about the event and his new album, which he says is all about Detroit.

When the subject of Detroit restaurants came up, the shock rocker lit up. 

"We just got our first White Castle. It's unbelievable," he said. "They have a corner that’s the Alice Cooper corner and it’s a picture of me sitting with all the boxes of White Castles."

Cooper said he got involved when he was visiting the restaurant chain's main office. 

"I told them, I grew up on White Castles," said the Detroit-bred musician. "I lived on them. Twelve for a dollar. We just lived on these things."

White Castle, in a release announcing the groundbreaking festivities, said Cooper got hooked on the sliders as a young boy in Detroit. It said he chooses tour dates based on their proximity to White Castles, which is believed to be one of the nation's oldest fast-food chains. 

“They promised me a Castle close by, but I never thought they would do it," he said in the release. "This is going to be epic.”

Cooper wasn't just stoked about sliders. He also raved about San Morello, an Italian restaurant on the ground floor of the Shinola Hotel, and said he visited the London Chop House on Tuesday night. 

"I said let's go to some place that's been here forever, the old, classic downtown Detroit," he said. "Probably the Purple Gang ate there, ya know. It was really good." 

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mbaetens@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @melodybaetens