The Alice Cooper Thread

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

I see Alice has announced 14 more US dates next spring.

Lita Ford will support.

There's another 20 US dates for November as well

No idea who is supporting, but probably not Lita Ford!

https://alicecooper.com/alice-cooper...an-tour-dates/

[Justin101]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

I see Alice has announced 14 more US dates next spring.



Lita Ford will support.

That’s a name I’ve not heard for a while!

[Susan Foreman]

New poster design for the April 2020 US dates

[Susan Foreman]

ALEX (V.O.)
"It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now to give it the perfect ending was a bit of the old Ludwig van Cooper"

[Susan Foreman]

There's a short Alice interview / questionnaire at Experience Magazine

The answer about Pennywise is an interesting one, and something I have never heard before, but I don't know if it's true, or an Alice flight-of-fancy!

"Alice Cooper is a musician from Detroit and a pioneer of the shock rock movement of the 1970s. He will be on tour in North America starting in November.

Where do you come up with your best ideas? 
I get my best ideas from television, pop culture, the news. Everywhere you look there’s a great headline, and I can build a song from there.

What is the best non-material gift you’ve received?
Compassion — it is a gift from god. When I was hopelessly addicted to alcohol and drugs, I was shown compassion from many people but especially my wife Sheryl, and without that I would not be here today. 

What is the best non-material gift you’ve given?
Hopefully my song lyrics. I’ve had many people say they quit drinking or avoided hurting themselves due to my lyrics.  

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced?
Without a doubt it was alcoholism and drug addition.  

If you had to choose a different profession, what would you do?
I would either be a comedy writer or a script writer for films.  I always seem to come up with great ideas for movies that haven’t been done yet.  

What is the most useful mistake you’ve made? 
Criticizing another band without knowing them. In the early days of Creedence Clearwater, I knocked them in an interview and then ended up meeting them shortly afterwards. I had to explain myself and why I had said what I said. After that I learned a great lesson and became professional enough to live and let live.

What’s the strangest experience you’ve had?
Working with Salvador Dali for a week was the strangest thing I’ve ever done.  

What opportunity do you regret passing up?
I remember being approached to play the part of Pennywise in the original IT film and I passed. I definitely regret that.

How do you relax? 
I play golf every day, and I avoid stressing about anything. 

If you could go anywhere in the world tomorrow, where would you go?  
Maui.   ​

What is your most indelible childhood memory?
Seeing Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show.  It might have sparked something in my brain. Also, in high school hearing the Beatles on the radio for the first time.

What’s the most valuable thing you learned in school?
That girlfriends did my homework better than I ever could.  

When you’re stuck how do you get unstuck?
Work backwards, find out where you made your mistake and fix it. 

What is your proudest moment?
Career wise — seeing my album at number 1. In my personal life — marrying Sheryl, my wife of 43 years and fathering our 3 kids.

What would you like to experience before you die? 
The feeling of knowing that I’ve done my last interview. "

[Susan Foreman]

Someone has put up the full concert from the at Thompson-Boling Arena, in Knoxville, Tennessee from August 3rd

Unfortunately it was one of the earlier shows, so 'He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask)' is not included

[Susan Foreman]

New interview from the Florida Weekly

"GODFATHER of SHOCK ROCK
Alice Cooper’s current show offers plenty of horrific visuals, stage sets and props.

ALICE COOPER IS BY NO MEANS living in the past — in 2019 he marks his 71st year on this planet. In fact, he is particularly busy, considering he has both his solo career and now his side band, the Hollywood Vampires, both up and running at full speed.

But his newest project, a newly released EP called “Breadcrumbs,” does represent a tip of the hat back to his beginnings — to the time when the man born Vincent Furnier returned to his birthplace of Detroit, brought his villainous Alice Cooper character into focus and started his climb to stardom with the original Alice Cooper Group.

The six-song EP features Cooper’s versions of songs by such legendary late ’60s/ early ’70s Detroit rockers as Bob Seger and the MC5, as well as lesser known, but important acts such as the Dirtbombs and Suzy Quatro. Cooper speaks fondly of the Detroit music scene at the start of the ’70s and how musicians playing very different musical styles co-existed and supported each other during and after the famous 1967 riot in the Motor City.

On his current tour, Alice Cooper continues the theatrical dimension that influenced bands from Kiss to Rob Zombie to Slipknot and beyond.

“If you were a hard rock band in Detroit, you were totally acceptable. A soft rock band gets killed in Detroit,” Cooper recalled in a phone interview last week. “It’s an industrial city. Everybody works at the factories. And it was the MC5 or Iggy & the Stooges or Alice Cooper or Ted Nugent or Bob Seger, those were the hard rock bands that came out of Detroit and were totally acceptable to everybody.

“Now, the crazy thing about Detroit was back in those days, the early ’70s, music was the common denominator. You had Motown and you had hard rock. We’d be playing the East Town with the Stooges or the MC5 and you’d look down and you’d see Smokey Robinson and you’d see like people from the Temptations or Stevie Wonder because they wanted to hear the hard rock bands.

“So, where we would go? We’d go to the Rooster Tail and places like that and we’d see the Motown bands. When the riots started, we realized the black audience and the black public in Detroit saw rock guys as being family. We were not the enemy. We could walk into any black bar in downtown Detroit, and if you were in a rock band, you were totally accepted. And I found that in the playing of this (“Breadcrumbs”) album, the six songs, I used all Detroit players, and there’s a certain amount of R&B within the hard rock. It’s in there somehow.”

In making “Breadcrumbs” Cooper didn’t choose the most obvious songs — or even try to include all of Detroit’s hard rock royalty. In fact, Iggy Pop and the Stooges and Nugent aren’t represented. And while Seger is included, Cooper chose to cover the relatively obscure tune “East Side Story.”

“I think he (Seger) was most surprised at that when I said I’m going do one of his songs for this tribute to Detroit,” Cooper said. “He probably thought I was going to do ‘Get Out of Denver’ or one of those hard rock ones. I said, ‘I’m going to do ‘East Side Story,’ and he goes ‘What?’”

The “Breadcrumbs” EP is worth noting, not only because it’s Cooper’s newest release and it’s quite entertaining, but because it serves as a prequel to his next full-length album, which he expects to release next year.

“I still think Detroit is the hard rock capital. We’re writing the songs right now, Bob Ezrin (the album’s producer) and Tommy Henriksen (guitarist in Cooper’s touring band) and myself and a couple of Detroit guys that I know,” Cooper said. “It’s going to have a flavor of Detroit, a little flavor of Detroit where it’s either about Detroit or all of the players will either be from Detroit or associated with Detroit, like that. I think it will definitely have a different flavor, a little bit of something you’re not expecting from Alice, even though it’s always going to be guitar, hard-rock driven.”

“Breadcrumbs” adds to a prolific stretch for Cooper. Over the past two years, he has released an Alice Cooper full-length studio album, “Paranormal” (2017), followed last year by a live disc, “A Paranormal Evening at the Olympia Paris,” which showcased Cooper and his current band performing plenty of his classics, including “Under My Wheels,” “Billion Dollar Babies,” “I’m Eighteen,” “Only Women Bleed” and “School’s Out.” Then in June, the Hollywood Vampires released its second full-length album, “Rise.”

The “Paranormal” studio album included a reunion on three songs of Cooper and the three remaining members of the original Alice Cooper Group — guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith. (Lead guitarist Glen Buxton passed away in 1997.)

This reunion already looks as if it will be continued on the next Alice Cooper album.

“I’ve already written some stuff with Dennis. And I’m waiting for Neal and Mike to throw in some songs,” Cooper said. “We’re really democratic about it. It doesn’t matter who writes the song. It’s the best song makes the album. So, if Neal writes three songs with me and they’re better than the songs I write with Dennis, then those are the three songs that are going to get on the album. Everybody knows that. It kind of puts everybody in a position of really working hard.”

Further writing and recording will happen around Cooper’s touring commitments. This fall, he is back in the states for the second U.S. leg of his “Ol’ Black Eyes is Back” tour.

As one would expect from the artist who brought a theatrical dimension to the rock and roll concert — influencing multiple generations of bands, from Kiss to Rob Zombie to Slipknot and beyond, that followed in the wake of the villainous and darkly humorous Alice Cooper character — the current show offers plenty of visual bells and whistles, stage sets and props to go with the songs.

“When the curtain comes down, it looks like an old castle,” Cooper said. “I always try to put myself in a situation where anything can happen. So, if it’s ‘Welcome to My Nightmare,’ then anything can happen in a nightmare. Well, anything can come out of this castle. You’re on a ride. And it’s all new staging. We know we have to do the hits. So we do the hits. But at the same time, we go deeper and find songs we haven’t done in a long time or songs that just fit the idea of this place. Then we write the whole show around what haven’t we done.

“We’re always going to do the guillotine because the audience wants the guillotine,” Cooper added, a hint of glee apparent as he spoke of his most famous stage stunt.

A tour with the Hollywood Vampires, the side band he formed with Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry and actor/guitarist Johnny Depp, is also possible for next year.

“There’s already the European tour, another worldwide tour, coming up next year, and I guarantee we’ll do the states. I just don’t know when,” Cooper said. “We’ve got to find a time when Aerosmith’s not touring, Alice isn’t touring and Johnny’s not making movies.”"

[Susan Foreman]

Dennis Dunaway 'Cold, Cold Coffin'. Also featuring Calico Cooper

[Susan Foreman]

[Susan Foreman]

The ending to 'I Never Cry' on the 'Theatre Of Death' tour