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Namedropping! Alice with a guitar that was given to Johnny Depp by Tom Petty |
"Had a car accident this afternoon in Phoenix, but luckily everyone walked away UNHURT. Very thankful for that and also to Dodge for building such a sturdy Challenger!!" Very nearly 'Under My Wheels'! |
Alice Cooper news roundup: Alice was at the annual 'Imperial Ball' at NAMM on January 27th along with Johnny Depp, Tommy Henriksen, Matt Sorum and Bruce Witkins from 'Hollywood Vampires' with guests including Wayne Kramer of MC5. Songs played were 'Johnny B. Goode', 'No More Mr. Nice Guy' and 'School's Out' Performing Songwriter has an interview with Bob Ezrin, during which he talks about recording with Lou Reed, Pink Floyd and (of course) Alice Cooper: "You first saw the Alice Cooper Group at a very early stage in their career. What was it about the band that convinced you they had potential? Well, first of all, you have to understand that I was 19 years old when I saw them. At that time I was a folk musician, and a classically trained pianist, so I was heavily into music of all kinds. And like most kids of the ’60s, I was used to rock music being played by angry young men with beards and T-shirts and jeans, talking about social issues and/or their own securities. When I went to New York City to see Alice Cooper play … first of all, I found myself in a room filled with people in black spandex and face makeup, with black fingernails and spider eyes and black lipstick. And then when the band hit the stage, they came on like a group of theatrical ghouls, who sort of walked out with their instruments and props and amazing lights and proceeded to do a show that was as much theater as it was rock music. The show took us through all kinds of strange little twilight zone-like short stories involving a variety of twisted characters and weird tales. By the end of it, they had given us basically an hour and a half of theatrical and musical experience. And I thought, this is the future of rock music. We’re going to graduate from T-shirts and jeans, and graduate to big productions and songs about large ideas. Alice has said that you were really their George Martin, and that you tightened up the band. He said that what you did was expand upon the good things about their songs and strip away anything that seemed extraneous. Oh, yes, that was done, at least. We sometimes did complete reconstructive surgery. We would come up with ideas and then take those ideas right down to the bare chassis—the first chord progression and three lines of melody—and rebuild an entire song around that. Or we might do that with one great riff, as with “School’s Out,” for example. Out of that one guitar riff we crafted an entire song in the rehearsal studio. There’s a song called “Reflected,” on the band’s first album, that has a catchy melody but sounds tentative. A few years after the song was initially recorded, you and the band transformed it into “Elected,” which is a powerful anthem. Can you talk a bit about how that was done? Well, we were nothing if not brave and sort of macho about our approach to music. And very melodramatic. The idea for “Elected” really sprang out of a casual conversation where we jokingly said, “Why don’t we run Alice for president?” It was such a horrible field of candidates, and we were so disappointed with what was going on in America at the time, that we thought that would be a great irony. And of course we all looked at each other and thought, “Why not?” (Laughs) We started thinking about what to do with the idea, and someone suggested we could make “Reflected” into “Elected.” We looked at the song, and thought, “Hell, yes, we can do that.” So we took the song and made it brasher or “brassier.” We added brass to it and made it speak like a hunting call. Quite a few of Alice Cooper’s songs start off with bass lines being played solo. What was the idea behind that? That’s an interesting thing. That was a device we used, and in fact we may have used it too much. It was a way of building energy and allowing the song to get larger and larger in a sort of natural way, using the five members of the band." Lastly, The Independent has an article on Alice to mark his upcoming 70th birthday, with their choice of top ten tracks: "The godfather of shock rock, Alice Cooper (nee Vincent Furnier), who celebrates his 70th birthday on 4 February, has been making music and outraging sensitive souls for almost 50 years now – and shows no signs of mothballing his notorious alter-ego any time soon. Only last year, Alice released his 27th studio album and he seems to be perpetually on the road, having just completed a 100-date world tour, with 20 more gigs to come Stateside in the next month. As both the frontman of the original Alice Cooper band and as a solo artist, Cooper has recorded some of the great anthemic singles of our time, anticipated and popularised glam rock, influenced punk and is now regarded as a heavy rock and metal icon. And then of course there is the grand guignol stage shows, which in a world now full of horrors may have lost their shock value, but represented something innovative and dangerous in the faraway 1970s. Cooper first made waves in his homeland at the dawn of the 1970s with the original Alice Cooper band which, apart from preacher's son Furnier, consisted of guitarists Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce, drummer Neal Smith and Dennis Dunaway on bass, all of whom contributed greatly as musicians and songwriters to the group's worldwide success in the first half of the Seventies. The story that they took the name Alice Cooper from a 17th-century witch after a ouija board session is an urban myth. They chose Alice Cooper at random as it was so innocuous and reassuring in stark contrast to their music and live performances. Taking inspiration from seminal Detroit rockers the Stooges and the MC5 and totally at odds with the whole hippy generation ethos, the group pioneered a brand of theatrical rock which found its apogee with an outrageous smoke and mirrors stage act. It was designed to shock and awe and featured mock executions, snakes, dismembered dolls and fake blood by the bucket load, all co-ordinated by Furnier (the son of a preacher, ironically), who eventually evolved into his androgynous alter ego, Alice. All of which was guaranteed to make the band every parent’s nightmare, and influenced a range of like-minded artists from David Bowie to Marilyn Manson to John Lydon. And beneath the schlock, there was some terrific music going on, thanks in a large part to classically trained whizz-kid producer Bob Ezrin, who Cooper often refers to as the George Martin of the band. However, it wasn’t until the summer of 1972 at the height of glam rock that the persona of Alice Cooper really entered the UK’s public consciousness (and how) when the anthemic “School’s Out” single spent three week at the top of the UK charts. At this stage, of course, Alice Cooper was the name of the five piece band but to the casual viewer and listener, front man Furnier was the titular Alice and they paid little attention to the rest of the group. For a brief spell following “School’s Out” the Alice Cooper band were the biggest group in the world, but it couldn’t last. The band splintered in 1974 and Alice went solo, officially adopting the Alice Cooper moniker. Initial success was followed by a fallow period as Cooper increasingly became part of the mainstream, taking up golf and appearing on The Muppet Show and Celebrity Squares. He also fought his own demons, becoming addicted to alcohol and cocaine before his re-emergence in the late 1980s and 1990s. And so, Alice Cooper carries on, still churning out the albums and peddling a persona and an act now more camp classic than house of horrors. Alice is almost a beloved family entertainer now, about as threatening as Tom Hanks, but there was a time when things were very different. So let’s celebrate his 70th with this playlist of Alice Cooper’s top ten songs. 10. Dead Babies from Killer (1971) Just one of several classic tracks from the Killer album, the original Alice Cooper band’s and indeed Cooper’s own finest work. “Dead Babies” is the perfect example of how misinterpreted many of the group’s songs were. It didn’t help that when they performed the song live, Alice was busy decapitating baby dolls, but behind the shock tactics lies a timely and prescient dose of social commentary warning of the dangers and repercussions of child neglect. To hear lines like “Little Betty ate a pound of aspirin / She got them from the shelf up on the wall/ Betty’s Mommy wasn’t there to save her / She didn’t even hear her baby call” to a background of Beatlesque psychedelia is a surreal experience indeed, and one not easily forgotten. 9. Poison from Trash (1989) After a lean decade when he lurched into showbizzy self-parody, Alice hitched a ride on the power ballad bandwagon. “Poison” that made it all the way to number two in the UK singles charts, his biggest hit since his early Seventies heyday. The song paved the way for his 1990s comeback when he was embraced by a new generation of listeners who considered him a heavy metal icon thanks to albums such as Trash and Hey Stoopid. 8. Under My Wheels from Killer (1971) Drawing on the murky, proto-punk Detroit sound of the Stooges and the MC5, this powerhouse track from Killer has one of Cooper’s toughest vocals and a twisted sense of humour, (a bloke runs over his girlfriend while showing off his new car). It bursts with Motor City grit and mayhem, and sparkling Stax-like horns round the whole thing off too. 7. Desperado from Killer (1971) Cooper has variously claimed that this is about the Doors’ Jim Morrison or Robert Vaughan’s character from The Magnificent Seven, and the western metaphor and the black leather imagery work well in this track from Killer. However, with lines like I’m a killer... and I’m a clown,” Cooper tapped just as much into his own persona for this moody, atmospheric and brilliantly orchestrated grower. 6. Only Women Bleed from Welcome to My Nightmare (1975) Even when he wasn’t trying to shock, Cooper still provoked controversy with this affecting ballad, a sympathetic view of domestic abuse which was widely misinterpreted as a song about menstruation. A track from his first solo album Welcome to My Nightmare, “Only Women Bleed” was a big hit in the USA. It’s now viewed as a feminist anthem and remains one of Cooper’s most enduring and frequently covered songs. 5. No More Mr Nice Guy from Billion Dollar Babies (1973) A brilliant hit single, boasting a terrific opening riff and catchy, singalong lyrics, on the face of it, “No More Mr Nice Guy” was a playful, tongue-in-cheek riposte to Cooper’s critics including family and friends who baulked at his music and outlandish stage theatrics. But behind the feel-good chorus was the message, This is what I do and I ain’t apologising. 4. Elected from Billion Dollar Babies (1972) The follow up to “School’s Out” was another anthemic piledriver that tapped into the election fever generated by Richard Nixon’s quest for a second term as US president in 1972. Elected hit number 4 in the UK charts in the autumn of 1972 but surprisingly barely breached the top 30 in the US giving some indication into how big Alice Cooper were in the UK at that time. Big, loud, and dripping with satire, (”I’m your Yankee Doodle Dandy in a gold Rolls-Royce”), “Elected” was backed with a pioneering video that featured Alice as a monstrous presidential hopeful. Watching it now, it’s impossible not to view it as an eerie premonition of what was to come in US politics. 3. Halo of Flies from Killer (1971) Killer‘s epic centrepiece is undoubtedly prog rock but prog rock with tantalising hints of the original five piece’s garage band origins and with just enough Kinks and The Who flourishes to illustrate the band’s influences. “Halo of Flies” fuses together a clutch of mini-suites in a bold cinematic sweep while somehow finding room for the melody of “My Favourite Things” from The Sound of Music.The result is a quantum leap in style, conception and performance from a band at the peak of their considerable powers. 2. I’m Eighteen from Love it to Death (1970) “I’m Eighteen” was the band’s breakthrough single in the USA and remains one of the all-time classic anthems of teenage angst. “I’m Eighteen” and its parent album Love it to Death was Bob Ezrin’s first involvement as producer and it put Alice Cooper on the map. Cooper’s trademark rasp barks out his frustrations as he lists a litany of reasons why being eighteen is such a bummer (”I got a baby’s brain and an old man’s heart.”) before concluding that actually, it’s not too bad, this whole being on the cusp of adulthood thing, as he triumphantly roars at the song’s conclusion, “I’m Eighteen and I like it!” 1. School’s Out from School’s Out (1972) No apologies for picking this timeless classic as Alice Cooper’s greatest song. Full of punky attitude and tailor made for radio and school holidays, “School’s Out” is the ultimate parent-baiting anthem, a conscious effort by the Alice Cooper band to write a classic hit single. It replaced Donny Osmond’s “Puppy Love” at the top of the UK charts and for three weeks in August 1972 it felt like something was in the air. A sabre-wielding appearance on Top of the Pops upset moral guardian Mary Whitehouse and she called for the group to be banned. Depending on your age and viewpoint, Cooper’s performance was either the most disturbing and scandalous exhibition of degenerate behaviour ever seen on British TV or the most exhilarating and liberating thing seen on the box since... well, the week before, actually, when David Bowie had cavorted with Mick Ronson on the self-same programme. For the nation’s moral guardians, songs like “School’s Out” and a bloke calling himself Alice was incontrovertible proof that we were all going to hell in a handcart. They needn’t have worried. By the end of the year Little Jimmy Osmond’s Long Haired Lover from Liverpool reached number one. The natural order had resumed" |
February 4th - Alice celebrates his 70th birthday today, and DW.com has an overview of his life "Alice Cooper at 70: Shock rocker lives on While many of his contemporaries have fallen by the wayside, the once hard-living pioneer of gory rock theatrics and catchy heavy metal anthems is one of music's great survivors. Cooper's musical adventure began in the 1960s. He played in various cover bands before forming the Alice Cooper Band. Their mission: to "drive a stake into the heart of the Love Generation." Musician Frank Zappa was impressed by Alice Cooper's talent to empty out a club just minutes after taking the stage. Zappa signed on "the worst band in L.A." and produced two albums with them. When Marilyn Manson started strutting the stage with his grotesque gothic visage, or the singer of the Death Metal band "Bloodbath" screamed into the microphone while covered with blood, it was nothing that new. Alice Cooper pioneered those kind of gruesome heavy rock theatrical over half a century ago. Interestingly, the devil on stage doing his voodoo was not only a shock rock pioneer, but the son of a pastor. Vincent Damien Furnier was born in Detroit, Michigan on February 4, 1948. While not much is known about his childhood, but he was a regular church-goer and at age 13 was proud to watch his father — who also loved rock'n'roll music — become ordained as a bishop. Indeed, few know that Alice Cooper remains a committed Christian to this day — despite his irreverent stage persona and long struggles with alcohol and drugs. Having started a band in high school, Furnier pursued his musical ambition in the midst of the 60s flower power movement. But he soon wanted to show just how much the Love Generation got on his nerves. While Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin became hippie icons, Vincent scratched around for gigs with his band The Spiders, who would regularly empty out clubs with their quirky garage rock. Furnier and the band ultimately ended up in Los Angeles, where they met musician Frank Zappa. The leader of the experimental rock band, The Mothers of Invention, liked this group that didn't care less what the mainstream was doing. So Zappa signed them to his new label, Straight Records. The band called itself Alice Cooper from then on because they allegedly thought it was funny to have a name that sounded like the nice grandma from across the street. A different version of the story says that Alice Cooper was the name of a witch who was burned at the stake in 17th-century England. The band Alice Cooper would soon find success on the back of an inimitable stage show. It was during a concert in Toronto in 1969 that the idea for a stage routine that Alice Cooper continues to perform to this day was conceived. A live chicken came flying out of the audience and onto the stage. Singer Furnier threw it back, saying "It's a chicken, it can fly on its own." Unexpectedly, the audience tore the bird to pieces. Some in the media wrongly reported that Furnier himself had torn the head off and drank the chicken's blood. The incident strangely inspired the band to shock audiences with bizarre theatrics, including cavorting on stage with an 11-foot boa constrictor snake. But with the new shock rock schtick also came musical success. The 1972 single "School's Out" went to number one in the UK charts; while the next year, the album "Billion Dollar Babies" also reached number one in the US. When the band broke up after its initial success, Vincent claimed the name Alice Cooper for himself as a solo artist — and even managed to have it written into his passport. And the hits kept coming with the release of the 1975 solo concept album, "Welcome to my Nightmare," which also went top ten in the US. Cooper was an acute alcoholic until 1983 but has been sober ever since and never fully succumbed to the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll lifestyle. These days, he's a loyal husband and loving father; and contrary to the shock rocker cliché, Cooper's hobby is golfing and he goes to church every Sunday. He even (jokingly) contemplated running for US President in 2016 — part of his platform was "Adding Lemmy (from band Motorhead) to Mt. Rushmore." In an interview with a Christian online magazine, Cooper explained why he stringently separates these two sides of his life. "Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain died because they wanted to embody their stage presence at all times. They drank and took drugs to do so," he said. "When I stopped drinking, I made a decision. I wanted to co-exist as a person alongside the stage figure Alice Cooper. But I didn't want to be that figure all the time." "Leave Alice on stage just as he is: the arrogant, evil guy," he reflected. "When the curtain goes down, I am a completely different person than I am on stage."" |
Desert Financial advert that aired during Super Bowl 2018 |
The news a lot of people have been waiting for Hollywood Vampires announce their first ever UK shows | Planet Rock JUNE 2018 Birmingham Genting Arena – Sat 16th Manchester Arena – Sun 17th Glasgow The SSE Hydro – Tue 19th London The SSE Arena Wembley – Wed 20th https://www.expressandstar.com/resiz...KYKCU2ATDE.jpg As much as it hurts me to say it, I don't want to see Alice fronting a covers band! |
A new interview in Billboard magazine Alice Cooper Talks Scares With Recent Car Accident & Hawaii False Alarm: 'Somebody Was Trying to Keep Me From Getting to 70' | Billboard "Alice Cooper is as busy as ever after making it to 70 earlier this month -- despite events, including a false nuclear attack and a car crash, that seemed to be conspiring against him. Cooper was in Hawaii, where his longtime manager Shep Gordon resides, on Jan. 13 during the nuclear attack alert that proved to be false. "You never want to see the words 'imminent,' 'nuclear' and 'not a drill' ever in one sentence," Cooper, who turned 70 on Feb. 4, tells Billboard. "I'm looking at it going, 'Are you kidding me?' My theology told me I'm gonna go from one paradise to another one, but it's still a bit of a shock to think, 'In about 18 minutes, I'm gonna be fried.' When it blew over everybody was laughing about it, but believe me, it was scary." Then, two weeks later, Cooper was involved in a head-on car collision back home in Phoenix that totaled both vehicles. "Both of us walked out of it without a scratch," Cooper reports. "My car looked like a piece of art, but I did come out of it with a 1965 350 Shelby Mustang -- a real Detroit car. That's where the insurance money's going." He ultimately concludes: "Somebody was trying to keep me from getting to 70, but I'm still here." And Cooper has plenty going on as he enters his eight decade. On March 1 he kicks off a new tour to support his 2017 album Paranormal, promising three or four songs from the new album. But he and Gordon are also planning a major new show that will probably hit the road during 2019. "There's a million ideas out there," Cooper notes. "It won't look like this (upcoming) tour and it'll be a bigger show. There's no way from getting away from the 15 songs for so you haveto do, so it's, 'How do you approach them? What's the look of Alice? What's the look of the band?' That's what we're working on how. The creativity has not gone." Meanwhile, Cooper will also be active this year with the Hollywood Vampires, his ad hock all-star group with Johnny Depp and Aerosmith's Joe Perry. The group, with some new adjunct members who will be announced soon, is playing dates in Europe during the spring and early summer, but it's particularly anxious to hit the studio to make its second album -- and first of all original material. "Everybody is writing right now," Cooper reports. "We probably won't get into the album until the summer, and then it'll go quickly because we've all got a lot of songs. Johnny did five movies last year so he could free himself up for this, and the band's really anxious to get together." Cooper is also interested to see who else becomes a Vampire during the coming months. "I still like the idea that the Vampires is the world's most expensive bar band," he says. "If somebody wants to jump on stage and play with us, if they know the songs and they fit, then come on up. If a Jimmy Page could come up and play with us, or a Jeff Beck or any of those guys and do a couple songs with us, they would fit right into Vampire world, 'cause they lived through that era." Cooper's other major project this year is playing King Herod for Jesus Christ Superstar Live on Easter Sunday, April 1 on NBC. Cooper has been rehearsing "King Herod's Song" every day, although he's waiting for some direction about how the show's producer want it to be delivered. "I think I should play it like Alan Rickman, a very condescending kind of arrogance," says Cooper, who recorded a version of the track for a 1996 Superstar album in the U.K. "It's the only song in the whole show that's funny, and Herod is being so abusive, verbally, to Christ, even though he's treating him as a guest. There's a lot of ways to take that song." Cooper is particularly stoked that the production is being broadcast live. "One of the guys said, 'Will that throw you off, having a live audience?'" Cooper says. "I'm like, 'What do you think I do every night?' I do rock theatrics in front of an audience, y'know? I'll probably the only one comfortable there. Musical theater is pretty much what I've done for 50 years. I think it'll feel pretty natural."" |
There is a short feature on The Vampires in Forbes Magazine. No new pictures or information tho (other than the fact the Johnny Depps net worth is $200 million!) Johnny Depp, Alice Cooper, Joe Perry Gear Up For Hollywood Vampires Tour | Forbes "Want a break from the day job as an A-list movie star? Worried that your reported net worth of $200 million has dwindled to a fraction of what it was? Do you love rock and roll and play in a mean band? Then go on an international tour, give the fans what they want and have a lot of fun. Johnny Depp is just about to do just that in a supergroup with Alice Cooper and Joe Perry. The Hollywood Vampires confirms its first tour since 2016, with its first –ever U.K. dates announced today to slot into an already-revealed European schedule. The group has decades of rock experience in total – Perry has sold 150 million records with Aerosmith and Cooper has sold 50 million himself. (In 1973, aged 23, Cooper was a FORBES cover star, with the headline “A New Breed of Tycoon.”) The original Hollywood Vampires gathered in the 1970s on the Sunset Strip at the Rainbow Bar & Grill’s upstairs bar. “To join the club, one simply had to out-drink all of the members,” Cooper, a founding member of the original Vampires, commented in a statement. “I would walk in on a typical night and John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, Keith Moon—who would usually be in a costume like a maid or a chauffeur—Bernie Taupin, and Mickey Dolenz would be there.” The 2018 live shows are set to include originals such as “As Bad As I Am” and rock covers – tributes to previous vampires and honorary members (Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham; Jimi Hendrix; Lennon; Nilsson; Marc Bolan; Jim Morrison of The Doors; The Who’s Moon and more.) The 2015 eponymous debut album had Cooper’s trademark “School’s Out” sequencing into the medley he now does in concerts with Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2).” The Hollywood Vampires tour starts in May in Moscow and includes Germany, Poland, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. The newly confirmed dates are in Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and London with to-be-announced guests and support acts The Darkness and The Damned. The Hollywood Vampires’ album gained a “generally favorable” score of 69 on Metacritic, with some praise for its MusiCares backing, Cooper’s vocals and Bob Ezrin’s production. The guests on that record were stellar: Paul McCartney, Joe Walsh, Slash, Dave Grohl, Perry Farrell, Zak Starkey, Robby Krieger and more. It peaked at No. 43 on the Billboard chart. Still, the AllMusic review said: “Hollywood Vampires is just a lark but it’s a fun lark, and having fun is what matters in a party.” The shows may prove to be just that." |
To be released in May (#68). Pre-order here There is also one of the straight jacket 'Ballad Of Dwight Frye' character |
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Alice won BEST WORLDWIDE SOLO ARTIST at the Planet Rock Awards 2018 Other winners were: BEST BRITISH BAND - Deep Purple BEST BRITISH ALBUM - Deep Purple 'Infinite' BEST INTERNATIONAL BAND - Foo Fighters BEST INTERNATIONAL ALBUM - Foo Fighters 'Concrete & Gold' BEST BRITISH SINGLE - Inglorious 'I Don't Need Your Loving' BEST LIVE BAND - Metallica BEST NEW BAND - Wayward Sons https://www.planetrock.com/news/rock...8-the-winners/ |
Glen's tombstone, located in Evergreen Cemetery, Wright County, Iowa, USA |
Alice has just started the 'Paranormal Evening With Alice Cooper' tour in the US and Canada. This is due to run for the entire month, ending on March 29th in Indianapolis. The opening night was in Windsor, Ontario, Canada on Thursday, March 1st. From what I am led to believe, this was the set list:
It's disappointing that, with so many fans calling for 'Fireball' to be included, the only additional song from 'Paranormal', alongside 'Paranoiac Personality' is 'Fallen In Love'. However. it's good to see 'Be My Lover' and (especially) 'Serious' back in the set It looks like there have not been any changes to the band: Nita Strauss - Guitar Ryan Roxie - Guitar Tommy Henriksen - Guitar Chuck Garric - Bass Glen Sobel - Drums No word on the theatrics as yet, but looking at the list I would imagine it's the same old-same old: Sword/money for 'Billion Dollar Babies' FrankenAlice for 'Feed My Frankenstein' Doll for 'Cold Ethyl'/'Only Women Bleed' Straight Jacket for 'Ballad Of Dwight Frye' Execution for 'I Love The Dead' Crutch for 'I'm 18' Balloons for 'Schools Out' |
The Toronto Sun has an Alice interview Welcome to his nightmare for the foreseeable future: Alice Cooper has ‘no desire to retire’ | Toronto Sun "After more than 50 theatrical years on stage, don’t expect Alice Cooper to hang up his snakes and guillotines anytime soon. The 70-year-old shock-rocker, who plays Casino Rama on Friday and returns for a Hollywood Vampires date with Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry and actor-musician Johnny Depp on May 18, says he has no plans of joining the growing list of seventy-something artists — Elton John, Paul Simon and Ozzy Osbourne among them — with a farewell tour. “I have absolutely no desire to retire,” said the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer. “I mean people say, ‘You could retire and play golf.’ I do that anyways. I get up every morning and go golfing and I do the show that night. I wouldn’t be retiring to anything and so why not just keep making records and touring? I think people still want to keep seeing the show.” We caught up with Cooper — who is also set to play King Herod in NBC’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live! on Easter Sunday (April 1) — down the line from his Phoenix home. You were once quoted as saying that when Mick Jagger, now 74, packs it in, you’ll give yourself six more years. Is that still true? I think that’s a safe thing to say because Jagger will just go on forever. As long as Keith Richards is still alive, Jagger is going to go on forever. And I used him as sort of focal point because he does three hours on stage, he does a half-hour on the treadmill before the show and he’s 74! That’s the sort of tour diet that you want to follow. Your 2017 album, Paranormal, was notable for a number of its guests — U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. , Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover and ZZ Top singer-guitarist Billy Gibbons, among them. Did you know them all previously? In our business, it’s sort of a fraternity — everybody knows everybody. I might get a call from Slash saying, ‘Hey, can you sing this one song I just wrote?’ And I go, ‘Okay, sure.’ Or I may call up Steve Vai or Joe Satriani or Billy Gibbons and say I got this song and it just screams, ‘It has your signature all over it.’ But does Larry stick out in that group? We picked Larry because it was so unpredictable. Normally I would pick a drummer that would be a rock ‘n’ roll drummer. And in his case, it’s just the opposite. I picked a drummer that’s a much more artistic drummer and that made the album a whole different thing. And I think that’s what you want. You want to give everybody a different flavour every time you go out. You’re also preparing to play King Herod opposite John Legend as Jesus. Why kind of ruler of Judea will you be? Well, I kind of see this King Herod as being very condescending, kind of very arrogant. If there’s anybody I’m looking to kind of copy, it would be sort of an Alan Rickman. You know, that sort of looking down on people kind of thing because he is the King and his job is to make fun, in a very subtle way, of Jesus Christ, which is a little bit hard for me because I’m Christian. But it is a part and I understand that and, in the end, I know who wins. The Hollywood Vampires have also added European and North American dates this year so touring with Joe and Johnny seems to be going well? I kind of try to act as the lead singer and the historian. We’ll do a song, and I’ll tell a story about Jim Morrison. Or I’ll tell story about John Lennon. Or I’ll tell a story about each one of those guys that we used to drink with. So it’s a little bit looser to be in the Vampires. It’s not as rehearsed and not as choreographed as my show. We kind of look at the Vampires as being the world’s most expensive bar band. And how is Joe doing? Just days after performing at Casino Rama in 2016 he collapsed at a Brooklyn show. He’s fine. It was a very scary moment but he got better in three or four days. He rejoined us and finished the tour in San Francisco. I just saw him three or four days ago in Los Angeles with Johnny and he looks great. They all look great. I think it was just the fact that I didn’t really realize that he might do two or three, maybe three at the most shows, a week. The Vampires we were on our ninth show in 11 days. I didn’t realize he wasn’t really quite in shape for the kind of pace we were on." |
50 years ago (March 1968), The Nazz change their name to Alice Cooper A letter from Michael Bruce to an unknown recipient stated: ""We are going to play at Cheeta wed and then leave after that and go to Phx [Phoenix]. A promoter in Phx, hs given us charge of his club. I don't know if I told you that we changed the name of the group, Alice Cooper is the name. Vince has changed his name to Alice Cooper and rotted his hair up. The club in Phx, is called Alice Cooper, after us, we run the club and give orders."" |
YQC Rocks has a review of the opening night Ontario show: Alice Cooper Kicks Off Paranormal Tour in Windsor "Legendary shock rocker Alice Cooper pulled into Windsor #YQG for a show of legendary proportions. The rock icon was in town to kick off his North American Paranormal Tour which runs across the continent until March 29. Cooper was in town all week at The Colosseum rehearing with his band, which included members Chuck Garric (bass), Ryan Roxie (guitar), Tommy Henriksen (guitar), Glen Sobel (drums) and Nita Strauss (guitar). While in town, he was spotted signing autographs at the Devonshire Mall during the week but spent most of his time readying the show. The presentation was loaded with flash, balls, plenty of lights and opened with a wash of pyrotechnics. Sobel’s bass drum heads were filled with images of Cooper’s eye makeup and seemed to stare at you the whole night. Loaded with classics rockers like Billion Dollar Babies, Under My Wheels and I’m Eighteen, he also whipped out a couple rare tracks like the Welcome to My Nightmare shocker Cold Ethyl, Halo of Flies from Killer and Serious from his 1978 album From The Inside. He also performed a couple tracks from his latest album Paranormal, including Paranoiac Personality and Fallen In Love. For fans of Cooper’s glammy 80s rock, he included his 1989 Top 10 Billboard hit Poison from the album Trash and Feed My Frankenstein from the album Hey Stoopid. It was a well-rounded set, which easily could have had a few more gems added to it – like Hey Stoopid, Welcome to My Nightmare, Clones (We’re All) and House of Fire. It was however great to see Brutal Planet in the set, a power song from early 2000 that defines the modern Cooper sound so well. The band worked well together, with Strauss’ guitar work captivating the crowd at every turn. The star of the show, as always, is Cooper himself. When combined with all the gimmicks, tricks and props, he puts on a show that can’t be topped." https://yqgrocks.com/wp-content/uplo...-30-2017-5.jpg https://yqgrocks.com/wp-content/uplo...-01-2018-4.jpg Meanwhile Creative Loafing has a new interview: He Is Worthy: Alice Cooper is going to heaven, and he knows it. It's interesting to note that he is still not denying the fact that 'Roses On White Lace' could turn up in the set Hey Coop, how are you? I'm doing great, how about you? Not bad, sorry you're cooped up in the interview room today. We'll get you out quick and painless. Like the doctor. Well I'm at home in Arizona, and the sun is out, there is no snow, so I'm like you, I'm probably in the only place in America where it's not snowing. Yeah, it's like I should have worn extra deodorant today because it's getting sweaty in here. What did you shoot today? You know what? I didn't play today. Ah. It's one of those days. I took the day off which is unusual for me, but tomorrow I'm playing. Don't worry. But I just got back from Pebble Beach and Spyglass. OK, and you're happy with your shots? I shot 79 at Pebble Beach and 78 at Spyglass. Right on. I like it. It's interesting you told that story, because you told a story one time about not being able to play with Glen because you had some interviews, or something like that. The interview with Glen was interesting because you talked about your faith in the context of Glen Campbell and I know you have a pretty strong faith but are you 100 percent confident when it's all said and done, you get to go to Heaven, that perfect place that you talk about? Well you know, I happened to be in Maui when the nuclear attack happened Yeah! And then you had the car crash a few weeks later, I think. It was a head-on car crash, so God is looking after me right now, because I was unhurt in both of them. But there I was in Maui on McKenna. It's 84 degrees, I just shot even on the front and I'm standing there all of a sudden it comes up. You never want to see the words ballistic, eminent and not drill in one sentence, and that's what it said. And I kept looking at it going the worst that could happen is that I go from this paradise to the next one, and the next one is probably better than this one. [laughs] So there's a certain calmness to it. I think your faith does give you that certain calmness and it's not an uncertainty in death. You know what you believe and you know what you're promised, and so I was not that shaken by the whole thing. At all. When it said "all clear" I went "OK, it's not my time." But I'm tellin' ya, people were putting their babies in sewers. Oh my God! Yeah, because they would've been the only safe place to be. Ya'know? Yeah. Wow. That is so crazy. When I read that Billboard interview, it was wild. Did you get your Shelby yet? I did, I did get the Shelby. I got a 350 Shelby Mustang, 65 hertz. It's black with gold stripes and it's absolutely perfect. It drives as good as it looks. That's awesome. So moving on from that paradise to this one that you're in right now, the tour starts in a week, and you said you've assembled the best players possible, Tommy, Glen, Nina Straus from Iron Maidens. Orianti is out. Who is on tour with you? Yeah she is working with Richie Sambora, and that is good combination to be honest with you. I've got Tommy Hendrickson on guitar, Ryan Rocky on guitar and I've got Hurricane and I've got Chuck Erickson(?) on bass and Glen Sobel just got named Best Drummer in Rock and Roll, so there you go. The great thing about this band is that everybody is best friends and so you never ever hear any back biting or any band politics that you always get. These guys just laughing all the time and they can't wait to get on stage. To me, I've got a band that I look toward touring [with]. I don't look at it as being that much work. It's going to be fun. Reaching back to some different times for the band, I think I'm reaching back to the '81 riot era, I think you have a Tampa connection because Mike Pinera was in a band called Blues Image and I believe he played guitar for a little, do you remember that? Yeah, Mike Pinera is one of those guys — and I'm not kidding — that if you go to Iceland and say rock and roll, somebody will say, "oh do you know Mike Pinera?" I swear that guy's networked everywhere in the world. I get people asking me about Mike Pinera to this day! I don't know how he got around so much but he was truly insane, when he was in my band he was certifiably insane. That's awesome! Blues Image was big for this town. I wanted to ask you about some songs. I think you're playing "Brutal Planet", "Roses on White Lace", and then "Serious" right? These are some gems that we are going to hear on this upcoming Paranormal Tour, or no? I never would have attempted two of those songs. "Serious" I wouldn't because the singing is a five part harmony and yet they do all that on "Poison" and they sing "Poison" exactly like the record. And then on top of it I've got my wife Sheryl who plays two parts in the show. She plays the Nurse and the Ragdoll, she sings all the high harmonies in my band and also in The Vampires. So we have to hit all those notes for "Serious" and "Roses on White Lace" I wouldn't have tried before only because I didn't have a shredder, now I've got Nina. Nina's a shredder so she can play that Dane Roberts' stuff. And you've talked about different parts of the show and I think in the opera, you do "Only Women Bleed" and I was wondering if you did do that song on this tour, and also I wanted to ask if you had thought about that song now that all this MeToo stuff has come out. You're always ahead of the curve. It was on that show "Better Things" and it's a song about domestic abuse, so has that came to mind recently? When I wrote the song, I needed a ballad, I wanted a little ballet in my Welcome to My Nightmare and we didn't have any real ballad yet and so I sat down with Dick Wagner and started writing this thing and I was watching TV and somebody something said something on TV that sounded like "only women bleed" and I just said "Did he just say only women bleed?" and Dick "no" and I said "well, that's what I heard" and I wrote it down and he started playing this little figure on guitar and that song was written in like fifteen minutes. When I look back at it and started psycho-analyzing what the song was about, I realized it was really about women bleeding emotionally. Not bleeding physically because that's the obvious thing they would be thinking of, but it was the emotional bleeding that women did that men don't do and that separates the sexes right there. It sort of wrote itself at that point. Right on. I like listening to you reflect on some older songs. I know you're PK and you're one of the more moderate conservatives that I know, and I was going to ask you some morality stuff and Pennsylvania Avenue [stuff], but I know that you think rockstars are the last people that should be commenting on politics. Yeah. Not just that but I've always loved the fact that people come to rockstars and ask us political questions, as if we know something you don't know. I mean we're sitting here going, do you guys understand we watch cartoons most of the time? I mean what would I be able to tell you about politics that your mailman couldn't tell you. We don't have any special phone line into the Pentagon or the Kremlin that gives us any information. The last person I would ask about politics is a rockstar. But "Elected" is one of the best music satirization of politics. That's what makes me think you're smarter than everyone else. Well that was John Lennon's favorite song. It was one of those perfect situations where Nixon was running. Everybody hated Nixon. If you can believe this, people hated Nixon more than they hate Trump. He was just so hated, and at the same time I was hated in a different way, and so I said the idea of Alice Cooper running against Nixon is so absurd and when we wrote the song we wrote the song as a bit of a tribute to Pete Townshend with those big power chords, and it ended up being John Lennon's favorite song. John Lennon used to say "thats a great song, I love that song" he was seeing it as a political statement, I was seeing it as a joke. I like how you these two different parts of your life, so I wanted to ask you, I don't know if you still teach Sunday School but I'm assuming you're Mr. Furnier when you teach Sunday school, but did any of the kids you taught ever grow up and figure out what you do? No, no, no. I'm Cooper. Kids are very very hip at this point. They get it quicker than anyone else that I play to Alice Cooper. They know I play the character Alice Cooper, they heard it one time and got it. It's the parents that have a hard time with separating the two, you just want to sit there and say, "Guys, OK I don't live in a big dark castle, alright?" I wanted you to think that early on in my career but now I think everyone is pretty aware that I play this character. [laughs] Yeah I think that everybody knows that now. That's what I kind of like about the Internet, everyone knows about Alice Cooper the golfer, Alice Cooper the husband, the philanthropist, the rockstar dad, because your kids are in bands too. I think there is something weird about the political thing. I think that if you're Christian you're immediately conservative, I don't really believe that at all. I think there are certain things you're conservative in. I would say if anything I am more moderate than anything else. You've gone back and forth between the blues and reds. Yeah, I'm not an extremist on anything really. OK, I can get down with that, and am I aloud to talk to you about the tour after this Paranormal Tour? That you and Shep are playing, you said that this other 2019 tour will be even bigger than the Paranormal Tour. Yeah, it will be. And Shep and I are starting sit there and we'll go "You know what we're missing in this show?" [laughs] — and Shep is as crazy I am — he says "We haven't really killed this audience yet, have we?" and I went "No, lets go for it on the next tour." So you're going to really get a different, more of a "Welcome to My Nightmare" show on the next one. So sitting there going "How many more tours do we have? Let's make sure we get 'em". Right on and I know I'm running short on time so I wanted to do two quick questions. I wanted to know about how much do you think about that day you mistakingly showed up to Frank Zappa's house at seven in the morning, I mean that was a turning point in that relationship for you, do you still think about it or is it just gone and past and doesn't even enter your mind? [Laughs] Yeah, well I don't live in the past, I honestly don't sit around thinking about things like that, but it does seem like four lives ago, but it was a different time, but we were so excited that Frank Zappa was going to listen to us that when he told us seven, I assumed seven in the morning. I'm not sure why I would think that, it was just a stupid thing on my part and it just added to the insanity. We were in chrome clothes and makeup and the whole thing at seven in the morning and he just kind of looked at us and went "That is so weird, I don't really get you guys at all." and I said "Is that good?" and he says "The fact that I don't get you is why you're gonna get signed." Heck yeah. And last question, you've played golf with Trump, Dan Quail, Gerald Ford. You've said there are no honest golfers on the planet Earth, who is the most dishonest golfer that you have played with? And is it yourself by any chance? Well let me think, I could say that Michael Douglas and I played against Shep and Stephen Stills. Now, I don't know if Stephen Stills just doesn't remember or what. [Laughs] But I think it might have been a little brain damage. I'm not going to say he was the most crooked, I would just say it was some sort of early memory loss on his part. I'll give him that. All right, well we'll give Stephen Stills that. Well I wish we can talk more, thank you for the time you did give me and I look forward to seeing you when you come down to Clearwater and then in 2019 when you guys bring it. Come on backstage and say, hi alright? Alright, for sure that would be awesome, I'll talk to Amy about that. Okie doke, thanks a lot! Perfect, have a great day thanks Coop! |
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It's nice to see Alice has dropped all the live cover versions and is concentrating on his own material. |
The covers will be with The Vampires this year |
Another live review, this time from the Boston Boch Center Wang Theatre on 6th March At the Wang, Alice Cooper plays his part so well | Boston Globe You need to sign up to read it, so it's copied below: "On the one hand, it seems odd to imagine the Grand Guignol hard rock of Alice Cooper in a stately venue like the Boch Center Wang Theatre, with its ornate, gilded molding, staid statuary, sumptuous curtains, and elaborately painted ceiling. On the other hand, the Wang Theatre is just that — a theater — and there are few performers in music history as purely theatrical as Cooper. Tuesday, framed by elaborate artifice (rather than the blank canvas offered by arenas and amphitheaters), the newly minted septuagenarian’s performance seemed all the more an act and suffered not a bit for it. He came equipped with the standard trappings of a Cooper concert, of course: guillotine, 9-foot-tall Frankenstein’s monster costume, straitjacket, disembodied evil-clown heads, and so on. But the singer was himself a walking stage effect, and not just because of his shock makeup and often-bloody outfits. There were times when it seemed that there was no such thing as an unconsidered movement in his presentation; even seemingly offhand gestures like the turn of a hand appeared as if they were being made for one effect or another. The surface result was a horror show, but Cooper’s not-so-secret weapon — and what distinguishes him from big-spectacle peers like Kiss — was the humor rippling throughout. It’s what let him to perform a jaunty, rocking song about loving a corpse (“Cold Ethyl”) without seeming simply exploitative, and what kept “Lost In America” on the right side of the line between delightfully stupid and just plain dumb. And it was a kick to see the giant monster who’d lurched and bellowed through “Feed My Frankenstein” high-five the guitarist as he exited. But while “No More Mr. Nice Guy” was funny because it was funny (and also because Alice Cooper is Alice Cooper) (and also because Alice Cooper isn’t actually Alice Cooper), it worked as music because it was tough and tuneful. The band brought a hefty crunch that could be metallic (the race-car momentum of “Serious,” the galloping charge of “Halo Of Flies “) or subtle (the quavery “Ballad Of Dwight Fry,” the dismissiveness of “Only Women Bleed”). Cooper gave such sparse focus to his solid 2017 album “Paranormal” — just two songs — that the audience heard more of it playing over the house speakers as they were taking their seats than they did from the stage. That doesn’t speak especially well to the prospect of injecting new ideas into the well-oiled machine of Cooper’s stage show. But after introducing his band during the closing “School’s Out,” he announced, “And playing the part of Alice Cooper tonight . . . me!” As if it could have been anyone else. Alice Cooper At Boch Center Wang Theatre, March 6" https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...75&oe=5B45D235 |
The Aquarian has an interview with Alice, talking about 'The Sound Of A' Alice Cooper Is Back! | The Aquarian "When I sat down to chat with rock living legend, Hall of Famer, and all-around nice guy, Alice Cooper this week, I realized this was our fourth such go-round. We have discussed many things over the years; his legacy as the godfather of shock-rock, his battle over alcoholism, his upstart high school band that became the biggest rock outfit in the world, our favorite lines from his wonderfully satirical lyrics, his incredibly diverse and bizarre solo career, the parade of Coop imitators, and the pressure to out-do the out-doable on stage and on record. This time he wanted me to know that the master of the macabre, the villain of rock ‘n’ roll, and the bane of a generation of bewildered and apoplectic parents, has now become…(gulp!) wholesome? “Bring your daughter to the show,” he said with a chuckle when I mentioned my playing Alice Cooper records to my daughter Scarlet for nearly a decade, which has made her a tried-and-true fan at nearly ten. “I love the Coop!” she used to shout in her little girl voice, which by the way, master producer, Bob Ezrin would have no-doubt affixed to some weird 1970s Cooper recording. “It’s an all-ages show!” Alice pitched with the fervor of a 19th century carnival barker. As long as those ages are up for, you know, the Alice Cooper treatment. Since our first interviews, Alice has been on an annual touring bender that even a man half his age would find grueling. Unlike Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour, this comes with some accoutrements; namely high-concept staging, special effects, monsters, ghouls, all manner of predator, and at a crucial juncture the ceremonious execution and resurrection of our hero. He has also returned to the aforementioned mad-scientist, Bob Ezrin to produce an excellent new album, Paranormal, some of which features members of the original Alice Cooper band. A creepy, black and white video for the song, “The Sound of A” was released the day we spoke, the central theme of which is everyone (all of whom wear different iterations of his iconic make-up) is Alice Cooper, or more precisely become Alice Cooper. The sound and images mesh perfectly into the art form for which this performance artist has tampered with extreme prejudice for nearly a half century. And this is where we begin. What part of the Alice Cooper psyche does “The Sound of A” and this fantastically creepy video comes from? Everything about this song is weird. For instance, I wrote it fifty years ago. What? [Laughs] It was a song that got lost in the mail somewhere and Dennis Dunaway, our original bass player, was playing a couple of songs in the studio and he played that one and I said, “I remember when you wrote that.” And he said, “I didn’t write that. You wrote it!” I said, “I did?” He goes, “Yeah. You wrote the whole song — music and lyrics.” I had totally forgot about it. Bob Ezrin was listening and he goes, “I love that. What is that?” I said, “Bob it’s the first song I ever wrote. 1968.” And he says, “Let’s do it!” It’s the only song on the record, I think, where we ever just let the band fly away. We decided that there is no ending to this song, so we’ll keep going and going…. I had Larry Mullen Jr. from U2 on drums and just all my guys on there and I said, “Just let it float away,” because we never do that. We always construct everything very formula-like. So, that song ended up being one of the most interesting songs on the album and it’s 50 years old. It’s funny, because I listened to the whole album when it first came out, because I’ve kept in touch with Bob since I had worked on my book (Shout It Out Loud – The Story of KISS’s Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon, Backbeat Books 2015) and his interviewers were key to it. Oh. Okay. He was keeping me up to date on what you guys were doing and when the album first came out I listened to it front to back and that song really stood out for me. The first thing I jotted down was it reminded me of Pretties For You (1969) or Easy Action (1970). It definitely has that pre-Love It To Death (1971) unstructured kind of psychedelia. I love it. And it was pre-pre-pre Pretties For You…as creepy as that sounds. [Laughs] And another little, unique thing about it was at the time we were living in Venice, Calif. in this house where I wrote it and we had just done a gig with some band that we had never heard of called Pink Floyd and they ran out of money and moved in with us. That’s right. And the song has definitely got some Pink Floyd influence to it. I can really hear a little bit of Syd Barrett running around in there somewhere. For sure. So, it’s got all kinds of pedigree, but at the same time it was just a simple little nothing song that, you know, ended up on Paranormal. I love the ethereal eeriness in this visual presentation for “The Sound of A”. I know you are always a visual artist and this album really does lend itself to visual components like the video. I love how you occasionally see everyone’s face in it, but mostly the camera concentrates on seeing just their eyes and mouths, depicting the evolution of Alice’s make-up, with your features interspersed in there. It truly works thematically with this song. Yeah. It’s almost Sci-fi, and you know the weird thing is that we used to spend close to a million dollars on videos, but I think this video costs maybe fourteen dollars. [Laughs] You know? It’s so bare, and yet it works with that song. It does have a Sci-Fi thing to it. I don’t know what it is. Yeah. It reminds me of those early Sc-fi flicks like The Day The Earth Stood Still, we used to see as kids on Creature Feature or something. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. There’s one thing I was dying to ask you since the last time we spoke and that is I have noticed that your organization is being extremely active on social media. That’s a huge part of what everyone does now, but I am harkening back to the original Alice Cooper, when you and Shep Gordon (manager and friend) would come up with these amazing ways to cause a scene, to catch attention, and I’m just wondering what the two of you guys would have done if you had this kind of thing available to you in 1971? There was something very organic back then about doing the Hollywood publicity stunts, because like you said, we didn’t have the Internet. We depended a lot on urban legend. We depended a lot on people seeing the show, seeing an eight-foot boa constrictor, and then by the time it got around it was suddenly a fifteen-foot boa constrictor and it nearly choked me to death and it got loose in the audience. [Laughs] People just kept adding to it to the point where then you have a bonafide urban legend going on. Every single show was something that. We would get to the next city and somebody would say, “Wow, I heard that you set a monkey on fire.” What? I mean, none of that ever happened, but we did enough in a show to make people believe things like that. They would just make up their own version of the show. That was just so bizarre. And I kind of think that that’s what art is about. Make the audience use their imagination and make them invent new things. And that was fine. In a way, we were using their imagination. It’s true. They brought their own perception to it. It’s surrealistic art. It’s bringing their perception to what you are doing on stage to provoke something in them. You were famously quoted early on; “We enjoy getting on stage and showing the public what their world has come to. Only usually they’re shocked.” Oh. yeah. I am telling you, this is the honest truth, I used this chicken one time on stage and I didn’t even know the chicken was there and I threw it in the audience and thought the audience would take it home as a souvenir, but they tore it to pieces. Yeah, I think the headline the next day was “Alice Cooper Bites Head Off Chicken and Sucks the Blood Out of It” or some such. I talked to people once a month who would say, “I was in Texas when you had the chicken.” But it was in Toronto, at the Rock and Roll Revival Show (Sept. 13, 1969). But I would sit there and listen to all this. I didn’t want to, you know, stop them and say, “We never used a chicken except for once in the show!” I have had people tell me that I’ve used that chicken 500 times! They might have never even seen it, except that that is what they saw that night. You know? And, of course you never want to let the truth get in the way of a good story. Yeah. Yeah. It is the very idea of art making people use their imagination, when you throw so much at an audience, we gave them and we still give them so much visually, that we over-amp them, and then they go home and start telling everyone about the show and they’re making things up that they don’t even realize they’re making up. It’s so true. How was it working on the record with the surviving members of the original Alice Cooper group again? Michael Bruce, Neal Smith, and Dennis? (Glen Buxton died in 1997 at the age of 49) Was it interesting to be in the same room and making music with those guys again? It felt so natural. It felt so unforced. Dennis, Neal, and Mike have a certain style of playing that I was absolutely sure of what they were going to do, but I didn’t know if they were going to be a little slower or if they were going to be a little this, a little that. They were exactly the way we played the last time we played on stage in 1974. In fact, here’s a great sort of look at it. In England, we did our regular show. My band is probably the best touring band out there right now. I’ve got the tightest band there is. And then the curtain would come down and then when the curtain would come up for the encore and it would be the original band and the audience would go, “What? That’s great!” The reviews said, “Unbelievable sparkling show. It just didn’t lack anything. It was amazing.” And then it says, “And then it got dangerous.” [Laughs] Meaning that the original band got on stage and suddenly it was “dangerous”, because my original band, Dennis, Neal, and Mike play “Eighteen” and “Billion Dollar Babies” and those songs much darker. I think it’s just in the DNA. Even my band said, “Do you know when you sing with those guys you sing differently?” And I just went, “Well, great! That’s cool.” I don’t notice it myself, but I guess I do. I kind of lend my voice to what they’re playing. That’s a fascinating insight. It really is. And why wouldn’t you sink right into that groove again? Some of you guys have been together since high school. That’s funny. But you know, like I said, the crazy thing was when we broke up, we didn’t break up with any bad blood. Nobody was suing anybody. Nobody was angry. There was a little disillusionment about, “Well, what are we going to do now?” I was not the architect of the breakup at all. It was much more of a, “Let’s separate for a while,” and then I went on to do Nightmare (Cooper’s first solo effort, Welcome to My Nightmare — 1975) and it just went from there. But again, there was no bad blood and there was no anger. I kept in touch with Dennis, Neal, and Mike all that time, so it was not unnatural for us to get together and play on stage or in the studio. And I told the guys in the studio, “We’re not going to layer this.” I said, “When we do these three songs, I want to play them live in the studio because I want the Alice Cooper sound live.” And the three songs that they did, (“Genuine American Girl”, “You and All Your Friends” and “Fireball”) sounded absolutely great in the studio. It really does. It is quite remarkable how much getting back with the original contributors to the Alice Cooper sound can take you right there. What can the fans expect from the new show? I always ask you this and you always say, “I can’t give too much away,” but if you could let slip out a little teaser for what can be expected from this new tour. Well, like I said, I have got the best touring band around. It’s the first time ever in the history of Alice Cooper that when I read a review it talks about how great the band is. It just absolutely reviews the band first over what happens on stage, which I love. I love the fact that the musicianship gets its due in this thing and I think that what it really is, is it’s just about everything you want to see from Alice Cooper and the only thing I can really do to change it around is to add some songs that you probably wouldn’t normally think you would hear. I added two or three songs in this version of the show that I think that the real fans will go, “Oh, man. I never thought I would hear that song.” That’s cool. So, it’s fun to do that, because there’s at least 15 or 16 songs that I have to do. There’s no way I couldn’t do those songs. I only can only really play around with about four or five songs. That’s true. Your catalog is so deep that you have to play the classics. Yeah, they would kill you if you don’t play the classics. I remember when Bowie went out one time and he said, “I’m not going to do any of my hits.” And I went, “Boy, that’s bold.” Because they’re there to hear the songs. You know? And I don’t think that went over very well, because I think halfway through the tour he started doing his hits." |
The Sky Arts 'Urban Myths' show, which was mentioned back in September, is due to be screened on May 3rd. This is the show that recreates the meeting between Alice an Salvadore Dali and stars Noel Fielding as Alice, David Suchet as Dali, and Paul Kaye as Shep Gordon. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++ After the current leg of the 'Paranormal Night With Alice Cooper' and The Hollywood Vampires tour, Alice has announced some dates for later in the year. Sadly these all seem to be Stateside at the moment: August 3rd — West Allis, WI — Wisconsin State Fair August 5th — Sioux Falls, SD — Washington Pavilion August 6th — Kansas City, MO — Kauffman Center for The Performing Arts August 8th — Colorado Springs, CO — Pike’s Peak Center August 10th — Las Vegas, NV — The Chelsea (w/ Ace Frehley) August 12th — Los Angeles, CA — Greek Theatre (w/ Ace Frehley) August 14th — San Jose, CA — City National Civic August 15th — Jackson, CA — Jackson Rancheria Casino August 18th — Bonner, MT — Kettlehouse Amphitheater August 19th — Everett, WA — Angel of the Winds Arena August 20th — Vancouver, BC — Queen Elizabeth Theatre August 22nd — Calgary, AB — Southern Jubilee Auditorium August 23rd — Edmonton, AB — Northern Jubilee Auditorium August 25th — Saskatoon, SK — SaskTel Centre August 26th — Estevan, SK — Affinity Place August 28th — Winnipeg, MB — Burton Cummings Theatre August 29th — Thunder Bay, ON — Thunder Bay Community Auditorium August 30th — St. Paul, MN — Ordway Center for the Performing Arts September 1st — Ft. Wayne, IN — Foellinger Theatre September 2nd — Huber Heights, OH — Rose Music Center at The Heights September 4th — Cincinnati, OH — Taft Theatre September 6th — New York, NY — Beacon Theatre September 7th — York, PA — York Fair It's uncertain whether these will be a continuation of the 'Paranormal Night' tour, or a whole new production and set list |
March 16th, 1968. Following the change of name, The Alice Cooper Group played their first gig at the Earl Warren Fairgrounds, Santa Barbara in California. However, posters still referred to the band as The Nazz. Also on the bill were headliners Blue Cheer and The Nitty-Gritty Dirt Band The setlist for the show consisted of*: Don't Blow Your Mind 10 Minutes Before the Worm Why Don't You Love Me? Titanic Overture Today Mueller Hitch Hike (Marvin Gaye cover) Wonder Who's Loving Her Now? Apple Bush Sing Low, Sweet Cheerio Fields of Regret Lay Down and Die, Goodbye * Titles highlighted appeared on the bands first album, 'Pretties For You', released over a year later, in June 1969 |
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Depending on how accurate their listings are, Vintage TV have got a programme entitled 'NHP With Alice Cooper' scheduled to be shown on Tuesday, 20th March at 10:30pm "The master of shock-rock himself details how instrumental manager Shep Gordon is, how sobriety saved him from his own alter ego, and how he became a Hollywood Vampire with Johnny Depp" |
WWF/WWE wrestler Mick Foley (Dude Love, Cactus Jack, Mankind) has a gushing blog entry where he talks about Nita Strauss and (to a lesser degree) Alice 10 Reasons Why Nita Strauss is the Coolest Person in the World Loudwire journalist Josh Bernstein has a feature about taking his 'mom' to meet Alice Alice Cooper Choked Out My Mom (and she liked it) Meanwhile, here are some behind the scenes pictures from rehearsals for the upcoming 'Jesus Christ, Superstar' television special |
March 20th Congratulations to Alice and Cheryl, who celebrate 42 years of marriage today - certainly through thick and thin! Initially the event was downplayed as not being serious, presumably not to make Alice unavailable to the hordes of female fans. They put out a statement saying 'Alice and Sheryl had a ceremonial marriage, the kind where you say "I do" but you really don't have to'. They even suggested that the couple were married a restaurant owner so it wouldn't be legal. A few months later, the truth came out |
Some more pics from 'Jesus Christ'. It's likely that this is the costume Alice will be wearing |
He looks great! He should wear yellow more often! |
Will need a bit more blood for normal Alice concerts tho! |
New songs from the live show 'Serious' (first time played since the 2003 tour) and 'Fallen In Love' |
CO-OP, the band featuring Dash Cooper (Alice's son) on vocals, release their debut album on June 15th (via the EMP label) It sounds like it might be a bit of riff-heavy 80's rock |
29th March, 1978 - Alice was filming his appearance on 'The Muppet Show' Alice gives commentary on the show |
Alice has just finished the current leg of the 'Paranormal Evening' tour in America. The last show was on March 29th in Indianapolis Next on the agenda is the 'Jesus Christ, Superstar' live television broadcast on Sunday, April 1st Following that, there is a break until May 17th, when The Hollywood Vampires begin their world tour in Verona, New York. At time of writing, this runs until July 8th, with a show in Rome, Italy. It does, of course, include the four previously announced UK concerts There is no new information about the current standing with regards to the new Vampires album - whether it has been recorded or is still being recorded and whether it will be available before the shows or not Ahead of the screening on Sky Arts on May 3rd, new picture has been released with Noel Fielding as Alice and David Suchet as Dali. [Suchet/Dali I believe, Fielding/Alice, less so!] https://www.comedy.co.uk/images/libr...ali_cooper.jpg https://www.comedy.co.uk/images/libr...i_cooper_b.jpg Urban Myths: The Dali And The Cooper | British Comedy Guide |
First look at King Herod in action, from the rehearsals for 'Jesus Christ' |
Wonderfully camp, and Alice is in his element There are some nice touches as well - the allusion to 'No More Mr. Nice Guy' with the cane at the start, the mention of 'Raise The Dead' (which, of course, was a previous tour/project), the black, giallo-esque gloves and Alice lapping up the applause at the end (all that is missing is "and playing the part of Herod tonight...me, yes me, you remember me!") |
Reviews for 'Jesus Christ': Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert: EW review | EW.com - "And for an extra dose of charisma, we needed to look no further than Alice Cooper, who delivered a delicious dollop of camp as King Herod. Striding down the steps in a gaudy orange suit, twirling a skull-headed cane, and trailed by Vegas-style showgirls, Cooper literally stopped the show to soak up the crowd’s adulation after his delightfully sneery performance of “King Herod’s Song.” For all the singers who took us to church with this production of Superstar, Cooper was the one who had the most fun playing God." TV Review: ‘Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert’ on NBC – Variety - "The musical was intensely earnest, often endearingly so. The entire cast, a multi-cultural tribe who looked as though they just left a loft party at 3 a.m. hungry for more adventure, was as energetically sincere as they could be almost all of the time. The exception was Alice Cooper, who stole the show when he emerged in an orange suit. But that adjective doesn’t begin to describe what he was wearing. Cooper’s threads looked like there were made out of flames — that’s how vivid and pleasingly eye-popping his tailored suit was — and yet the singer easily outshone his clothes. His rendition of “King Herod’s Song” was a star turn of the highest order, and a delightful amount of fun. If you can’t enjoy a dapper, devilish rock-god Herod surrounded by dancing ladies clad in outfits a Vegas showgirl would kill for, then perhaps live musicals on television are just not for you. (Your loss.)" Alice Cooper as King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar Live’: Video – Hollywood Life - "Did you watch Jesus Christ Superstar Live on Sunday, April 1 on NBC? In case your answer is no, HollywoodLife now has video of one of the most talked about moments from the musical that aired on Easter: Alice Cooper‘s performance as King Herod! Alice appeared in Act II of the musical, in which he appeared alongside John Legend‘s Jesus Christ. He absolutely nailed his song, “King Herod’s Song (Try It & See)”, in which King Herod judges Jesus and ultimately dismisses him as a fake and sends him back to Pilate. Alice rocked the performance in his bright orange suit with a skull-tipped cane and the live audience couldn’t get enough of him!" Alice Cooper's Performance On 'Jesus Christ Superstar Live!' Was The Answer To Twitter's Prayers | Romper - "Casting Alice Cooper as King Herod on NBC's production of Jesus Christ Superstar Live! was so perfect it was hard to even be surprised when his role was announced. And on Sunday Alice Cooper's performance on Jesus Christ Superstar Live! was the answer to everyone's prayers — particularly the Superstar superfans of Twitter, who immediately sounded off after his fantastic rendition of "Herod's Song." Alice Cooper first became famous in the '70s for his bad boy rock opera schtick, his over-the-top villainous persona inspiring punk artists like Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. So considering the fact that the role of King Herod required being brash and antagonistic (with a bit of flair), Cooper is the perfect choice. Even he knew that he was perfect for it, explaining in interviews that when he was approached about doing the show, he already knew they wanted him for King Herod. And wouldn't you know it, he was fantastic. The man has been touring pretty much nonstop for the better part of a century, so he's a consummate pro. And Twitter ate up every second of his vaudevillian performance, in which his character taunts Jesus Christ before he's about to die on the cross." Twitter Has All Good Things to Say About Alice Cooper as King Herod in 'Jesus Christ Superstar' | Billboard - "Alice Cooper played the part of King Herod in NBC's live, televised adaptation of Jesus Christ Superstar Sunday night and had the audience laughing at his lines. He also enthralled Twitter, where viewers were quick to get his role's name trending. "Alice Cooper???! This is the greatest thing I've ever seen," one user wrote of the rock star's cameo in the rock opera, while another admitted, "Never been so happy in my life. From now on, I will ONLY play Herod in my family's annual nativity, wearing THAT suit, THOSE boots. And a skull walking stick." "I am LOVING THIS!" another person tweeted of his take on Herod. "Edgier, less flamboyant, but just as campy."" Alice Cooper Rocks as King Herod in 'Jesus Christ Superstar Live' - "Midway through NBC's live broadcast of Jesus Christ Superstar Live on Sunday, the show was kicked into overdrive by having rock icon Alice Cooper appear as King Herod. The "School's Out" singer, with microphone in hand and dancing showgirls at his side, performed "King Herrod's Song (Try and See It)" with ease. His performance earned a standing ovation inside the theater and a rousing applause from fans watching at home." |
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September 8th - Tropicana, Atlantic City, NJ October 4th - Palace Theater, Albany, NY October 9th - Ovens Auditorium, Charlotte, NC October 10th - Cobb Energy Perf Arts Centre, Atlanta, GA October 12th - Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium, Chattanooga, TN October 13th - Beau Rivage, Biloxi, MS October 14th - White Oak Music Hill Lawn, Houston, TX October 16th - The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory, Irving, TX October 17th - Hartman Arena, Park City, KS October 19th - Orpheum Theater, Memphis, TN October 20th - Peabody Opera House, St Louis, MO October 21st - Paramount Theater, Cedar Rapids, IA October 23rd - Des Moines Civic Center, Des Moines, IA October 24th - Coronado Performing Arts Center, Rockford, IL ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++ In other news. Nita was at Wrestlemania 34, where she appeared on the stage performing Shinsuke Nakamura's entrance music. Sadly, it seems that the WWE lawyers are on hand, and the footage is being removed from YouTube as soon as it is uploaded! This comes 31 years after Alice was at Wrestlemania III, appearing in Jake 'The Snake' Robert's corner during his match against The Honky Tonk Man Ahead of the upcoming Sky Arts show, Another Man Mag has got an interview with Alice where he talks about his meetings with Dali Alice Cooper Remembers His Encounter with Salvador Dal* | AnotherMan |
Happy Friday 13th everyone |
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