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:

• Brutal Planet
• No More Mr. Nice Guy
• Under My Wheels
• Billion Dollar Babies
• Be My Lover
• Lost in America
• Serious
• Fallen In Love
• Woman of Mass Distraction
• Poison
• Halo Of Flies
• Feed My Frankenstein
• Cold Ethyl
• Only Women Bleed
• Paranoiac Personality
• The Ballad Of Dwight Frye
• I Love The Dead
• I'm 18
• Schools Out

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."


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!

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.

https://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_835w/Bos...oper10_liv.jpg

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