In the new issue of Rock Candy magazine, Alice Cooper told editor Howard Johnson why now was the right time for the ALICE COOPER band to work together again and why they split up in 1974 after seven groundbreaking studio albums.
“I’ve always known it couldn’t have lasted between us back then,” he said. “There were too many things in the way. Mike [Michael Bruce] went through a bad period, Dennis [Dunaway] had some physical problems, Neal [Smith] had some physical problems. Plus I was dealing with my cocaine and alcohol things and that set me back at least five years. At the end of the ‘Muscle Of Love’ album period, we were not on the same page lifestyle-wise. I don’t think anyone really understood where the group should be going. We were dysfunctional.
“I think the way it has finally worked out is perfect,” Alice continued. “I never truly felt the band divorced. Rather we separated, and everyone went off down their own track. But what you have to remember is that we were in high school together, so we have real history… and when we finally got back together and started playing as a band, it felt just like coming home.”
The new studio album they created, “The Revenge Of Alice Cooper”, with the help of “fifth band member” producer Bob Ezrin has come out this month and sounds like they picked up where they left off in 1974.
“I was aware that some people were going to be cynical about whether we could do it, but the band sounds exactly like it did back in 1974,” Alice said. “I was pretty amazed by that.”
Read the rest of the interview with Alice, plus ones with Michael, Dennis, Neal and Bob Ezrin, in Rock Candy magazine issue 51, along with in-depth interviews with Glenn Hughes, Steve Hackett, Gregg Giuffria, Gil Moore of TRIUMPH, Brian Vollmer of HELIX, and many other fascinating articles including a lookback to September/October 1982, and a reappraisal of DEF LEPPARD‘s juggernaut “Pyromania” album.
Rock Candy magazine is a 100 page, full-colour bi-monthly rock mag, created in the U.K. It covers the sights, sounds and smells from the greatest era in hard rock, the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s. It is the brainchild of respected U.K. rock journalists Derek Oliver, Howard Johnson and Malcolm Dome — all frontline writers for the legendary Kerrang! magazine in the golden era.
“The Revenge Of Alice Cooper” was made available last Friday (July 25) via earMUSIC. The highly anticipated effort, dedicated to original ALICE COOPER guitarist Glen Buxton, who died in 1997, is heralded as the successor to their iconic records “School’s Out”, “Billion Dollar Babies”, “Love It to Death” and “Killer”.
Regarding how the reunion with the other original members of ALICE COOPER came about, Alice told 95.5 KLOS: “When we parted, we didn’t divorce; we just separated. There was no bad blood. There was no lawsuits or anything like that. And we stayed in touch with each other. And finally, at one point — they had worked on some of my albums — I said, ‘Why don’t we just do an album?’ Ah we got [longtime producer] Bob Ezrin involved. And I was absolutely amazed. Everything went so smoothly. We wrote all these songs, and it sounded exactly like 1975.”
Alice added: “Losing Glen was really tough for us ’cause he was our Keith Richards. We got Robby Krieger to play on ‘Black Mamba’, which was perfect for that song. And we found a guy named Gyasi [Hues] in Nashville that just fit in perfectly.”
Asked if he and the other surviving members of the original ALICE COOPER band just clicked right back in as friends too, Alice said: “Absolutely. It was never a beat even [that was missed]. It just felt like this was the album that should have come out after ‘Billion Dollar Babies’. It had that feel to it.”
The four surviving bandmates performed together in 1999 at the second Glen Buxton Memorial Weekend at CoopersTown in Phoenix. Another reunion concert took place in 2010 at Alice Cooper‘s Christmas Pudding, followed by an appearance at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony in 2011. There was also a record store reunion concert captured in the documentary “Alice Cooper: Live From The Astroturf” as well as guest appearances on select tracks on Cooper‘s solo albums “Welcome 2 My Nightmare”, “Paranormal” and “Detroit Stories”.
To celebrate the release of “The Revenge of Alice Cooper”, Dunaway, Smith and Bruce joined Alice on stage on July 25 at London, United Kingdom’s sold-out O2 Arena to perform “School’s Out” — supported by Cooper‘s current touring band and Hollywood superstar Johnny Depp. This epic night followed an equally memorable event the evening before at London’s Union Chapel, where Alice, Dennis, Neal and Michael joined longtime producer and honorary sixth member Bob Ezrin for an exclusive, sold-out question-and-answer session and global livestream, hosted by Sir Tim Rice — which also featured the world premiere of the album in full.
Formed in 1968, the original ALICE COOPER band forged a theatrical brand of hard rock that was destined to shock and had never been seen before. Within five years, they would release no fewer than seven studio albums, amongst them their international breakthrough “School’s Out” (including the Top 10 hit of the same name) and the U.S. No. 1 “Billion Dollar Babies” (1973). By 1974, the band had risen to the upper echelon of rock stardom… and then it dissolved.
In October 2015, over 40 years later, record store owner and superfan Chris Penn convinced the original lineup to reunite for a very special performance at Good Records, his record store in Dallas, Texas. Alice, Michael, Dennis and Neal were joined on stage by Alice‘s current guitarist Ryan Roxie (standing in for Buxton).
Cooper pioneered a grandly theatrical brand of hard rock that was designed to shock. Drawing equally from horror movies, vaudeville, and garage rock, the group created a stage show that featured electric chairs, guillotines, fake blood and boa constrictors. He continues to tour regularly, performing shows worldwide with the dark and horror-themed theatrics that he’s best known for. With a schedule that includes six months each year on the road, Cooper brings his own brand of rock psycho-drama to fans both old and new, enjoying it as much as the audience does. Known as the architect of shock rock, Cooper (in both the original ALICE COOPER band and as a solo artist) has rattled the cages and undermined the authority of generations of guardians of the status quo, continuing to surprise fans and exude danger at every turn, like a great horror movie, even in an era where mainstream media can present real-life shocking images.
Photo by Jenny Risher
