{"id":31950,"date":"2017-05-01T23:28:49","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T13:28:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/?p=31950"},"modified":"2017-05-02T07:17:38","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T21:17:38","slug":"alice-cooper-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/2017\/05\/alice-cooper-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Cooper"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“I think that there\u2019s a certain amount of theatricality that they expect from us, and of course they\u2019re expecting a great band and they\u2019re expecting those songs to sound great but I kind of think we\u2019re like the Barnum and Bailey circus that comes to town every once in a while, they know that the Alice Cooper show is going to be something, there\u2019s going to be surprises in it and there\u2019s going to be stuff that\u2019s going to make people sit there and go \u201coh, ok that was really satisfying.\u201d Hopefully we never let the audience down and so far I don\u2019t think we ever have.”<\/p>\n

From Release: Alice Cooper pioneered a grandly theatrical brand of hard rock that was designed to shock.\u00a0 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\u2019s best known for.\u00a0With his influence on popular music long since acknowledged, his place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame secure, and with multiple gold and platinum albums, sold-out tours plus countless honours and career achievement awards, there is little that Alice Cooper hasn\u2019t accomplished in his remarkable career.<\/p>\n

Alice Cooper gave us a call while in Asheville North Carolina to talk about his return to Australia for the 40th Anniversary of his first tour,\u00a0set lists, his band, new music, The Hollywood Vampires, & more…<\/p>\n

It’s been two years since we last chatted so let’s catch up, how have the last two years been?
\n<\/strong>Yeah I mean I have never been busier in my life. Between being in this band and writing for this band and then being in The Hollywood Vampires with Joe Perry and Johnny Depp and doing two tours at the same time, it\u2019s sort of like you\u2019d think that I\u2019d have slowed down a little bit, but I\u2019ve got a new album coming out in July and when that album comes out then I\u2019ll start writing the new album for The Hollywood Vampires *laughs* so it\u2019s sort of like I\u2019ve never been so busy in my life.<\/p>\n

Of course we’re here because you’re heading back to Australia for the 40th anniversary of your first tour to Australia, have you decided on how you’ll shape up these shows?<\/strong>
\nYou know we have always maintained that theatrical kind of show and we always will, there\u2019s never going to be a time that Alice Cooper just goes out there and does songs. We spend 90% of our time on the music but we realise that after that\u2019s all done we want those songs to come alive on stage, so we figure out how to make them breathe. In the early days it was like we\u2019d say if you\u2019re going to say \u2018Welcome To My Nightmare\u2019 don\u2019t just say it, give them the nightmare. If you\u2019re gonna do a song called \u2018Poison\u2019 make that song come alive, and I always like to see the lyrics end up being the script for the stage show.<\/p>\n

With a catalogue as large as yours, does it become harder and harder to put a set list together these days?<\/strong>
\nYou know especially with the internet because everybody has an opinion, for your really hardcore fans you know that when you\u2019re playing 10-20,000 people a night that generally you\u2019ll have to play the hits, like \u2018Eighteen\u2019 and \u2018No More Mr Nice Guy\u2019, and \u2018School\u2019s Out\u2019 and \u2018Poison\u2019 and \u2018Only Women Bleed\u2019 and all those songs and then you only really have about six or seven songs that you can mix in there that are going to be deeper cuts, and if I did like a poll from all the people that email us it would just go all over the place. I mean people want to hear this from this album and that from that album, and so what we\u2019re doing on this tour is for those six or seven songs about once every two weeks we\u2019re spinning in different songs. We\u2019ll say OK this week we\u2019re going to mix these two songs in, if you saw the show last week and you go to see it two weeks from now you\u2019ll say \u2018oh wow they just put those two songs in\u2019 and then two weeks after that there\u2019ll be two different ones. So it\u2019s kinda neat for us to do that, a little more work but it makes it fun for us to also go to different songs.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ll send you my list for the Sydney show, yeah?<\/strong>
\nYeah *laughs* and the funny thing is sometimes people come up with oddest songs they want to hear and it takes us by surprise and I would say \u201cwhy would they want to hear that?\u201d*laughs*<\/p>\n

What do you remember about that first trip to Australia back in 1977?<\/strong>
\nOh man, the very first time we were down there you have to remember that the very first time we came there was no direct flight, so you went from LA to Hawaii, Hawaii to Guam, Guam to New Zealand, New Zealand to Sydney and then the first show was in Perth so that\u2019s another six hours, so it would take thirty hours to get there and it would take two days to recover *laughs*. Now of course from Los Angeles it\u2019s a thirteen hour flight and you get there in one day and you\u2019re back to normal but back then it was a production trying to get to Australia. The odd thing is that everybody that ever went to Australia said \u201cyou know I could live here\u201d so there\u2019s like a very special kind of thing about Australia that people just love, Americans love Australia.<\/p>\n

You always have such a great rapport with Australia what do you think it is about Australia that just gets and loves what you do?<\/strong>
\nI think that there\u2019s a certain amount of theatricality that they expect from us, and of course they\u2019re expecting a great band and they\u2019re expecting those songs to sound great but I kind of think we\u2019re like the Barnum and Bailey circus that comes to town every once in a while, they know that the Alice Cooper show is going to be something, there\u2019s going to be surprises in it and there\u2019s going to be stuff that\u2019s going to make people sit there and go \u201coh, ok that was really satisfying.\u201d Hopefully we never let the audience down and so far I don\u2019t think we ever have.<\/p>\n

This upcoming tour is going to be your thirteenth tour here, have you noticed a change in audience over generations?<\/strong>
\nYou know that\u2019s another very strange thing, if you go to any one of our concerts we\u2019ve noticed that the first twenty or thirty rows are all fifteen to twenty five years old and they know every lyric and they have the eye make up on, and some of the girls are dressed like the nurse, and they pick up certain characters in the show. Then we notice that the next generation is the next group back and then the older generation are sort of in the back watching. So I think we go through three different generations, three or four, it\u2019s one of the only times that you\u2019re gonna have a grandfather, a father and a son all listening to hard rock and kind of like being happy with it.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re still rockin\u2019 the same band as the last time you were here, how is it all running at the moment?<\/strong>
\nYeah the great thing about this band is they\u2019re all handpicked. Ryan Roxie is the guy that I know is a great rock and roll guitar player and he knows how to work the stage, Chuck Garric he has his own band called Beasto Blanco and he is one of those bass players that just looks like he should be in the Alice Cooper band. Glen Sobel just got voted best drummer in Rock and Roll, Tommy Henriksen is the guy who\u2019s sort of my anchor, he\u2019s the guy that really holds things down, then our guitar player \u2018Hurricane\u2019 Nita Strauss is just a total shredder, I mean she looks like a model and she just gets up there and shreds. The thing that makes it even better is that every single one of these people is best friends so you never hear anything backstage except laughter, you\u2019re never hearing anybody screaming at anybody or any yelling, it\u2019s all just laughing.<\/p>\n

Well you can really see that come across on stage, it did look like fun up there.<\/strong>
\nIt really is, these guys get up on stage and they give me everything they\u2019ve got every single night and I think what people are probably surprised about is the high energy in this show, we never let the audience get a chance to get their breath, and a lot of people will say \u2018well Alice has got to be almost seventy now I\u2019ll bet he\u2019s really slowing down\u2019 and all this, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever done a show with this much energy and I feel great, I\u2019ve never felt better in my life.<\/p>\n

You’re also bringing Ace Frehley along with you, a great pairing, why was Ace the perfect choice?<\/strong>
\nHe was one of those guys that we\u2019ve known since early KISS days, and I don\u2019t know what their falling out was with KISS but Ace was always a friend, he kept his show together, he kept his act together, he plays great and there\u2019s just something right about it, it really works. We\u2019re also doing a tour in August, it\u2019s Alice Cooper, Deep Purple and Edgar Winter, but Alice Cooper and Deep Purple together is really a good classic rock show.<\/p>\n

I love that you\u2019re still loving it and still going, when we spoke last time and Motley Crue were wrapping up you said you were never going to quit and it\u2019s showing!<\/strong>
\nOh yeah, you know Motley Crue I think had come to an end of creativity and there was a lot of conflict in their band, they hardly talked to each other and to me I said that\u2019s exactly the opposite to what I want in a band, I want the guys in the band on a day off to go to the bar together, I want them to go out to dinner together, go out to a movie, whatever. So that\u2019s the kind of band I always wanted and I insist on that. Conflict is something that does not work in a band. You can tell that our band is having fun on stage, I could only tell there was conflict going on with Motley Crue.<\/p>\n

You mentioned new music before and it’s been a long while since new music from you, what can we expect?<\/strong>
\nWell I\u2019ve got a new album coming out in July and it\u2019s called \u2018Paranormal\u2019 and it\u2019s Bob Ezrin and I, Bob is producing. Larry Mullen is playing drums on it from U2, that\u2019s a whole different thing, Billy Gibbons plays on one of the songs, from ZZ Top, and then it\u2019s really all stuff that Bob and I just decided we\u2019re going to do an album of stuff that we like. So it goes all over the place but it\u2019s still a guitar rock album, we decided no story-line in this one, the songs all have a story but there\u2019s no connecting sort of string that connects the songs all together. So that\u2019s why we called it \u2018Paranormal\u2019 it\u2019s sort of other than normal for us. You know I\u2019m at a point now when I\u2019m making albums now I\u2019m making albums for my audience, for the Alice Cooper fans, I don\u2019t think in this generation the way the music business is you\u2019re really not making albums to break a new audience. I think it\u2019s great if you do get people that discover you and do become Alice fans, but it\u2019s a whole different thing than it was in the seventies. In the seventies you\u2019d make an album and people would go out and buy it and they would become your fans, now I think it\u2019s so scattered and splintered that Alice is gonna be Alice, KISS is gonna be KISS we\u2019ve all established ourselves with a certain sound and certain look and we\u2019re really not looking, I know it\u2019s great that people are coming along but we\u2019re not sitting there saying we\u2019ve gotta break the twenty year olds into Alice Cooper. If they discover us, great, but I listen to the radio now and I kinda don\u2019t get it, it\u2019s very introspective and it\u2019s kinda all over the place. There\u2019s a couple of great bands but it\u2019s not like it was in the seventies where almost every band was unique.<\/p>\n

So obviously over time a lot of things change but what is the one thing you’d say has stayed the same in your time making music?<\/strong>
\nI was born in Detroit so I am always going to be a Detroit sort of guitar rock band, I was based in The Yardbirds and The Kinks and The Who, Chuck Berry was sort of our patron saint and I learned to write lyrics just listening to Chuck Berry, I mean he could tell a story in three minutes and make it a funny interesting story in three minutes and I listened to that and said that\u2019s how I want to write my lyrics. Now of course I always had a dark sense of humour so I added that to it. If you listen to us we will always be a very hard driving rock and roll band with melodies, I think that Bob Ezrin insisted that everything has to have a good melody to it, not just a throw away vocal on it we always wanted to develop that melody and make sure it was a good song, not just a good riff.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s left to do that you haven\u2019t yet done that you want to accomplish?<\/strong>
\nWell you know there\u2019s always that idea of taking Alice Cooper to Broadway, and if we did that I would never do it the way that Broadway would do it, I would take what we\u2019ve learned over fifty years and sort of make Broadway have to listen to us, I would never water it down. In other words if you go to see \u2018Tommy\u2019 on Broadway it\u2019s really watered down compared to what The Who\u2019s \u2018Tommy\u2019 was, I would never allow \u2018Welcome To My Nightmare\u2019 or any of that to ever get mellowed out, I would keep it hard rock, I would keep it loud, I would keep it angry, scary, spooky but then I would be able to use the entire stage in order to really, really make those songs come alive.<\/p>\n

So we shouldn\u2019t hold our breath for an acoustic album any time soon?<\/strong>
\nNever ever, don\u2019t lose any sleep over that *laughs* I\u2019ve never ever, I\u2019ve promised my fan base I will never do an unplugged album. I mean you could take those ballads \u2018Only Women Bleed\u2019, \u2018I Never Cry\u2019, \u2018You and Me\u2019, \u2018How You Gonna See Me Now\u2019 and if somebody wanted to do those songs acoustically they could do a great show around it, but it won\u2019t be me.<\/p>\n

Lastly let’s look ahead to the future, finish this sentence for me, by the end of 2017 Alice Cooper wants to…
\n<\/strong>Finish the album for The Hollywood Vampires, and we finish this tour on the 6th<\/sup>\u00a0of December, so I\u2019m ready to start the new tour with The Hollywood Vampires in 2018.<\/p>\n

Think you could bring The Vampires here?<\/strong>
\nOh yeah, the Vampires are gonna do a world tour. That band is really fun, here\u2019s something that people don\u2019t realise, Joe Perry from Aerosmith great guitar player, takes guitar lessons from Johnny Depp. That\u2019s how good Johnny is, Johnny is a really excellent guitar player.<\/p>\n

Oh yeah I know, he\u2019s played on some of Butch Walker\u2019s stuff\u2026<\/strong>
\nOh Butch Walker is one of my favourite guys, you talk about a guy that really, really brings it, there\u2019s a guy that brings it. He is really great I went to see him a couple of times and I said, man, if I had a young band and they said \u201cwell what should we do?\u201d I\u2019d say \u201cwell go watch Butch Walker.\u201d<\/p>\n

On that note, thanks so much for your time again, Alice.<\/strong>
\nHey I\u2019ll see you when we get down there, OK?!<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t miss it!<\/strong>
\n*laughs* Alright!<\/p>\n

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AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES: \u2018SPEND THE NIGHT WITH ALICE COOPER\u2019 WITH VERY SPECIAL GUEST ACE FREHLEY<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tuesday 17 October Perth Arena, Perth, WA
\nThursday 19 October Thebarton Theatre, Thebarton, SA
\nFriday 20 October Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne, VIC
\nSaturday 21 October Hordern Pavilion, Sydney, NSW
\nMonday 23 October AIS Arena, Canberra, ACT
\nTuesday 24 October Entertainment Centre, Newcastle, NSW
\nWednesday 25 October Convention Centre, Brisbane, QLD<\/p>\n

Tickets on sale now\u00a0at\u00a0www.ticketek.com.au<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0with Adelaide tickets available at\u00a0www.ticketmaster.com.au<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Presented by TEG Live<\/p>\n

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Essential Information<\/strong><\/h2>\n

From:<\/strong>\u00a0Phoenix, AZ, USA<\/p>\n

Band Members:<\/strong>\u00a0Alice Cooper \u2013 Vocals, Chuck Garric \u2013 Bass, Tommy Henriksen \u2013 Guitar, Nita Strauss \u2013 Guitar, Ryan Roxie \u2013 Guitar, Glen Sobel \u2013 Drums<\/p>\n

Website:<\/strong>\u00a0http:\/\/www.alicecooper.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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