Alice Cooper has revealed plans to reunite with his original band for his next studio album.
Formed in 1968 with members of the Phoenix, AZ group The Spiders, the Alice Cooper Band featured Cooper, guitarists Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith.
The lineup went on to record 7 albums of classic material – including 4 platinum records – before splitting in 1975, following which Cooper launched a solo career with “Welcome To My Nightmare.”
Now Cooper says he’s been working with the surviving members (Buxton died in 1997 of complications from pneumonia at the age of 49) on new material that seems to have recaptured some of their old sonic magic.
“I’ve always liked the idea that Alice Cooper has always been a Detroit rock band,” Alice tells The Weekender. “We’ve always been a hard rock band, guitar rock, and I’ll never give that up. But every once in awhile, though, there’s just a flavor of what album do we want to go to here to give it that flavor. And it seems to be going toward the ‘Killer’ album.
“And I kind of go, that album, let’s revisit the sound of that album and what we were kind of thinking. You can never go back and totally recapture it, but you can certainly look at the elements that made that album work the way it did.”
“I wrote three or four songs with Neil Smith and Mike Bruce,” Cooper continues. “And so we worked together in Phoenix for about two weeks just writing songs and demoing songs. And you never know which ones are going to make the album, but I said let’s do that.
“Dennis Dunaway wrote two or three things. We haven’t seen those yet, but I know Dennis has always written great stuff. It’s fun to go back and work with guys you haven’t worked with in awhile. It’s not trying to recapture your youth. It’s trying to recapture a sound. And it’s a very elusive sound.”
The surviving members reunited for a performance in a Dallas record store last October at a signing event for Dunaway’s book, “Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs!: My Adventures In The Alice Cooper Group.”
Along with Bruce, Smith and current Cooper guitairist Ryan Roxie, the lineup delivered an 8-song set of classic tracks that included “Caught in A Dream”, “Be My Lover”, “I’m Eighteen”, “Is It My Body”, “No More Mr. Nice Guy”, “Under My Wheels”, “School’s Out” and “Elected.”
In addition to new material, Cooper has a busy 2016 schedule juggling solo shows and dates with The Hollywood Vampires.
The original shock-rocker recently extended his North American tour and unveiled a full live schedule with the supergroup that sees him joined by Johnny Depp and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry.
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Search Alice Cooper at hennemusic
