Alice Cooper fans rejoice: two new albums in the works

A little less conversation, a little more “Revenge”, please. Well, at least that’s what Alice Cooper wants! Although there have been collaborations on several of Cooper’s albums over the past 14 years, the shock rocker’s reunion with his bandmates from the original Alice Cooper group in July for “The Revenge of Alice Cooper” marked the first full album that Cooper, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, and Neal Smith (and, via technology, the late Glen Buxton) had recorded together since “Muscle of Love” in 1973. “The Revenge…” received overwhelmingly positive reviews and charted all over the world, including the Top 20 on Billboard’s Independent Albums and Top Rock & Alternative Albums charts. And from Cooper‘s perspective, it will occur once again, as reported by UCR.

I think we’ll probably do another album. I can’t see why we wouldn’t. This one did so well, we might as well do another one. I talked to (producer) Bob Ezrin the other night, and he said, ‘What do you think about…doing another album?’ It’s great with me. We haven’t talked to the guys about it yet, so it’s certainly not a done deal. But I’d be willing to do it, for sure. It was interesting the album took off as much as it did…which is great for an album that’s 53 years old. The funny thing was we accidentally made a 1975 album. We didn’t try to make it sound like 1975, but when we all got into the studio and started writing and started doing it, it just turned out 1975. There’s so many young bands trying to sound like 1975, or the 70s sound, and we weren’t even looking to do that. But it ended up being that, ’cause that’s what we sound like when we get together.

It makes sense that Cooper, who is also writing songs for another album, isn’t playing any of “The Revenge…” material in his own performances. However, his new stage show, which is based on his Alice’s Attic syndicated radio show, is searching the catalog for rare gems.

Everybody loves the fact that we’re doing those songs. We just kind of went through and said, ‘What about this? What about that?’ Somebody said, ‘What about ‘Dirty Diamonds’ and I went, ‘Oh, that’d be good. That would be a great stage song. let’s try it,’ and it was just perfect. Then, ‘What about ‘Dangerous Tonight?’ I said, ‘I`ve never done that one on stage,’ so we did it and it really turned into a great little piece of theater. It’s great for us. It’s just one of those things where the band loves getting into music that they haven’t played before, ’cause when it you get on stage it gives you that, ‘Oh, man, we’re doing that new song’ and ‘Oh man, we’re doing that song!’ or ‘Oh, boy, we’re gonna do that?!’ Of course we’re doing ‘Poison’ and ‘I’m Eighteen’ and ‘School’s Out,’ but I dropped a couple of the standards just to put some new stuff in.

They also performed “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath.

We felt that for at least a week or two weeks (after his death) we should do a tribute to Ozzy, and we made sure we did the song really, really well. I think every band out there did a tribute to Ozzy, as they should.